Announcement about RDF

[klr]

Ah, ....Lak VanYoungman happens to be Grey Beard Loon. Have been for 20 years.

Hi van

Nice seeing you here. Are there many other old farts around. Lak and starr are here but no sign of Fraser, Nora, DD, Pen and a few others.
We will have start a thread again.

Fraser and Nora joined (and posted) today. Pen has been a member here for a while, and has also posted today. No sign of DD - yet.

[Feck]

Ah, ....Lak VanYoungman happens to be Grey Beard Loon. Have been for 20 years.

Hi van

Nice seeing you here. Are there many other old farts around. Lak and starr are here but no sign of Fraser, Nora, DD, Pen and a few others.
We will have start a thread again.

Pen has been an occasional visitor for ages .

[Scot Dutchy]

I just picked up a PM from Nora on RD.net, saying that she is on Facebook. She seemed unaware of this site, so I sent her the address. Hopefully she'll be along in a bit. Pen is here, as is durro.

Nora knows about it fine and we have been discussing it via email since last night [GMT]. She’s upset.

Who is not. All those bloody hours just gone.

[ozewiezeloose]

I just picked up a PM from Nora on RD.net, saying that she is on Facebook. She seemed unaware of this site, so I sent her the address. Hopefully she'll be along in a bit. Pen is here, as is durro.

Nora knows about it fine and we have been discussing it via email since last night [GMT]. She’s upset.

I imagine she'd be. Poor girl. Josh should be ashamed.

[Thinking Aloud]

I've just dragged what I have of the "Death of the Forum" thread out of my browser's cache (pain in the arse database cache)... and merged it into one file (with the Announcement at the top).

It'll be here briefly - if it's worth keeping, I'd invite a Ratz Admin to take a copy and put it on the Ratz server.

Sorry for any repeats, missing pages, lack of formatting, etc...

http://thinking-aloud.co.uk/temp/rdf.html

Edited now for original format ... easier to read! Pages 7 - 20 available.

[Bella Fortuna]

Who's going to create multiple pointless threads now?

It's clear you haven't been here long...

[SpeedOfSound]

I now have a direct (non-RD.net) email address for Richard Dawkins, which I'm currently only willing to share with RD.net staff members (please PM if you want it),

Please carefully appeal to preserve the content indefinitely. If that's not an option try to get the database so we can convert it to google docs or something. There is a valuable snapshot of history in the philosophy put forth by ALL of the individuals that participated. Destroying it would be crime beyond belief.

[aca]

i opened a thread about RDF debacle on secular cafe

http://secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=5642

also talkrational has a thread about it

http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=23106

RDF created a great community for atheists and it is fucken pity that a guy who has been telling atheists to come out and show strength in numbers is the cause of the demise of one of the biggest ones.

This is bigger than IIDB disaster.

It just sucks

[Squawk]

So I've been sitting here all day after registering waiting for a confirmation email, turns out I can post anyway despite no new email. No worries.

Now, where do I put this cheese?

On with something a little more on topic, what a complete and utter farce. If they want to disband the forum, fine. Do it in a controlled fashion, spread out over a period of months, with a proper searchable archive and plenty of warning, allowing the users to migrate the forum elsewhere if they should so choose. The manner in which they actually chose to do this stinks. The pm to the mods was disgusting and the fallout since then far worse. What possible justification can they provide for deleting the accounts of moderators, including all posts?

Dawkins has gone seriously downhill in my estimation, communicator of science my arse. He clearly has no understanding of the masses despite his excellent work via his talks and literature.

To all the mods, I echo the comments of others. Your work was valued immensely. I wasn't a prolific contributer to the boards by any means, 700 or so posts to date, but I was an avid reader and I learned more on those boards from your posts than I ever did in my formal education.

I thank you all for your contributions, and will now settle into my minor role here along the same lines, the occasional post and lots of learning.

Squawk.

[laklak]

Ah, ....Lak VanYoungman happens to be Grey Beard Loon. Have been for 20 years.

Hi van

Nice seeing you here. Are there many other old farts around. Lak and starr are here but no sign of Fraser, Nora, DD, Pen and a few others.
We will have start a thread again.

Done.

Old Farts Part XIV (Interrupted) now lives in Fun Stuff / Games.

I feel better now. Gawd is in His Heaven and all's right with the world.

Edited because I quoted the wrong damn post. Now it makes more sense.

