Announcement about RDF Part 2.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by ficklefiend » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:11 pm

Paula1 wrote:
debunk wrote:
NoDayJob wrote:
Stephen wrote:I have more than a few times defended Dawkins against friends' claims of his arrogance. I wonder if I was wrong..... :oops:
Does anyone else find RD "Shrill" all of a sudden? :ask:
He does seem a bit... militant all of a sudden.
I'd go as far as to say 'strident and aggressive' :?
We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by Paula1 » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:13 pm

ficklefiend wrote:
Paula1 wrote:
debunk wrote:
NoDayJob wrote:
Stephen wrote:I have more than a few times defended Dawkins against friends' claims of his arrogance. I wonder if I was wrong..... :oops:
Does anyone else find RD "Shrill" all of a sudden? :ask:
He does seem a bit... militant all of a sudden.
I'd go as far as to say 'strident and aggressive' :?
We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by life » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:14 pm

Fact-Man wrote:
Wiðercora wrote:
life wrote:
Wiðercora wrote:What is now to be done about the proposed Book of RDF?
Apart from the drama, posts would have to be rewritten so that RD(F) cannot claim any copyrights.
I thought particularly insightful/sciencey posts were going to be collated into a single publication...how could RD claim copyrights, or infringement thereof, or whatever?
Well, they couldn't, by no means, albeit they might hang you up in court over it for awhile, before their claims were dismissed as frivolous. But even that's doubtful, not many will pursue claims they know are worthless.

The law is clear, those who pen words own those words, unless they explicitly surrender their ownerhip of them in some formal expression, like a contract or a signed agreement.

RDNet neither has nor had any claim of copyright to anything that was posted on its forum by a member. Period.
Material Submitted
All materials, photos or videos you submit to any of our forums and other public posting areas become the property of richarddawkins.net and may be reproduced, modified and distributed by richarddawkins.net without restriction, in any medium, and for any purpose. Posting of any material on richarddawkins.net gives expressed waiver and release of any/all rights, legal, moral, or otherwise, to said material(s). (Embedded or linked images/videos hosted elsewhere do not count as submitted material.) You may edit posted material for up to 48 hours after it is initially posted, but you may not edit posts to such an extent that it substantially alters posts to which others have responded.
Source: http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... =8&t=64014

Either I'm reading too much between the lines or you're right (hopefully!) :)

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by HughMcB » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:15 pm

Stephen wrote:I'm sorry, I thought it was attributed to you. It was a quote in her signature, about her, that she was genuine, fun, bullshit-free, etc. Apologies for assigning it to you- the irony would have been obvious, that's what I was getting at.
Now, I hold up my hands and say that it was me who said that.

I think someone had slagged her off somehow in some thread and i defended her saying something like that although we've been on the wrong side of each other that I thought she was a straight shooter and quite a caring person.

However.... opinions can change....

I'm just hoping that like our good Professor, she is extremely ill-informed and I know that personally she is extremely loyal to him.

Personally for me, as I've said previously my loyalty lies with my friends (and foes :twisted: ) from RDF who have (mostly) made it here.

RD can go fuck himself, and so can the rest of the world for that matter, we all know what happened and that's good enough for me.
Timonenfail wrote:We are all very excited about the new changes.
Quote-mine Dawkins wrote:If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by Pensioner » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:21 pm

HughMcB wrote:
InYourFaceNewYorker wrote:Have you guys seen the announcement Richard made? It is now clear why such drastic actions were taken. I just want to personally thank the people who ruined it for the rest of us by sending Richard (and I'm guessing Josh, too) some nasty emails reminiscent of the ones Richard read aloud in The Genius of Charles Darwin. You know who you are. And after seeing some of the nasty names you called Josh here, it is now clear that many of you are not capable of talking about this in a reasonable manner.

Look, I don't agree with the changes being made. But the drastic actions being taken are a result of immature vitriol, it seems. I imagine that, had this not happened, we could have had some normal discussion on the forum on our thoughts about the changes being made. Instead, a select few ruined it for us.

Thank you, whoever you are, for making it come to this.

Julie
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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by Wiðercora » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:23 pm

life wrote:
Fact-Man wrote:
Wiðercora wrote:
life wrote:
Wiðercora wrote:What is now to be done about the proposed Book of RDF?
Apart from the drama, posts would have to be rewritten so that RD(F) cannot claim any copyrights.
I thought particularly insightful/sciencey posts were going to be collated into a single publication...how could RD claim copyrights, or infringement thereof, or whatever?
Well, they couldn't, by no means, albeit they might hang you up in court over it for awhile, before their claims were dismissed as frivolous. But even that's doubtful, not many will pursue claims they know are worthless.

The law is clear, those who pen words own those words, unless they explicitly surrender their ownerhip of them in some formal expression, like a contract or a signed agreement.

