Just dropped by to say that I found it very confusing that a conference where a number of the people who have been mentioned multiple times in this thread are speaking (WIS 2 with Ophelia Benson, Greta Christina, Amy Davis Roth and Rececca Watson as speakers among several others), suddenly "has nothing to do with A+" (and more words to that effect). That did not make sense, so I spent some time reading the A+ forum, and found that these Big Names from FTB are not really that active on the A+ forum. Fair enough. Though I still don't understand why these people then are mentioned so often in this thread, which seems to be mostly about the A+ forum.
I don't think "all" of them have been mentioned as being A+, but have been mentioned as leading lights in that wing of skepticism. Rebecca has been referred to as Elevatorgate was mentioned as one of the seminal influences in the founding of A+. Additionally, they sure spend an awful lot of time defending her every utterance (when they're not tripping all over themselves to light incense to Saint PZ). They'd get collective hard nipples if Teh Watson showed up and started posting.
So, perhaps we should make it clearer that this is her posse and fan club and not Rebecca's blog or home. I'll remind you, though, that a lot of us have had web and personal dealings with Rebecca since long before any of this started, so her back-history at the JREFF may be part of the reason you see the concentration on her.
But I also found some practical things that the forum members are doing, contrary to what has been claimed several times in this thread ("all they do is talk"). In addition to what could be called "the usual kind of forum activism" i.e. which can be found pretty much everywhere on the Web: posts about petitions and about charity drives, I also found a few activities/projects that really do not seem to be "just talk" at all (and note: I do not claim that I would have done any extensive searching, I basically just browsed some of the Organization, activism and charity forum and some of the Drafting and development forum, and then stumbled upon a few more things quite unsystematically):
The JREFF has an advantage in that the forums (the final F in JREFF) are a part of the JREF and the JREF does things. Many members of the forums came here originally because they'd been to TAMs or seen lectures or presentations by Randi or others associated with the Foundation. Atheism + is a forum. It seems to have designs on becoming something else, but I haven't actually seen Hyperdeath or Ceepolk or SubMor out there tackling Popov or Geller or homeopathy. Correct me if I'm wrong.
1) Their transcribing effort. This post
http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3485 lead me here:
https://a-plus-scribe.com/doku.php?id=media:start - not a bad start in a bit less than 6 months, especially considering that it is such a small forum.
What you should say is "not a bad start... 1 month". That thread and the activity just about died after a month. Most of those transcriptions have been up for a while. It's a tiny, but significant project for those who are interested in the topics, and I tip my cap to them for getting it done, but it's not much beyond "just talking" to segue to "just typing". It's FIW (fearless internet warrior) in action.
Note that this stuff is nothing sponsored by A+, but anecdotes of what people have done IRL that has been inspired by their A+ time/association. Bully for them. All journeys start with a single step and all that. But then, I remember that this is the group who cheered on a FIW for trashing someone's meatspace experiences standing on the line against apartheid.
The second thread is a bunch of people saying "You go!" to a single activist who seems to coincidentally be a member. We've got lots similar here. The most noteworthy would be RSLancaster's herculean efforts in Stop Kaz and Stop Sylvia. But that's Rob's work. We're cheering from the peanut gallery and offering suggestions, but he's carried the lance out onto the battlefield himself. I wouldn't credit the JREF Forums for Rob's efforts and don't think A+ gets any credit for the actions of an individual in Orlando (as credible as I find those actions to be).
Mind, I've been inspired (or at least informed) by threads here to send a letter to my Senator or the Attorney General or a newspaper or media outlet. There's nothing wrong with posts that so illuminate but face it, those are pretty empty threads and this is nothing near their claim to fame. They are best known for creating big noise, furthering the schism in both atheism and skepticism and outing trolls (defined as anyone the illumi-notty find disagreeable). Yeah, I'm a "big tent" kind of hippie SJ guy. I want to see people looking for common ground, not splitting hairs.
3) And this quite new one has me deeply intrigued: @the_block_bot for/on Twitter
http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3896. I'm an open source / free software enthusiast since the late 1980s, so I just *have*to* follow what happens with this one.
Intrigued? I'd be frightened. A piece of software that blocks known trolls by number of Tweets or evidenced massive distribution of same? Sure! One that blocks "known trolls"? No so much. One that blocks "known trolls" as defined by this bunch of paranoid sycophants? No way! Their definition of a troll, as we've seen, is anyone who doesn't agree with them. Look at Ceepolk's comments in that thread about there being no value to communicating with anyone who criticizes the basic tenets of SJ.
Worse, as I hinted at above,... they're willing to sign over that policing to some central committee - as usual, made up of anonymous members of discussion boards, many of whom have, shall we be kind, ... issues.
So at least for the time being, parts of the A+ forum/community do have my positive attention. I likely will be back later to report, but that may take some time, with IRL obligations also pressing on my time.
They have my attention, but it's not so positive. With their stand on "safe space" and "301 level", they are doing next-to-nothing to further social justice, other than patting themselves on their collective smug backs. They won't allow legitimate dissent, but call it "101 level discussion" because you could not be bringing that crap up in the main forums if you'd read, absorbed and agreed with the holy writ in the re-education camps. They allow the personal anecdotal experiences of anonymous victims to trump peer reviewed studies and credible articles (they even have a term for it so they can hand-wave you away without wasting too many bytes... gaslighting), and refuse to understand that one can value the lessons from the anecdotes but that the experiences of that one special member do not equal the experiences of the group in question.