[SpeedOfSound]

I have ten thousand posts over there that document my personal journey from thinking that rocks should be conscious to a firm personal solution to the Hard Problem and a thorough understanding of both the philosophy and science of the mind. My personal problem and my personal whine. I'm sure that everyone who has participated has laid down in bits there own rational journey in the same manner.

BTW. Will they get irritated here if I start still more threads about C?

[Stephen]

MedGen, thanks for sharing.

I'm curious to read the pm the moderators were sent, if anyone cares to share that?

[klr]

MedGen, thanks for sharing.

I'm curious to read the pm the moderators were sent, if anyone cares to share that?

Subject: Announcement about RDF

Since it's probably going to get deleted before much longer, here's the post to the mod forum:

Dear forum moderators,

We wanted you all to know at the earliest opportunity about our new website currently in development. RichardDawkins.net will have a new look and feel, improved security, and much more. Visits to the site have really grown over the past 3 1/2 years, and this update gives us an opportunity to address several issues. Over the years we've become one of the world's leading resources for breaking rational and scientific news from all over the net and creating original content. We are focusing on quality content distribution, and will be bringing more original articles, video and other content as we grow.

The new RichardDawkins.net will have a fully-integrated discussion section. This will be a new feature for the site, similar to the current forum, but not identical. We feel the new system will be much cleaner and easier to use, and hopefully this will encourage participation from a wider variety of users.

We will leave the current forum up for 30 days, giving regular users an opportunity to locally archive any content they value. When the new website goes live, you are welcome to submit these posts as new discussions. The forum will then be taken down from the web. You will not loose your username on the new system.

The new discussion area will not be a new forum. It will be different. We will be using a system of tags to categorize items, instead of sub-forums. Discussions can have multiple tags, such as "Education", "Children", and "Critical Thinking". Starting a new discussion will require approval, so we ask that you only submit new discussions that are truly relevant to reason and science. Subsequent responses on the thread will not need approval—however anything off topic or violating the new terms of service will be removed. The approval process will be there to ensure the quality of posts on the site. This is purely an editorial exercise to help new visitors find quality content quickly. We hope this discussion area will reflect the foundation's goals and values.

We're confident that these changes will improve the site experience and we look forward to seeing what you do with the new system.

We know that this is a big decision. We know some of you moderators will be against this change. We ask that you respect our decision and help make this transition as smooth as possible. These decisions have all been approved by our organization, and we ask that you don't add to our work by causing trouble.

We will not be migrating moderator roles to the new discussion site. Again, we're sure this might come as a shock, and we hope you don't take it personally. We can't thank you enough for your contributions to the old forum. The new system will not require a large team of moderators, as the discussion area will be more focused. We encourage you to contribute to the new discussions area, and are welcome to flag inappropriate activity for review.

Please understand that this transition is going to be a lot of work for us. I'm sure as you read this, you will have a lot of questions and concerns. We also know that this is a change from what we had been discussing previously. This announcement does not require a response, but we wanted you to be aware. Please do not email Richard with complaints, we have discussed this transition thoroughly with him, and he is currently on tour in Australia and New Zealand. Please do not attempt to inflame the users, start any petitions, or "relocate" groups of users to a separate forum. Do not use any of the data held by the foundation (such as email addresses) through the control panel to cause any trouble. Any behavior of this kind will not be tolerated. We don't expect you to do these things, but we say all of this only to discourage any well-intentioned moves that would only frustrate the situation.

Many thanks again.

Josh Timonen
Andrew Chalkley
The Richard Dawkins Foundation

[Daan]

I just picked up a PM from Nora on RD.net, saying that she is on Facebook. She seemed unaware of this site, so I sent her the address. Hopefully she'll be along in a bit. Pen is here, as is durro.

Nora knows about it fine and we have been discussing it via email since last night [GMT]. She’s upset.

Who is not. All those bloody hours just gone.

Why? It is the people who count and half of them here, i know from RD forum.

[klr]

I just picked up a PM from Nora on RD.net, saying that she is on Facebook. She seemed unaware of this site, so I sent her the address. Hopefully she'll be along in a bit. Pen is here, as is durro.

Nora knows about it fine and we have been discussing it via email since last night [GMT]. She’s upset.

Who is not. All those bloody hours just gone.

Why? It is the people who count and half of them here, i know from RD forum.

I think it's a reference to all the posts at RD.net which might now be lost ...