Time for some restraint?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm a Vietnam War veteran. In that perspective this current issue is unfortunate, but not worth killing anybody over.

[Ilovelucy]

I'm enjoying the noise, even the crappy journalism. Maybe it's the request we got in the mod centre, asking us not to start a petition, inflame the forum or try and contact Richard. Bit fuckin' bigger than a petition now, eh?

As virphen says, it's about getting the information out there. It wil mean less in a month's time, sure. But it still means a hell of a lot right now.

[leo-rcc]

I'm a Vietnam War veteran. In that perspective this current issue is unfortunate, but not worth killing anybody over.

Unless you are into that sort of thing of course.

[ED209]

The truth, 'our side', whatever you want to call it, actually shows Dawkins' in a better light than the way the story has been reported, IMO.

Papers are reporting, in a nutshell, that atheists have now turned on Dawkins' en masse because he asked them to stop calling him a cunt when he planned to assert more control over his website. They are portraying him as a deeply unpopular, largely deserted and even discredited figure. This is not the case.

The truth is that Dawkin's - a 70-year-old Oxford don - has somewhat of an over-reliance on and seemingly absolute trust in his IT staff, that he doesn't understand forums much, that he is surprisingly bad at PR and doesn't seem to have dedicated PR staff, and that he's willing to go off half-cocked when he doesn't know the facts but is assured by his trusted staff that he does. I.e. he's human. I don't think any of these failings should affect anyone's opinion of him much, unless they previously held him to be perfect and infallible.

The wholesale destruction of posts, deceit and ham-fisted damage limitation is solely the action of his staff, who Dawkins' ill-advisedly and disastrously gave carte blanche to, but what else might he reasonably be expected to have done, looking at it from his perspective and background? Dawkins employed two incompetent staff, he continues to trust them completely, he issued an ill-advised statement in his name while unwittingly ignorant of the facts, and if he is continuing to ignore the former mods then he is making it clear that he isn't interested in learning the background to why his forum imploded. That's the extent of his culpability. I don't think any of that is particularly damning or discrediting to him.

(dons flameproof suit. Yes, those failings are real and bad but he isn't the one intentionally deleting the users, destroying the logs etc over a sustained period of time out of petty and total unprofessional empire-building.)

[TheoJones]

This is the thing,

all it takes is, what, a couple of clicks and you can see the whole story - what was posted on RDF, Peter's blog post and that's about it, right there.

Josh was/is a control freak... but without a friend/contact like that, Richard would probably not have started a forum in the first place.

he got it going, other people made it better, then it did what every internet forum in history does - it got hostile to newcomers, in-jokey and attracted a large selection of crazy cat people...

Dawkins has decided to cut it loose, and Josh has screwed that process up horribly.

A lot of people's efforts of time have been wasted, and that's bad. it's been handled badly, and that's worse...

but at the end of the day? It's not the end of the world, not even close... outside of the forum users... nobody cares about who did what to who.

The sooner people move on, the better it is for everybody, and the less horrible name calling and abuse there is, the easier it is for everybody to move on.

[Heresiarch]

but at the end of the day? It's not the end of the world, not even close... outside of the forum users... nobody cares about who did what to who.

The sooner people move on, the better it is for everybody, and the less horrible name calling and abuse there is, the easier it is for everybody to move on.

Couldn't agree more.

Oh, applying some restraints is almost always a good idea, but that's a subject for another sub-forum.

[leo-rcc]

The sooner people move on, the better it is for everybody, and the less horrible name calling and abuse there is, the easier it is for everybody to move on.

Judging by the posts around here recently that whole matter was dying down anyway. The best way to achieve that is to let it go and just not rehash the whole event again and again. We get your point, it is well made (better than some other person has done around here).

[Ilovelucy]

I'm glad others have been able to get over it and move on, I'm not trying to drag them back in. But I made a big investment in that place and I'm still fuming, and no amount of level headed exortations to calm down are going to dampen that furnace until it burns out in its own time.

[klr]

This is the thing,

all it takes is, what, a couple of clicks and you can see the whole story - what was posted on RDF, Peter's blog post and that's about it, right there.

Josh was/is a control freak... but without a friend/contact like that, Richard would probably not have started a forum in the first place.

he got it going, other people made it better, then it did what every internet forum in history does - it got hostile to newcomers, in-jokey and attracted a large selection of crazy cat people...

The forum became the success that it was with little or no direct help from Josh. He had next to nothing to do with the day-to-day running of same, or even in setting strategy or policy.

Dawkins has decided to cut it loose, and Josh has screwed that process up horribly.

A lot of people's efforts of time have been wasted, and that's bad. it's been handled badly, and that's worse...

but at the end of the day? It's not the end of the world, not even close... outside of the forum users... nobody cares about who did what to who.

The sooner people move on, the better it is for everybody, and the less horrible name calling and abuse there is, the easier it is for everybody to move on.

I would largely agree, but you know what: It would probably have died down a lot sooner if RD himself had not thrown so much pyrotechnics on the fire ...

[maiforpeace]

I'm glad others have been able to get over it and move on, I'm not trying to drag them back in. But I made a big investment in that place and I'm still fuming, and no amount of level headed exortations to calm down are going to dampen that furnace until it burns out in its own time.

+1

Not only that but admonitions to calm down can exacerbate, rather than diffuse people's feelings of frustration and anger.

What I think many people don't understand is that there is a much deeper level of emotional investment in work that is done on a volunteer basis. So, when you are treated like crap it's even more hurtful than for a paid job, and that's already pretty bad.