He apologised personally on this forum, here. Not a grandstanding public apology.DaveDodo007 wrote:What apology? I haven't seen it, I hadn't even heard of Andrew Chalkley until you mentioned him. Did the apology come after RDF went after JT and they realised that they needed new allies? They certainly didn't go out of there way to make this apology knownlordpasternack wrote:
And it must also be stated that some of the more infuriating actions (including the Rick-rolling) - were taken not by Timonen, but by Andrew Chalkley - and also that Chalkley deleted some profiles, which he claimed was at the insistence of Paula Kirby. Chalkley has since apologised for his role in stirring up shit during that time - and he's the only individual involved who has explicitly apologised publicly - even if you personally don't accept it.
Either way - you may feel obliged to create a little bit more nuance in your mind, regarding who deserves which amount of contempt, for what happened during forumgate.
chalkers wrote: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"...
She was definitely involved in the unveiling of the new RDF site in 2010, one way or another - irrespective of whether Andrew Chalkley's specific claim is accurate.DaveDodo007 wrote:Is there any evidence that Paula Kirby was involved? No offence but you seem to be taking their words at face value, call me a cynic all you want but I find people will lie their arses off when backed into a corner.
As Topsy (now known as Emmeline) noted on RatSkep:
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... ml#p195391Paula Kirby was asked to write the new website's Terms of Use and was working on it it just before the forum was shut down. I don't know if the final result is her work though.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... ml#p195612I expect Paula was asked because even back then when she said she was doing it (quite some time before the forum was shut), they had decided not to take any existing forum staff with them into the new website, although we were asked to test-run it. I volunteered the staff's expertise to help Paula write the new Terms of Use and she accepted but we didn't hear anything more about it.
Ilovelucy was more cynical in affirming this fact, here on Rationalia:
http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 81#p355381Don't be fooled by Paula Kirby acting like a fresh voice of reason for the other side. She is already involved with the team running the front page and I will not be surprised at all if she ends up in a high up position on the new site. The exciting new site.
She also ran, or still runs, the UK side of RDFRS - which in all honesty is a one man (or woman) and his (or her) dog, type of organisation. Though she's stated repeatedly on Twitter recently that she wants to distance herself from the atheist/secularist movement - and this may apply to her attachment to RDFRS, too.
But then - please explain to me why I bother referencing my responses to you, so exhaustively and robustly- when it looks as though you just skim over the glaring substantive points in my posts, and then chip in to express yet another vague generalised gripe about my tone or viewpoint?
I mean - for Christ's sake, I quoted from a legal document (which Josh's lawyers would have produced under penalty of perjury), quoting verbatim Richard Dawkins' words written to Josh Timonen in 2007, in which Dawkins stated very explicitly that Timonen had no "moral obligation" to donate profits to RDF... And RDF did not then allege that these words were not in fact written by Dawkins. RDF simply claimed that the words were being "taken out of context" - but did not elaborate on what the "correct" context of those words might be...
And your main concern, having read and processed those words, is to find out whether or not I'm secretly Timonen's best pal or something? Seriously?