Dawkins sues Josh Timonen

[klr]

...

And here's something else: Why wasn't RD or Josh (especially) Josh aware of what was happening on the forum? Wouldn't it have been Josh's responsibility in particular to know what was going on in all areas of the website? Including keeping track via Google Analytics and other services? Even if he was utterly ignorant of forum proceedings - and by his own admission he was - shouldn't he still have realised that something was seriously amiss? What on earth was Josh doing during that time?

Keep asking. I wonder who will answer! Are you asking the right question?

Oh please. If this is what you're reduced to after a couple of posts, this isn't going to last long.

I've highlighted some serious flaws in the case you've put forward. It's now up to you to try and rebut them. Playing these silly internet games doesn't cut the mustard, especially since you're the one who made the effort to come here and ramp up the discussion.

I had to look up "Camel Toe". And now I'm surprised such a soft-core, non-porn, not-remotely-titillating thing could possibly have caused so much angst. Not when there were more pressing issues such as what certain bodily fluids tasted like.

Seriously.

Actually, that's a very good point. There was much worse "discussed" at the time. And it was indeed the textual content that was the problem. Pictures were a comparatively minor issue, because "someone" was afraid of the trouble that might ensue if RD or the world at large rumbled what was going on. But for some reason, this person believed that even the most explicit written content would not be an issue. Crazy but true.

[Cormac]

For some it comes naturally, but others need all the help they can get ...

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

You know it's going to be a serious blow to all the devotees of the ass to mouth thread that they were beaten by the camel toe thread ... seriously .

But felching is a reputable service ...





(Hehehehehe hehe hehehehehehehehe hehe hehe hehe hehehehe...

hehehehe hehe hehehehehehehe...

hehehe hehe hehe hehe....

You said "blow"... hehe hehe hehe...

hehehe hehe hehe hehehe hehehe hehe hehe hehe hehe....)

I don't like to use this one very often, but:

[Svartalf]

For some it comes naturally, but others need all the help they can get ...

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[chalkers]

Thanks, Cormac. Your analysis about why and how RDN failed (in two semi-long posts, a few posts above) about sums it up IMO, too.

Andrew (if it is you): when you're doing a job, you're supposed to know how to do it, or learn if you don't already know - read, ask questions, try things out (small scale) etc. That is called professionalism. If then someone "higher up" tells you to do your job in a shitty/unprofessional way, you tell them (first nicely, then more forcefully) what the likely negative consequences of such actions will be, and if they don't believe you, you go to their boss. That, too, is called professionalism - not allowing your organization or your client to shoot themselves in the foot. If nobody believes your well-founded professional opinion - get the hell out, and fast. No (desk) job is worth taking the bullet for your bosses, IMO. Competent people will always find new jobs, no point in staying in bed with people who can tarnish your professional reputation, too, while making mistakes you cannot stop them from making, if they are truly determined.

Just my experience. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks Ronja. I walked due to the boss' boss not listening about the boss' crazy behaviour. How ever nicely you suggested something contrary to the boss' will, I was ultimately doing things which were making me unhappy - clients will be clients. The last action which they asked me to do that broke the camels back they haven't executed yet. If that's due to a lack of competence or I changed their mind I don't know. I am out of the loop now. I said that this boss' direction would cause the fall of the Foundation. We'll see. I left with a full handover and have been co-operative with any technical needs when asked.

Frankly, it's a disgrace what RD and RDFRS are doing in not co-operating in producing evidence and prolonging this process. RD said he'd apologise and make things better. I haven't seen any sign of this so far. Unless he was just saying that to appease me 'cause he didn't want me to leave, which I suspect now. The judge has ordered monetary sanctions and ordered them to produce docs an they still haven't, with Josh posting those updates to dawkinssuestimonen.com with the filing of terminating sanctions, I hope RD is true to his words he said to me. He told me to stay their 'til January, and wait for the judges' decision, here we are in July and they're still making excuses about not producing docs. Glad I walked.

