I Quit: The Lessons of History

[Apollonius]

Darwin would have made some interesting comments about how the web is like an organism experiencing rapid natural selection. Just get used to it.

Web communities can grow rapidly and outgrow the intentions of the host or their capacity to manage it.

[Shaker]

Is Jerome leaving again? It must be Wednesday

[Feck]

Is Jerome leaving again? It must be Wednesday

Don't you have a law about that sort of thing ?

[Shaker]

[Matt H]

I'm reading your post now Jerome, but before I do, I'll just say I've lost count of the amount of internet forums I've been on that have ended up being shut down by some crazy admin.

[locutus7]

Thanks for the background, Jerome. I asked about IIDB in another thread and, lo, you responded. I hope you stick around.

[Daan]

I don't think Atheism is to blame. We are pioneers on the internet, dealing with organizations that only exist a couple of years. In due time organizations will appear that span decades and will continue for a long time. The bad thing about being pioneers is that things change fast and can go broke fast. The good thing is that it is more intense the living with the same shit for decades on a row.

[paceetrate]

Well the simple version of the answer to this is: If these people don't care if they fuck us over because they receive no ill effects from doing so... then we need to make them suffer ill effects. When a group advocating some kind of social change starts voicing their opinion, they are always met by large numbers of people, even people in their own group, saying "shut the fuck up, I don't want to hear it." If they listened to those assholes, we wouldn't have such things as Civil Rights. Stop caring about whether or not they want to hear you, and simply be too loud to not be heard.

There's another lesson from history for you.

[maiforpeace]

Well the simple version of the answer to this is: If these people don't care if they fuck us over because they receive no ill effects from doing so... then we need to make them suffer ill effects. When a group advocating some kind of social change starts voicing their opinion, they are always met by large numbers of people, even people in their own group, saying "shut the fuck up, I don't want to hear it." If they listened to those assholes, we wouldn't have such things as Civil Rights. Stop caring about whether or not they want to hear you, and simply be too loud to not be heard.

There's another lesson from history for you.

Exactly.

Regroup and make a new plan of attack. Quitting is giving up and giving in and giving them the satisfaction of saying I told you so.

I was banned from RD.net forums several years ago for my dissent over the demise of the RD.net chat. (another community 'murder' Josh was responsible for) I have seen a number of schisms occur since then, and each time people have regrouped and created something newer and better. I have faith (yes, an atheist with faith!) that the community you had over at RD.net will be vibrant and thrive once again for you all as long as you remain connected and work together.

Rationalia is an excellent example of this. Of all the online communities I am a part of, Rationalia is the most sensitive to preserving the community largely due to all of the grief and suffering people experienced from the schisms at RD and TAF.

So Jerome, take a break and give it a rest. Come back later when things have settled down a bit.

Otherwise, here's a ham sandwich and a road map.

[GenesForLife]

Hey Jerome, it'll be a real shame if you leave, I never got to know you, barring that very interesting evolution board game...

[Valden]

I have been thinking of doing the same thing, not in quite so much detail as you though lol.

But yea.

Bah, don't you dare! I'll harass you on msn. :twisted:

[skintbuthappy]

Hey Jerome, it'll be a real shame if you leave, I never got to know you, barring that very interesting evolution board game...

I wish to be associated with the remarks of the last speaker!

Stay and play with us, Jerome!

[lpetrich]

Even after the great October Purge, when many of us left, I eventually drifted back to RD.net. TAF and Rationalia split: I can't help but being reminded of the South Park episode Go God, Go! where the United Atheist Alliance (UAA)fight the United Atheist League (UAL) and the Allied Atheist Allegiance (AAA) --sure it was a shit episode by South Park standards, but there was more than a grain of truth in it.

