Merged RD Forum shutting down

[Darat]

What "Land of the typos"?

 

[remirol]

"The Chowder of Reason"

 

[stijndeloose]

Oh, dear, you appear to have misunderstood the concept of "rights" entirely. On a private forum, them who pays the bills has all the rights.

Err... isn't the RDF funded by private contributions, many of which - presumably - come from people who use the forum?

 

[AvalonXQ]

Please do not attempt to inflame the users, start any petitions, or "relocate" groups of users to a separate forum.

This is the part that really bothers me. You're wanting to shut down your forum, where real people have made real friends and formed a real community. Why not give them the tools to relocate elsewhere if they don't like your decision?
Prohibiting them from doing that, and taking steps to make that difficult/impossible to do, can be interpreted no other way than a Major Jerk Move.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

That's twice in the last day or so I have seen the word clam in a so-called "typo". I suspect Scientology infiltration.

 

[Darat]

Get back to baking.

 

[remirol]

Err... isn't the RDF funded by private contributions, many of which - presumably - come from people who use the forum?

There's a difference between donating to the Foundation and donating specifically to its forum. When you donate to the Foundation, you're saying "take this money and use it as you see fit to enhance the Foundation". It is entirely possible that this action will cause some people to be no longer willing to donate/contribute to the Foundation, which is completely their right.

 

[macdoc]

AvalonQX

Quote:

Please do not attempt to inflame the users, start any petitions, or "relocate" groups of users to a separate forum

.
This is the part that really bothers me. You're wanting to shut down your forum, where real people have made real friends and formed a real community. Why not give them the tools to relocate elsewhere if they don't like your decision?
Prohibiting them from doing that, and taking steps to make that difficult/impossible to do, can be interpreted no other way than a Major Jerk Move.

Exactly - many of have thousands of hours and posts and hundreds of friends and now not even a chance to swap emails and where to re-organize.

A word to those not involved or members there - far more than meets the eye politically and the treatment of the mods was atrocious some of whom are very senior scientists with thousands of hours of effort put into the Dawkins site.

And please - if you can't make a constructive comment don't comment at all....I and others who spend a lot of time on Dawkins are extremely annoyed and don't appreciate the comments from the chattering class here..

There is a lot of value lost and some very correctly pissed off people. Playing the fool here does not present an inviting refuge for those looking for a new place to gather.....

I'm speaking as someone with 10,000+ posts there.

••••

Darat thanks for your input

 

[cj.23]

And of course I can't resist: this Forum has a well established membership with a lot of overlap with the subjects discussed at the Dawkins forum, folks are quite welcome to register here.

I had mentioned the JREF to former RD.net posters within minutes of it happening (i was Jerome over there, I won the Science writing contest for which I am still absurdly proud!)

Details and links on my blog here

http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/the-end-of-an-era-richard-dawkins-forum-to-close/

EDIT: And now you will be stuck with a lot more of me posting here!

cj x

 

[stijndeloose]

AvalonQX


Exactly - many of have thousands of hours and posts and hundreds of friends and now not even a chance to swap emails and where to re-organize.

A word to those not involved or members there - far more than meets the eye politically and the treatment of the mods was atrocious some of whom are very senior scientists with thousands of hours of effort put into the Dawkins site.

And please - if you can't make a constructive comment don't comment at all....I and others who spend a lot of time on Dawkins are extremely annoyed and don't appreciate the comments from the chattering class here..

There is a lot of value lost and some very correctly pissed off people. Playing the fool here does not present an inviting refuge for those looking for a new place to gather.....

I'm speaking as someone with 10,000+ posts there.

••••

Darat thanks for your input

YES! I agree, wholeheartedly. Many of us are regrouping over at www.rationalia.com now. I'm there, too, and I've been here for a while as well.

It's crap that you can't even search the forum decently to save posts to you hard-drive.

 

[stijndeloose]

It is entirely possible that this action will cause some people to be no longer willing to donate/contribute to the Foundation, which is completely their right.

Probable rather than possible, methinks. And I will be one of them.

 

[Piscivore]

... this island of clam... is quite rare on the internet...

Why else do you think I come here?

 

[Beerina]

They explicitly lied to the mods for months about the changes.

They felt the need to threaten the mods and tell them not to contact Richard, despite the fact that some of them were in regular contact with him prior to this.

They banned members with over 10k useful posts for expressing dissent (Edited : and deleted every single post they ever made)

And they have made the forums read only and removed all PM functions over night.

Imagine if that happened here.

One thing I liked was the mods wouldn't ban you here just for pissing them off by getting in their face through sarcasm and the logical conclusions of their faulty ideas. Normal discussions, anyway.

 

[95theses]

Of course. Wouldn't you? If it were dollars coming out of my pocket to run the forum, I damn well wouldn't announce an unpopular decision one second ahead of time to anyone who had the keys to cause damage.

Inaccurate representation of events. They told the mods, quote:




You seem to be under the impression that shutting a forum down allows posts to remain regardless of the software, data, or machine it's hosted on being present.

Should've done that in the first place. I believe (as others have noted) that they were excessively naive to believe that such an announcement wouldn't cause boundless Internet Rage among the forum members. Between the schools of "one agonizing rip" and "a series of excruciating jerks", I fall firmly into the former.

I'd say "well, " and move on with my life. But, it must be said, I think the JREF has implemented an elaborate system for the express purpose of avoiding the need to do something like this.