RDNet neither has nor had any claim of copyright to anything that was posted on its forum by a member. Period.
Material Submitted
All materials, photos or videos you submit to any of our forums and other public posting areas become the property of richarddawkins.net and may be reproduced, modified and distributed by richarddawkins.net without restriction, in any medium, and for any purpose. Posting of any material on richarddawkins.net gives expressed waiver and release of any/all rights, legal, moral, or otherwise, to said material(s). (Embedded or linked images/videos hosted elsewhere do not count as submitted material.) You may edit posted material for up to 48 hours after it is initially posted, but you may not edit posts to such an extent that it substantially alters posts to which others have responded.
Source: http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... =8&t=64014

Either I'm reading too much between the lines or you're right (hopefully!) :)
Well, that's that idea up the creek.

Although...what, exactly, is 'materials'?
What do we want?
Gradual change!
When do we want it?
In due course!

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by David M » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:27 pm

InYourFaceNewYorker wrote: But the drastic actions being taken are a result of immature vitriol, it seems.
Bzzt.

The vitriol is a result of the drastic actions.

When I read the initial announcement my reaction was WTF> I will admit, my second reaction was that I would have like to ask how well the comment system could cope with linking to scientific papers, its ability to support scientific formula, whether it would support proper quoting and what the character limit would be.

Its only after I saw the supression of polite dissent and the deletion of useful posts that my reaction switched to this being an incompetent implementation of a change by a useless fucktard with no management potential (and I'm an IT porject manager with a track record of successfuly implementing significant business change in IT systems).

By anyhoo, I decided to use my 1 PM a day allowance to respond to Dawkins' announcement.

I have just read your announcement.

Unfortunately you have completely missed the motivation behind the protests levelled at the 2 people in question.

When the original announcement was made there was no vituperation levelled at Josh. There were a number of objections registered the overwhelming percentage of which were polite in questioning the reason for the changes proposed.

At the start of this it was felt that the moderators were supporting the change, Two of the moderators posted a message from Josh sent to all the moderators, strictly speaking it was against the rules of the site to repost something from the staff only forum but this was not revealing personal communication but a policy change nor had there been any suggestion that an attempt to misuse private member information by the volunteer staff was even being contemplated.

It was also made clear by some mods that over the past few months the staff had been in communication with the 2 people involved and not only had communications been ignored but the staff had been told things that were just not true, and the people making those statements must have known they were untrue when they made them as such a radical change to the forums cannot have been proposed, planned and decided in a few days.

It was the actions taken by Josh from this point onwards that have attracted so much distaste from a wide variety of the membership.

1) Posts that politely criticised or questioned the change were removed - these did not include insults to Josh.

2) The moderators who reposted info from the staff forums were not stripped of their moderator priveleges or even banned. Instead their accounts were deleted which removed every single post they had made, this resulted in the loss of exactly the type of posts that were supposed to be available for members to archive. No communication was received by any other moderators who may have been willing to keep things going over the 30 day period.

Deleting accounts has never been the policy of the forums, only deletion of specific posts. The fact that thousands of useful and relevant posts have been deleted certainly angered many regular users.

3) Josh did not respond to any private messages or e-mails send by staff questioning what was happening.

3) The forums were locked - this prevented any further questioning of the changes, polite or otherwise.

4) Private Messaging was effectively disabled which prevented members communicating with each other in any manner whatsoever. The announcement "We were not telling the regular users what they could and couldn't do, they were all welcome to move to a separate forum." was obviously false as disabling both posting and PM's prevented the regular users from doing anything.

5) The admin logs showing what had been done have been deleted, and well over 100,000 posts have disappeared from the forums on the past 2 days.

6) The updates announcements on the closure were condescending to regular users and contained lies. There was no valid reason to delete accounts rather than de-moderating or banning members. There was no reason to stifle polite discussion by reguilar members.

It was not the decision that was taken that has enraged so many but the actions taken after that decision was announced.

It is Josh's actions that have attracted the criticism levelled at him and, coupled with his supression of any form of dissent by regular members, have lead many to regard the past 2 days as a debacle that will drive many away from any future support of the foundation. It will certainly do so in my case, I will give no support to an organisation that has so abruptly and egregiously silenced the voices of so many in the atheist community.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by Reverend Blair » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:28 pm

ficklefiend wrote:We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
Paula1 wrote:Say it aint so.....is jedi still an option?
You can join the Church of Reverend Blair. There are no rules, the hymns consist of whatever you want to listen to, and drinking beer during mass is highly encouraged.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by M » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:30 pm

Reverend Blair wrote:
ficklefiend wrote:We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
Paula1 wrote:Say it aint so.....is jedi still an option?
You can join the Church of Reverend Blair. There are no rules, the hymns consist of whatever you want to listen to, and drinking beer during mass is highly encouraged.
And peephole cassocks.
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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by Fact-Man » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:31 pm

NoDayJob wrote:
Stephen wrote:I have more than a few times defended Dawkins against friends' claims of his arrogance. I wonder if I was wrong..... :oops:
Does anyone else find RD "Shrill" all of a sudden? :ask:
I wouldn't say shrill, I'd say petulant, acrimonious, captious, pedantic, and willfully blind.

