News coverage

[Chris Wilkins]

I don't think it's like that, TBH. I just think he has accepted uncritically what Josh has told him.

As for the history of telling people to go jump, I'd love to see some examples of that. I'm fairly confident I can explain them in much the same way. The obvious example that will probably come up is the infamous 'what if you're wrong' video. His response to that question was spot on, and a good deal more polite than I'd have been.

This is not a defence of Richard, but a defence of the truth. As you may have gathered, we're pretty keen on that around here.

Edit: BTW, it wasn't the Ken Ham thing that triggered the alarm, just so you can rule that out. It was the tone of the questions, and one other thing which I am not willing ot go into. As it stands, though, an endorsement from Dan is enough to assuage my doubts. Carry on.

Tee hee. Dan will also tell you I can be difficult at times.

[hackenslash]

I'm not suggesting for a second that he's blameless. Indeed, failure to think critically, and to respond in the manner he did without, it seems, looking at the evidence, is about the worst condemnation I could level at a critical thinker. It's far worse than calling him a twat. He failed to engage in critical thought, and that's not good in a scientist. He allowed his personal bias to overrule his instinct to question, and that's pretty bad.

[CJ]

Sorry if I have missed this but what evidence do we have that the rickroll link was not in an old post moved to the recycle bin by the moderators? If all attempts to download the forum were impacted by the link then I would think that it was already there hidden in the recycle bin. If early attempts made a successful back up then later ones didn't then I would start to suspect foul play subject to the software being used. Are some download programmes smarter than others?

The recycle bin was a hidden forum where inappropriate posts were moved out of sight rather than being deleted.

The archivers weren't just finding links to to rickrolls in threads. The rd.net server was returning 302 re-direct messages to their requests.

Also, early attempts were being successful, it was only later that the re-directs started happening.

It was also only happening to those trying to archive, so it was probably done using mod rewrite.

Of course, it may have been that the archive attempts were having a detrimental effect on performance of other areas of the site and the admins thought that this was the easiest way to reduce the load.

Thanks for the claritfication

[CJ]

The RDF internet ranking has dropped to it's joint lowest level in 6 months.

[hotshoe]

The RDF internet ranking has dropped to it's joint lowest level in 6 months.

And that's even counting in my two views of RDnet today - looking for a couple of posts of mine I wanted now.

Funny to think how much I, and all the rest of us, must have been on the forum for the site traffic to drop so precipitously after we were tossed out by those fuckers Josh Timonen and Andrew Chalkley and master Dawkins.

[Feck]

The RDF internet ranking has dropped to it's joint lowest level in 6 months.

And that's even counting in my two views of RDnet today - looking for a couple of posts of mine I wanted now.

Funny to think how much I, and all the rest of us, must have been on the forum for the site traffic to drop so precipitously after we were tossed out by those fuckers Josh Timonen and Andrew Chalkley and master Dawkins.

And that is with his name being in the news seems like people did not log-on even when RDF was news ...... Funny cos it's busy as Hell in here

[CJ]

The RDF internet ranking has dropped to it's joint lowest level in 6 months.

And that's even counting in my two views of RDnet today - looking for a couple of posts of mine I wanted now.

Funny to think how much I, and all the rest of us, must have been on the forum for the site traffic to drop so precipitously after we were tossed out by those fuckers Josh Timonen and Andrew Chalkley and master Dawkins.

And that is with his name being in the news seems like people did not log-on even when RDF was news ...... Funny cos it's busy as Hell in here

They didn't log in as much as those who were kicked off did, when the rumpus subsides (if it does) then that will be more representative of the new background usage.

[hackenslash]

Indeed. Bear in mind that a lot of that is users grabbing posts and resources, sending PMs to member who haven't made it yet, and also a fair bit of rubber-necking to see if anything's happening. Once the archive is running and we can access content, it will die down a fair bit

[Blondie]

I tend to agree that it will pass, one way or another, and that others will use the new software if we don't.

But how could the bad language have caused the shutdown, when the bad language happened after the shutdown, and in response to it? That's confusing.

Carefully blended chronology, nothing new there. Josh is rewriting history to fit his mission. Orwell would be pleased.

Is anyone really that surprised? Richard has to be very concerned about his public image and as his forum ballooned and gained in public profile I'm sure the question of how the tone and tenor of the forums could potentially negatively reflect on him weighed more heavily on his mind (or the minds of certain others with a vested interest). The man is a celebrity and his public image is very carefully stage managed. Naturally it was only a matter of time until he (or they) made moves to secure any potential loose ends and remove anything which might threaten his book sales, speaking engagements, debates, television programs, and feature length film appearances.

[95Theses]

I tend to agree that it will pass, one way or another, and that others will use the new software if we don't.

But how could the bad language have caused the shutdown, when the bad language happened after the shutdown, and in response to it? That's confusing.

Carefully blended chronology, nothing new there. Josh is rewriting history to fit his mission. Orwell would be pleased.