[Ronja]

Very interesting. The plot definitely thickens.

BTW - be careful of what you post - the current UK libel laws are pretty draconian, and in principle global (if the "injured" party has a "credible" connection to the UK, or legalese to that effect).

[Pensioner]

Chalkers and Andrew I do not trust you guys. I remember when in the latter days of the RDF when I was trying to log on it took an age, if I tried to post anything at all it was impossible. You two, at that time were either incompetent arsoles or your job was to wreck the forum. Which was it?

[charlou]

Very interesting. The plot definitely thickens.

BTW - be careful of what you post - the current UK libel laws are pretty draconian, and in principle global (if the "injured" party has a "credible" connection to the UK, or legalese to that effect).

It was just a couple of felching ads

[Pensioner]

Very interesting. The plot definitely thickens.

BTW - be careful of what you post - the current UK libel laws are pretty draconian, and in principle global (if the "injured" party has a "credible" connection to the UK, or legalese to that effect).

It was just a couple of felching ads

[Svartalf]

Well, there are some people who'd think nothing of drinking their seed from the mouth of the lady that just relieved them of it and who'd still drag you in court if you insinuated they lap santorum after making it, or worse, have their lover lap ip from the cup.

[lordpasternack]

Every single change implemented on the RDF site was done in an absolutely cack-handed and incompetent manner. There was a blatant disdain for the membership, and a complete lack of concern for how changes would impact them.

I guarantee you, that had even the most rudimentary standard change management techniques been applied, then there would have been no significant backlash, and no web-wide controversy would have ensued.

THIS!

As an executive who has run operations of a much larger scale, and with much bigger teams, I would have fired anyone involved in running the site in a heartbeat, at the very first scandal way back in the first year of operation.

I've been saying this all along!

If you don't see the stupidity of the organisational failures that led to the sequence of dramas on that site, then I'm afraid you have a long way to go in order to learn how the web works. In particular about how to work with groups to promote a particular agenda.

This!

The culture of management imposed on that website was is toxic, and incapable of getting anything right.

THIS!

This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that Richard owned the site, and that Richard could, of course, do what he liked with it.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a former member who wouldn't accept that it was Richard's right to do what he wanted with the site.

Mhmm...

BUT, there is a way to do these things, and the approach repeatedly taken for all sorts of changes was simply wrong and self-defeating.

Sing it, sister!

It seems to me that Richard is quite naive in some ways - which isn't to say I think he's soft-headed. I'd say he's fairly hard-headed when he wants to be. But he doesn't understand how to work with communities and with the disparate groups making up a community, towards an end.

Yup!

What you guys succeeded in doing was seeding a whole load of sites around the world where there is rank antipathy towards the so-called team (you and Timonen I believe - up until the lawsuit for Timonen, after which you left).

The consequences of this are:

1. The traffic to the Dawkins site has dropped
2. Richard's brand has been irrevocably tarnished amongst many many atheists. (And I still like Richard by the way)
3. What could have grown into a coherent political movement has been fractured and splintered
4. All of this was done in full public glare, and was jumped on with glee by the enemies of reason

A complete SNAFU.

Hear, hear!

In any kind of commercial organisation, anyone who presided over, or advised a course of action that led to the above would have been fired, without equivocation.

Let that last sentence resound!

[charlou]

*slurp*

[hadespussercats]

Josh, why are you even bothering here?

What good will do you think you can possibly gain? Seriously!

Since Josh didn't create this thread, the thread is "Dawkins sues Josh Timonen" and Josh is being talked about I think it's fair that he does comment, on this thread, posting updates on the case in which "Dawkins sues Josh Timonen". I don't think he get's any thing from this personally, it's clear you guys have an irrational hate of him. Maybe he's naive in thinking people give a shit about the truth and evidence.