His post at RDF reads like the worst kind of PR that we've ever seen come from, say Goldman Sachs or the Republican party, as though it were penned by a low ranking failed PR guy who never had a clue to begin with.

It's absolutely pitiful for a man of his stature. And in fact may reveal that his stature was not genuine after all.

I think the newspapers in is town of residence should receive a good share of letters demanding a public apology for his shoddy behavior, so c'mon all you Brits, get to writing them!

There's so many things on so many levels that bother me about this debacle I wouldn't know where to begin if I chose to elaborate them. There's not the slightest good in it anywhere, not a single utterance.

Prof. Dawkins is toast in my book, at least until I see an unconditional apology from him to all concerned and an admission that the shutdown was badly flawed and terribly botched. But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that. He has cast his lot, and with some exceedingly sordid people. Let them all rot in their arrogance and horribly misguided self-righteousness, for all I care.

Toast I tell ya, badly burned toast at that. :banghead:
A crime was committed against us all.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by the pigeon » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:32 pm

Reverend Blair wrote:
ficklefiend wrote:We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
Paula1 wrote:Say it aint so.....is jedi still an option?
You can join the Church of Reverend Blair. There are no rules, the hymns consist of whatever you want to listen to, and drinking beer during mass is highly encouraged.

Not to be a splitter, but you might also want to consider Pigeon Buddhism: eat stuff you find on the ground, play in traffic, crap on people you don't like.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by j.mills » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:33 pm

Incidentally. There's all this talk of the site being that of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. But that has its own site, and the two were separate, I thought, precisely so that the wild fizzing melange that was rd.net would not 'taint' the clear and clean image of the Foundation. Now suddenly rd.net is the public face of RDFRS?
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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by Mazille » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:34 pm

the pigeon wrote:
Reverend Blair wrote:
ficklefiend wrote:We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
Paula1 wrote:Say it aint so.....is jedi still an option?
You can join the Church of Reverend Blair. There are no rules, the hymns consist of whatever you want to listen to, and drinking beer during mass is highly encouraged.

Not to be a splitter, but you might also want to consider Pigeon Buddhism: eat stuff you find on the ground, play in traffic, crap on people you don't like.
That sounds like it was invented for me. Do I get to lay eggs?

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by the pigeon » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:35 pm

Mazille wrote:
the pigeon wrote:
Reverend Blair wrote:
ficklefiend wrote:We really are all going to have to convert. Aw man, I hate churches.
Paula1 wrote:Say it aint so.....is jedi still an option?
You can join the Church of Reverend Blair. There are no rules, the hymns consist of whatever you want to listen to, and drinking beer during mass is highly encouraged.

Not to be a splitter, but you might also want to consider Pigeon Buddhism: eat stuff you find on the ground, play in traffic, crap on people you don't like.
That sounds like it was invented for me. Do I get to lay eggs?
Oh, absolutely. Especially in strategically annoying places.

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Re: Announcement about RDF Part 2.

Post by GeneticJen » Wed Feb 24, 2010 10:36 pm

Well, mixed support from notable personalities, but happy to see that 99% of the comments on my blog agree that we shouldn't have been treated the way we were. I've had great, well-known skeptics getting in touch to offer support (popular people, like Rebecca Watson for example), but the likes of Dawkins himself and PZ Myers seem to be focusing on the website changes and ignoring the censorship and lies to the public.

Oh well. I didn't want to do anything but explain what happened, and help members find each other. I've done that, so I'm happy to have done my bit. I do feel good about the comments. There have been some disagreements, but considering that the entry has been viewed 7700 times, it's great to see so many comments backing us.

About 300 hundred clicks on the Rationalia link in the article too. :tup:

If anyone asks me for further comments, I'll be happy to discuss the incident, but I've done my bit. The info is there, and people can make of it what they like. Cheers to everyone at Ratz that have made the RDF members welcome here, and for sharing links to the blog.

As for Dawkins, I feel he's suffering from a delusion, perhaps ironically. Religious people usually aren't idiots, and they almost always think they doing the right thing, but they've been deluded into believing nonsense. Sadly, it seems Richard is also attempting to do what he thinks is best, but has been deluded by Josh and Andrew. I'm still curious to know why Josh and Andrew had to clear the admin logs every time they deleted threads or members. By that point, there was only person they could be hiding the actions from.

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