Is anyone really that surprised? Richard has to be very concerned about his public image and as his forum ballooned and gained in public profile I'm sure the question of how the tone and tenor of the forums could potentially negatively reflect on him weighed more heavily on his mind (or the minds of certain others with a vested interest). The man is a celebrity and his public image is very carefully stage managed. Naturally it was only a matter of time until he (or they) made moves to secure any potential loose ends and remove anything which might threaten his book sales, speaking engagements, debates, television programs, and feature length film appearances.

And yet there was no reason to behave like an utter lying prick (as someone at RDF certainly has)

If Richard had come on the board and said :

'Hello everyone, I'm taking a lot of flak for these forums, so I'm afraid I'm going to need to shut it down. We will assist you to transfer it to another domain under someone else's name if you can find a candidate to do that, and we will be starting a new discussion board with moderated submissions. Thanks for all your help, sorry it had to end like this'

Everyone would have shrugged and gone about their business.

All this lying to staff behind their backs, quote mining people, vandalizing peoples hard work on science related topics etc etc was pointless, unnecessary and childish.

[hackenslash]

And yet there was no reason to behave like an utter lying prick (as someone at RDF certainly has)

If Richard had come on the board and said :

'Hello everyone, I'm taking a lot of flak for these forums, so I'm afraid I'm going to need to shut it down. We will assist you to transfer it to another domain under someone else's name if you can find a candidate to do that, and we will be starting a new discussion board with moderated submissions. Thanks for all your help, sorry it had to end like this'

Everyone would have shrugged and gone about their business.

All this lying to staff behind their backs, quote mining people, vandalizing peoples hard work on science related topics etc etc was pointless, unnecessary and childish.

Bingo.

[Blondie]

I don't believe for a second that the staff was as wholly ignorant of goings on as they profess - the junior staff, perhaps, but the ones who had been there long enough to know which way the wind blew surely had some inkling before hand.

[goodboyCerberus]

The RDF internet ranking has dropped to it's joint lowest level in 6 months.

And that's even counting in my two views of RDnet today - looking for a couple of posts of mine I wanted now.

Funny to think how much I, and all the rest of us, must have been on the forum for the site traffic to drop so precipitously after we were tossed out by those fuckers Josh Timonen and Andrew Chalkley and master Dawkins.

Am I blind? I don't see a trend. How could anyone with so many steep spikes and valleys?

What happened at the middle of November?

[Ayaan]

I don't believe for a second that the staff was as wholly ignorant of goings on as they profess - the junior staff, perhaps, but the ones who had been there long enough to know which way the wind blew surely had some inkling before hand.

Which staff do you mean? The forum staff? We had been trying to talk to Josh and chalkers for months before this happened. They did ask for ideas and input from the staff with extremely little description of what any of the changes would be. We were told we would be given a chance to test drive the new software and give our feedback. We were as surprised as the other members by the announcement - which pretty much contradicted everything we had been told.

Besides that if Dawkins did not like the way the forum was going, why did he personally approve rule changes more than once? He had the email address of all the forum admins, the phone numbers of most of us, and had spent time on the phone discussing the forum with one forum admin in particular. He also had full access to the staff forum. In the past we had made changes he had requested. There was never any indication from him that he was displeased with the way we were doing things - and I saw him logged on numerous times before this happened. The entire thing was handled poorly.

This link had been posted in other places, but it bears repeating. If you want to know what happened, read it. http://realityismyreligion.wordpress.co ... open-soon/ Everyone I have run into who was on the forum when the meltdown happened has said it is the best record of the event.

Sciwoman
Former RDF Admin

[Blondie]

I don't believe for a second that the staff was as wholly ignorant of goings on as they profess - the junior staff, perhaps, but the ones who had been there long enough to know which way the wind blew surely had some inkling before hand.

Which staff do you mean? The forum staff? We had been trying to talk to Josh and chalkers for months before this happened. They did ask for ideas and input from the staff with extremely little description of what any of the changes would be. We were told we would be given a chance to test drive the new software and give our feedback. We were as surprised as the other members by the announcement - which pretty much contradicted everything we had been told.

Besides that if Dawkins did not like the way the forum was going, why did he personally approve rule changes more than once? He had the email address of all the forum admins, the phone numbers of most of us, and had spent time on the phone discussing the forum with one forum admin in particular. He also had full access to the staff forum. In the past we had made changes he had requested. There was never any indication from him that he was displeased with the way we were doing things - and I saw him logged on numerous times before this happened. The entire thing was handled poorly.

This link had been posted in other places, but it bears repeating. If you want to know what happened, read it. http://realityismyreligion.wordpress.co ... open-soon/ Everyone I have run into who was on the forum when the meltdown happened has said it is the best record of the event.

Sciwoman
Former RDF Admin

Hi Sciwoman, nice to see you. Thanks for the link, I'll be sure to read it soon.