I don't know that anyone cares much about the legal whatsits concerning the case except as an exercise in schadenfreude and speculation, if anyone's not bored of that yet. You could start by morally justifying the amount of money you got from the store as a legitimate and reasonable compensation.

How about the agreement that Dawkins had with Josh? Do you care about that? That's the thing in dispute here.

You could also apologize to all those who were summarily booted off the RDF forum.

Jesus H Christ...

...and the rickrolling, the slowing down of PMs to a crawl, the deception that led to that one post by Richard, your disrespect for the volunteer efforts of the moderators, the deletion of whole accounts...

Not wanting to derail this thread...

Please accept my deepest apologies for rickrolling a curl command line client, or more specifically inorganic traffic. That was me not Josh. Josh didn't tell me to do it either. Shock horror! Neither Josh or I were the sole source of the "disrespect for the volunteer efforts of the moderators, the deletion of whole accounts"...If people wanted to "volunteer" for Richard's PERSONAL website that's fine, but they weren't doing it for a "cause" they were doing it for Richard. If someone wanted to moderate a Z-list celeb forum believing it was for cause of reason and science and not being taken for a ride that's their prerogative! If they have any misunderstandings about that all they needed to do was look at the banner at the top of the website - it's still there on http://forum.richarddawkins.net.

Any how Richard issued the apology, taking PERSONAL responsibility for the whole team, since it was his PERSONAL website at the time, where the forum resided. There was no apology on the then Foundation site.

Just a tad more background; the idea of the closure was that RichardDawkins.net was going to transition to RDFRS's US site. The ideas of having "camel toe" threads wasn't palatable to Foundation management. So the forum in it's current state had to go before the transition.

I think we all need to remember we don't really know the full facts behind every story. And Robert_S, I think you'll have to be content that you don't know the full facts behind the whole forum thing, and that you may never will. Before you start demanding apologies or "moral justifications" I would please ask you to refrain until you are justified in making such demands.

It seems that you've made the error, that others have done, attributing actions to Josh, that he didn't do. You've probably listened to the first bit of information and accepted it as gospel. Don't worry a lot of the human race does this, you're not alone.

Most of the skeptical or rational community didn't act very skeptical or rational upon the filing of this suit. Which is hilarious. If this whole forum fallout and this law suit has taught me is that the problem isn't religion, it's the human mind.

When I resigned, due to more history re-writing at the time, Richard said this:

Andrew, lawsuits are designed to get to the bottom of cases like this. Why not wait till the Judge gives his verdict? If he decides in favour of Josh, of course I will apologise profusely and try to make everything better. If he decides against Josh, well, then you should make your decision on what to do. But please don't prejudge the issue. You don't have to wait long. I believe the case is coming up during November.

He doesn't sound too confident with the statement "If he decides in favour of Josh", he did say the evidence was "compelling" but really? Where is it?

Considering Richard hasn't produced the documents to back up his changing story, alleging that these important documents are lost forever because his Uni account has been closed and Robin Cornwell's hard drive crashed, when they all use several IMAP and Webmail accounts, it doesn't look good. The judge has thrown out the criminal charges due to no supporting evidence being presented. Claims require evidence.

If Richard had any ounce of integrity he would do what he said and apologise and try and make everything better.

All your questions may not be answered now but it looks like things are going to get more interesting and will all come out in due time. But once again I suspect we all need to reserve judgement in all of this until the evidence is presented.

Dawkins is already a member, but understandably he posts under a pseudonym.

Is it Roger Derwen?

Who are you?

[Bella Fortuna]

*slurp*

*dribble*

[charlou]

*slurp*

*dribble*

[hadespussercats]

Josh, why are you even bothering here?

What good will do you think you can possibly gain? Seriously!

Since Josh didn't create this thread, the thread is "Dawkins sues Josh Timonen" and Josh is being talked about I think it's fair that he does comment, on this thread, posting updates on the case in which "Dawkins sues Josh Timonen". I don't think he get's any thing from this personally, it's clear you guys have an irrational hate of him. Maybe he's naive in thinking people give a shit about the truth and evidence.

