Announcement about RDF

[Apollonius]

If RD just wants his site to discuss what he wants and how he wants, fine, it's his site. I'm outa there. I didn't hang out on RD.net forums to talk about his books or his latest lecture, or whatever.

Forums take on a life of their own and become a community. RD should know that. If he doesn't, he doesn't understand the net and shouldn't have a forum.

[CJ]

I see that new users are still allowed to register, which is odd.

They can still use the front page.

True, I forgot about that. Anyone expecting to use the forum is going to be in for a rude shock though.

I'm still wondering what (if anything) is going to happen to the FP. Surely that is going to get folded into this new system. Which would make a number of people very happy.

Oh dear, I can't wait to see that explosion! The forum members were the polite ones!

[Durro]

Can anyone tell me Richard Dawkins' direct e-mail address ?

I could, but then I'd have to kill you. Seriously.

Not that I don't think he deserves to be spammed six ways 'til Sunday for letting this happen, but I just can't bring myself to divulge the addy.

I'm sure he'll get the message in the next day or so, one way or another.

Durro was a mod and held in high regard on the RDF forums.

While I agree that you shouldn't publicly post Richard's personal email, I do think that it would be appropriate to give it to Durro, who spent so much of his time policing Richards forums for no personal gain. I'd trust Durro to keep it confidential.

If you could kindly PM it to me, I'll swear I won't pass it on to anyone. Despite my earlier mood, I too realise that spamming Richard with abuse would be counter productive. I would like to write to him as a "staff member" of his recently defunct forum and ensure that he is fully aware of the shenanigans that has gone on, much of it in his name according to Josh and Andrew.

Durro

[klr]

I see that new users are still allowed to register, which is odd.

They can still use the front page.

True, I forgot about that. Anyone expecting to use the forum is going to be in for a rude shock though.

I'm still wondering what (if anything) is going to happen to the FP. Surely that is going to get folded into this new system. Which would make a number of people very happy.

Oh dear, I can't wait to see that explosion! The forum members were the polite ones!

Revenge. Dish. Served. Cold.

We live in hope.

[JimC]

Jeebus! Just logged on for the day and the instant as I saw the flood of new members with familiar names I knew there'd been a meltdown at RDF. Just wading through this thread now. What an absolute clusterfuck!

It has been a crazy time, FF, but the tents are up, the blankets are distributed, and those crazed missionaries have been told to fuck off...

[NineBerry]

Oh dear, I can't wait to see that explosion! The forum members were the polite ones!

I don't think, much will change for them. They will get articles that they can comment on. The login stays the same and I also guess the old comments on the front page will be kept (no one has told the front pagers to back up their comments)

[Flora]

I just posted this over at the JREF Forums :

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php? ... ost5647085

Richard Dawkins Forums Closed

Hello all,

Due to some overlap I thought that you all might be interested to hear of the developments over at RDF, a forum that while primarily for atheists also had a thriving debunking paranormal section and that Randi was a member of.

it was the busiest Atheist forums on the net, and had 85,000 members and garnered over 2,000 posts a day.

Last night the Admin, Josh Timonen posted this to the moderators :

***Snipped Josh's Mod message****

As this appeared to be both rude and condescending, and due to the fact that for months Josh had been personally assuring the mods that very soon new forums with a working search function was coming, to have this thrust upon them was a shock.

A thread discussing this was quickly started, which was in the majority critical of the way this was being handled.

in response to this Josh shut down the forums, removed all critical posts and made it read only and removed the PM function.

The upshot is that members who have spent years battling for reason wether as members or mods now no longer have any way of contacting friends they made on the forums.

This is not the way to build a community.

A few managed to get word out that we were joining a new forum for now before those threads got burnt along with the other books and all dissent quashed.

Thread is at Rationalia but I can't post a link as I don't have enough posts under my belt here, i mainly lurk.

If you want to be picky about the figures, the 85,000 is the number of members for the whole site, not just the forum. The average number of posts per day since last October is around 3,000 and of those posts about 2,000 were focused on Dawkins, Reason or Science. The others were welcome threads, general discussions etc.

Data for the last 3 weeks:
----------------------------------------- Front Page ----------- Forum
No. of comments/posts made:
31/01/10 - 22/02/10------------------------6204-----------------------62,367
(average posts per day)-----------------------282------------------------2,834

[JimC]

If RD just wants his site to discuss what he wants and how he wants, fine, it's his site. I'm outa there. I didn't hang out on RD.net forums to talk about his books or his latest lecture, or whatever.

Forums take on a life of their own and become a community. RD should know that. If he doesn't, he doesn't understand the net and shouldn't have a forum.

Very true, but, in the past, some of us hoped it could be both...

[Strontium Dog]

Why has The Evil One been deleting accounts? What did those people do to merit that kind of treatment?

[Flora]

Oh dear, I can't wait to see that explosion! The forum members were the polite ones!

I don't think, much will change for them. They will get articles that they can comment on. The login stays the same and I also guess the old comments on the front page will be kept (no one has told the front pagers to back up their comments)

I don't think much will change there either - possibly just an improvement to the layout and the way you can post comments.

[CJ]

Why has The Evil One been deleting accounts? What did those people do to merit that kind of treatment?

Well I just warned the world not to give Josh anymore business and posted on the front page when I could no longer post on the forum. Apparently Josh thinks he can control the Internet, a bar of soap springs to mind!

[Matt H]

CJ posted a couple of times on the front page, and so did I and I'mWithStupid. That was enough to get the attention of Josh, who promptly deleted all our posts (and the correspondence from a couple of the main page regulars).

My account hasn't been deleted, though. I think he must have got rid of CJ's because he's had trouble from him before. I'm just a first timer, I guess.

[kiki5711]

Why has The Evil One been deleting accounts? What did those people do to merit that kind of treatment?

My account was also deleted, I guess everyones was. That's kind of rude. In fact very rude.!!!

[CJ]

CJ posted a couple of times on the front page, and so did I and I'mWithStupid. That was enough to get the attention of Josh, who promptly deleted all our posts (and the correspondence from a couple of the main page regulars).

My account hasn't been deleted, though. I think he must have got rid of CJ's because he's had trouble from him before. I'm just a first timer, I guess.

I have never had any dealings with Josh since a couple of PMs in the first weeks I was a member. If you are referring to any content I posted in Vets they were only trouble for him because he's evidently a prudish arse wipe.

[Arse]

Why has The Evil One been deleting accounts? What did those people do to merit that kind of treatment?

My account was also deleted, I guess everyones was. That's kind of rude. In fact very rude.!!!

My account hasn't been deleted, not yet anyways. If I could I'd delete it myself in protest.