Can I nest quotes on this forum? it doesn't appear to allow me to do anything but quote your replies, which is going to be difficult to follow.

I wanted to address each point specifically but they don't make sense out of context and without being able to show what you quoted of me.

Some brief points though :

Shutting down the forum will occur in 30 days to allow people to archive past content, however in a fit of pique Josh the admin has physically deleted the accounts and posts of people that complained, including mods with over 10k posts in the science forums. These posts are not archivable or viewable at all anymore, just because they complained publicly about the decision. It's as if they didn't exist at all.

One of the top mods has posted in the thread on rationalia tha they have been warned that any attempt to contact Richard Dawkins (who they have previously had many conversations with) will result in the Admin - Josh - removing their account and wiping all their PM's/Posts from history making it impossible for them to get anything back before the forum shuts down.

It's possible to change things without acting like a massive jerk, throwing the toys out of the pram, which is precisely what josh has done.

 

[Beerina]

Question: what is this thread supposed to achieve?

Shame on the admins of the Dawkins forum?

An attempt to shout so loudly as to gain the attention of Dr. Dawkins himself to take a look at what his doofs are doing with his good name?


Both sound reasonable to me.

 

[remirol]

Can I nest quotes on this forum? it doesn't appear to allow me to do anything but quote your replies, which is going to be difficult to follow.

You can use the multiquote feature to quote them both, but unfortunately this version of vBulletin doesn't have nested quoting. I think people have used the "reply in PM" feature (which, oddly, _does_ have nested quoting) and copy-pasted the text in the past, but that's an ugly workaround.

Shutting down the forum will occur in 30 days to allow people to archive past content, however in a fit of pique Josh the admin has physically deleted the accounts and posts of people that complained, including mods with over 10k posts in the science forums. These posts are not archivable or viewable at all anymore, just because they complained publicly about the decision. It's as if they didn't exist at all.

As I understand it there was a short period following the announcement during which the forums were still accessible; then, not long after, the forums were made "read-only".

Were the deletions before or after he closed the forums? If "before", there's a simple explanation: he thought that stopping individual people would make the general outcry stop. (Which, as others have noted, is hopelessly naive. If he didn't want discussion of the topic to take place on that forum, the "make the boards read-only" should've been the _first_ option, not the latter.)

One of the top mods has posted in the thread on rationalia tha they have been warned that any attempt to contact Richard Dawkins (who they have previously had many conversations with) will result in the Admin - Josh - removing their account and wiping all their PM's/Posts from history making it impossible for them to get anything back before the forum shuts down.

The quote from the announcement indicates that attempts to contact him regarding the forum change are proscribed, which is perfectly understandable. Can you post the text of the actual warning from that thread?

 

[stijndeloose]

As I understand it there was a short period following the announcement during which the forums were still accessible; then, not long after, the forums were made "read-only".

I wish they were simply made 'read only'. Basically, though, ALL the functionality is going. I can't use the 'view your posts' and 'view active topics' functions, I can't search the forum for any posts I want to save, and I can't PM other members.

Were the deletions before or after he closed the forums? If "before", there's a simple explanation: he thought that stopping individual people would make the general outcry stop. (Which, as others have noted, is hopelessly naive. If he didn't want discussion of the topic to take place on that forum, the "make the boards read-only" should've been the _first_ option, not the latter.

It's not only naive. It's immoral. It's authoritarian, and insulting to many members and mods who put time and effort into many of the VERY informative posts they put on the forum - voluntarily, i.e. with-out being paid for it.

 

[95theses]

Some were banned before and some after the forum was locked for good.

Even still, a simple revoking of posting rights would have sufficed. For example DarwinsBulldog had something like 13k of serious science posts with links to published papers on evolution. All gone, wiped clean. No need at all apart from pure spite at being criticized publicly. At least 4 other posters with huge track records are wiped clean too, not had posting privileges revoked, their entire record wiped clean. Current conservative estimate is over 30k of posts that up until last night were regarded as some of the most useful and educational on the site.

Regarding the ban on contacting RD :

Bloody Hell.

So he right royally ****s over both you and the entire mod team and you are still prepared to listed to his directives from on high telling you not to contact Richard?

At the very bloody least Richard owes you and the other mods a personal thanks and explanation for what happened. You spent so much time moderating his forums for no personal gain and then they do that to you?

I'd be right on the email to Richard.

**** Josh, besides who knows what he's actually telling Richard?

No I'm not emailing Richard at the moment. If I do that, I'll be deleted and lose all my posts (some of which I am copying) and these contain lots of information about the forum eg data on how it's grown. This is important info that needs to be kept if ever there's a discussion about why the forum was axed.

 

[Sledge]

Shame on the admins of the Dawkins forum?

An attempt to shout so loudly as to gain the attention of Dr. Dawkins himself to take a look at what his doofs are doing with his good name?


Both sound reasonable to me.

Shame on the admins requires people here to care, and for the admins to care what we think. I'm not sure either of those criteria will be met.

As for attempting to gain the attention of Dr. Dawkins, wouldn't an e-mail to him be a better approach?

 

[cj.23]

Shame on the admins requires people here to care, and for the admins to care what we think. I'm not sure either of those criteria will be met.

As for attempting to gain the attention of Dr. Dawkins, wouldn't an e-mail to him be a better approach?

Anyone emailing Richard Dawkins immediately has there entire posyting history removed, and is "removed from history." That fact, and that fact alone suggests to me that Richard Dawkins must be fully aware and complicit in the situation...

j x