I don't know that anyone cares much about the legal whatsits concerning the case except as an exercise in schadenfreude and speculation, if anyone's not bored of that yet. You could start by morally justifying the amount of money you got from the store as a legitimate and reasonable compensation.

How about the agreement that Dawkins had with Josh? Do you care about that? That's the thing in dispute here.

You could also apologize to all those who were summarily booted off the RDF forum.

Jesus H Christ...

...and the rickrolling, the slowing down of PMs to a crawl, the deception that led to that one post by Richard, your disrespect for the volunteer efforts of the moderators, the deletion of whole accounts...

Not wanting to derail this thread...

Please accept my deepest apologies for rickrolling a curl command line client, or more specifically inorganic traffic. That was me not Josh. Josh didn't tell me to do it either. Shock horror! Neither Josh or I were the sole source of the "disrespect for the volunteer efforts of the moderators, the deletion of whole accounts"...If people wanted to "volunteer" for Richard's PERSONAL website that's fine, but they weren't doing it for a "cause" they were doing it for Richard. If someone wanted to moderate a Z-list celeb forum believing it was for cause of reason and science and not being taken for a ride that's their prerogative! If they have any misunderstandings about that all they needed to do was look at the banner at the top of the website - it's still there on http://forum.richarddawkins.net.

Any how Richard issued the apology, taking PERSONAL responsibility for the whole team, since it was his PERSONAL website at the time, where the forum resided. There was no apology on the then Foundation site.

Just a tad more background; the idea of the closure was that RichardDawkins.net was going to transition to RDFRS's US site. The ideas of having "camel toe" threads wasn't palatable to Foundation management. So the forum in it's current state had to go before the transition.

I think we all need to remember we don't really know the full facts behind every story. And Robert_S, I think you'll have to be content that you don't know the full facts behind the whole forum thing, and that you may never will. Before you start demanding apologies or "moral justifications" I would please ask you to refrain until you are justified in making such demands.

It seems that you've made the error, that others have done, attributing actions to Josh, that he didn't do. You've probably listened to the first bit of information and accepted it as gospel. Don't worry a lot of the human race does this, you're not alone.

Most of the skeptical or rational community didn't act very skeptical or rational upon the filing of this suit. Which is hilarious. If this whole forum fallout and this law suit has taught me is that the problem isn't religion, it's the human mind.

When I resigned, due to more history re-writing at the time, Richard said this:

Andrew, lawsuits are designed to get to the bottom of cases like this. Why not wait till the Judge gives his verdict? If he decides in favour of Josh, of course I will apologise profusely and try to make everything better. If he decides against Josh, well, then you should make your decision on what to do. But please don't prejudge the issue. You don't have to wait long. I believe the case is coming up during November.

He doesn't sound too confident with the statement "If he decides in favour of Josh", he did say the evidence was "compelling" but really? Where is it?

Considering Richard hasn't produced the documents to back up his changing story, alleging that these important documents are lost forever because his Uni account has been closed and Robin Cornwell's hard drive crashed, when they all use several IMAP and Webmail accounts, it doesn't look good. The judge has thrown out the criminal charges due to no supporting evidence being presented. Claims require evidence.

If Richard had any ounce of integrity he would do what he said and apologise and try and make everything better.

All your questions may not be answered now but it looks like things are going to get more interesting and will all come out in due time. But once again I suspect we all need to reserve judgement in all of this until the evidence is presented.

Dawkins is already a member, but understandably he posts under a pseudonym.

Is it Roger Derwen?

Who are you?

All right, I'm caught up with the thread.

You worked on the old forum, you have some axes to grind, and camel toes are a real sticking point for you.

Well, I guess that last bit is true for most people.

The rest will be revealed in time.