Announcement about RDF

[Ilovelucy]

As I said on another post, one could see Josh as a Wormtongue to RD's aging Theoden...

More like a Wormtongue to RD's Saruman...

It always shocks me when in this one and former events, RD is left outside of knowledge or responsibility...

No Josh was explicit that RD was absolutely part of this decision. Re-read the announcement to the mods.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Josh has told Richard something, but I doubt it's the same thing he told the moderating team. His current actions, deleting threads, posts and the whole accounts of dissenting members, plus the "we are excited" post, seems to be a strategy to keep /Richard from knowing how pissed off the membership are. I'm sure Josh told Richard that everyone is so excited about the new forum and cant wait, sure there may be a few discontents, but that's the nature of change, eh?

[JimC]

As I said on another post, one could see Josh as a Wormtongue to RD's aging Theoden...

More like a Wormtongue to RD's Saruman...

It always shocks me when in this one and former events, RD is left outside of knowledge or responsibility...

No Josh was explicit that RD was absolutely part of this decision. Re-read the announcement to the mods.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Josh has told Richard something, but I doubt it's the same thing he told the moderating team. His current actions, deleting threads, posts and the whole accounts of dissenting members, plus the "we are excited" post, seems to be a strategy to keep /Richard from knowing how pissed off the membership are. I'm sure Josh told Richard that everyone is so excited about the new forum and cant wait, sure there may be a few discontents, but that's the nature of change, eh?

That is exactly how I pictured it; it makes sense, really, RD really just wants to get on with the next book or lecture, he would see the forum as an unruly creation that potentially saps his energy, let the Grey Eminence (Josh T) deal with it...

[virphen]

A lot of things about how this were done smell of something dodgy going on (and I don't just mean the obvious). The mods threatened not to go over the admins' head. RD apparently being "away" (although clearly not so away that he can't read the forum). Any dissent being ruthlessly deleted (they missed a few little threads though).

It does smell like a cover up. If it is, I doubt very much it will work.

[Ilovelucy]

To be fair, I think that RD was more active on the forum than Josh was.

[Thinking Aloud]

The announcement OP has been amended with the following, just for the record.

Update: We had intended to leave the forum fully-funtioning for 30 days, but due to the inappropriate posts by some users and moderators, we have decided to leave the forum in a read-only state. You can still download and archive your posts and private messages, but the ability to enter new posts has been disabled. It's unfortunate that it had to come to this. We know that change can be difficult and sometimes frightening, but we are all very excited about the direction of the website and the future.

[Robert_S]

Poor Richard, the theists will be laughing their asses off in a few hours.

I admire Dawkins' books and lectures, but if he is doing this to protect Brand Dawkins, then I will lose a ton of respect for him as a person.

That is the impression i am taking away. I will actually toss his books into the garbage. From this time on I have no use for him. And I mean Dawkins. This was not done without his approval. We were being bad little atheists and not living up to the arrogant standard set forth in recent years by RD. I can't imagine why else they would want to replace the forum with censorship and then delete threads that criticized them. The ultimate was to make the playground toddler move yanking the forum without warning because people said mean things about them.

Oh well. His hero status with me was pretty much washed away by this time anyway. I truly hope everyone gets on the net and tells it how they feel about this Nazi bullshit. The PR price that RD pays should be no small bill.

Hi Speed, you may remember me as Ertt.

I really don't think Dawkins realizes what he was doing, or the way the forum was going about it. I'll give it 48 hours before I pass any moral judgment.

He made some post about people threatening to unfollow him on twitter being a rubbish threat, so I unfollowed him anyway. If you're making posts about it you've got to have a little insecurity there.

I feel like I contributed to the locking of the forum, which makes me feel a bit bad. Still, better than just sitting and taking it, but we could have had 30 more days forum time.

What the hell does what you might have said or done have to do with anyone else? Did you force that Admin whatsisname to do what he did? Did you point a gun at his head and make him lock the forum?