Or the Judean People's Front vs. the People's Front of Judea in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

As to IIDB, I'd been a member since the beginning of its current incarnation. It has a long history, and its prehistory extends into the primordial ooze of Usenet News, an Internet-wide distributed messageboard. Usenet goes all the way back to 1979, when it ran between two Research-Triangle-university computers - UNC and Duke U. It grew from there, but in a haphazard, higgledy-piggledy way. In the mid-1980's, it had three hierarchies (categories): fa.* - from Arpanet, mod.* - moderated, and net.* - everything else. Its newsgroups (forums) were haphazardly named. In 1987 and 1988, some admins of major Usenet sites imposed the Great Renaming, producing the Big Seven hierarchies, comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*. Since then, several others have been added, including several regional ones.

An unofficial one, alt.*, was soon added, and in 1990, someone created alt.atheism. A few years later, someone created alt.atheism.moderated, and a certain Clark Adams was an early moderator of it. Clark Adams had been into meetups and other social events even back then, and he met some people who were maintaining a FAQ file for alt.atheism. They added more and more stuff, and they decided to found Internet Infidels, running their site off of a dormroom computer. To their library, they added a messageboard that ran some absolutely awful software called wwwboard.pl, one with only three forums - General Discussion, Young Freethinkers, and Evolution. They shut it down in late 1999 after the discovery of a security hole, and started a stopgap effort at Delphi Forums. But it was very awful, and several proto-IIDB regulars started their own refugee forum, Prembone's Den of Infidels.

II's Board of Directors started IIDB's current incarnation in June 2000, and I joined a few months later, though I wasn't very active at first. They started a Freethinkers Private Forum a year or so later, and it lasted a few years before it was shut down because its contentious drama llama. IIDB had an almost-anything-goes forum called Rants, Raves, Preachings, etc. that was shut down soon after because II's Board of Directors thought that it was bad for their image. A little later, in 2004, II's BoD decided that IIDB ought to be a bit more tolerant, so they decided to accept theist mods. That caused a lot of drama llama, including the resignation of a moderator of IIDB's evolution-creation forum.

I remember meeting Clark Adams during a meetup in Las Vegas in 2002; he was very friendly, and he showed me around parts of that city. He continued in II's BoD, and in 2006, EverLastingGodStopper was appointed to it. She was a longtime secularist activist, and she seemed good for public relations. But in the middle of 2007, Clark Adams committed suicide, and late that year, ELGS was voted out of II's BoD. She announced what had happened on IIDB, and the BoD banned her for leaking confidential info. This led to two months of major drama llama -- bannings, resignations, you name it. II's BoD appointed The Other Michael to deal with IIDB, and he acted like he was the top admin, alienating much of IIDB's staff. Something like half IIDB's staff members resigned as a result. TOM expressed great concern about II's mission of promoting metaphysical naturalism, and how II might lose its tax exemption for doing other things. His implication was that IIDB ought to be focused on that mission, with community being secondary -- at best.

IIDB calmed down over the next year, and a certain Alcyonian emerged as an important admin. She, NinJay, and RayJ ended up taking over most of IIDB late in 2008, and they renamed it the Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board - FRDB. Since then, the management of that board has become more relaxed and informal and community-minded, and less legalistic.

Prembone's Den of Infidels was the first of numerous spinoff boards of IIDB, complete with a delightfully complicated history. I myself have been involved in some of these spinoffs, and I still am.

[Jerome23]

I knew most of that from discussions over the years, but you certainly give a superb first hand perspective. Perhaps you could point some of us toward pastures new? I'm a theist so I gues my options are more limited than most - I'm posting here and at Thinking Aloud forums at moment.

j x

[ReverendClog]

Jerome, you put into words exactly how I've been feeling about this. RDForum was an interesting place - one which I had shared with family and friends - and although I didn't actively participate I felt that I appreciated some of the personalities and the interesting things they posted. It upsets me that so much information will be lost, I lost all my university work and notes and nearly thirty years worth of personal correspondence in a house fire, and it sickens me. In this age there is no need for any information to be destroyed, I'm of the opinion that RDF and Josh et al have contributed in a small way to the increase of ignorance by deleting so much, and certainly the amount of entropy has increased as a result.
I am also ashamed that I was abusive about the issue and I think that maybe I too am better off gone for good from forums.
So long, folks. I wish you all well. Jon.

Mods, please will you delete my account.