If not, then let the stupid jerks take full responsibility for their actions.

[JimC]

The announcement OP has been amended with the following, just for the record.

Update: We had intended to leave the forum fully-funtioning for 30 days, but due to the inappropriate posts by some users and moderators, we have decided to leave the forum in a read-only state. You can still download and archive your posts and private messages, but the ability to enter new posts has been disabled. It's unfortunate that it had to come to this. We know that change can be difficult and sometimes frightening, but we are all very excited about the direction of the website and the future.

Slimey spin merchants...

[Ilovelucy]

Guys, dont forget to tweet "dawkins forum" and "rationalia" together. Right now, the only peeps on twitter saying RDF are welcome to join their forum are the Rational Response Squad, things haven't got that bad yet!

[JimC]

Guys, dont forget to tweet "dawkins forum" and "rationalia" together. Right now, the only peeps on twitter saying RDF are welcome to join their forum are the Rational Response Squad, things haven't got that bad yet!

Shit, that reminds me, are TAF touting for business yet!

[Peter Brown]

I really don't know what kind of reaction they were prepared for.
eXcommunicate

Well whatever reaction they were expecting what they got wasn’t it. The dramatic midnight shutdown and purge of all anti change comments speaks for itself ‘Et tu, Brute?’

Obviously some pre planning was involved, the cabal of conspirators planning some brave new forum, the rather inept PR messages to the former forum helpers and then the general members tell a different story.

It seems blatantly obvious to me what the reaction from a community would be to an abrupt shutdown of said community, especially since it was so large and seemed to be thriving.

I would have thought any young British adult would know if the management issue mass redundancies in a corporation the Unions threaten strikes and the consumers on the whole support the Unions if they previously liked the product. I don’t know if that is the same atypical reaction for Americans as I believe this sort of reaction one of those social cultural differences and Unions are a dirty word. Whatever the nationality the cabal now turned Junta showed a level of naivety of public relations not witnessed since Daniel (take one) said ‘shit, this is a different lion!’

I have seen a disturbing trend, not just on RD.net, but Internet-wide and in other various media (video games, movies, and entertainment, etc.) of a move towards "managed content."

It is as old as the hills and first penned by AOL when it throttled CompuServe. It is mostly financial I assume, make whatever revenue from the suckers you can and present the illusion of ‘community’. No doubt there are external influences, which I might suggest are external financial backers to RDF stating the donations stop if you don’t do what we ask, and of course the threat of a few well funded individuals and lawyers objecting to negative publicity.

The price of being a popular web site is pressure to impose censorship.

[virphen]

Guys, dont forget to tweet "dawkins forum" and "rationalia" together. Right now, the only peeps on twitter saying RDF are welcome to join their forum are the Rational Response Squad, things haven't got that bad yet!

Speaking of twitter... is anyone able to send a message to a user there called "natselrox" telling him I said to get his arse on this forum? He uses the same handle on RDF. And I don't really want to sign up just to send one message.

[Arse]

What a stupid and bizarre thing to do. I don't think I like Dawkins anymore.

[CookieJon]

Worst part is, we'll never know now whether God can create a rock in the same universe as him that he wants to lift but it's so heavy that he cant!

[JimC]

Worst part is, we'll never know now whether God can create a rock in the same universe as him that he wants to lift but it's so heavy that he cant!

Someone should create a poll with the 2 obvious alternatives...

The majority response in a Ratz poll is always correct...

[Ameri Boi]

I'm still waiting on confirmation that RD knew of what was happening. Despite the fact that Josh asserted as much, a part of me feels that the statement regarding contacting richard, riling up the peons and going bananas verbally says that Josh hid it from RD and passed it along as a simple harmless change.

Further, if Richard did know the full implications of what was done and was content with the outcome, I would only lose a bit of personal respect for him; I still love his books, and I am cuddling with my copy of the Selfish Gene right now(my father thinks I love Richard more than him...)