Announcement about RDF Part 2.

[Paula1]

What will happen when the people who made the forum happen and be the community it was, will not join in their new sanitized area? I will not go there, as there will be nothing for me.

I loved the debunking and science sections of the forum most of all. Especially the Debunking Creationism section was one of the busiest ones on the forum! That's where some of the most interesting posts were made, like Cali's bombs; when Mazille had the idea for the science competition, we all thought that it was a great idea, and pitched in our ideas of how to go about it, and it was picking up, with very interesting submissions.

What Josh wants to do is a boring, neat science front page area. That's all well and good, if I wanted that there are plenty of blogs that do the same and in a much more interesting format, and I can read the science news myself on sciencedaily, space.com and other sites, put them up on my blog and comment and write about it. It is the same thing with what Josh wants to do, anyone with a blog can do it. And those without a blog can do it too, as anyone can register on wordpress or blogger and open up a blog.

What I like is a forum community. It is to read up and see other people's comments and posts, and most of all the silly threads which were great. I loved the LOLcats, and read it, I want to talk about Avatar and Star Trek and Doctor Who, and whether cats are better than dogs or whatever little thread there is. You don't go to a forum just to be serious, but also to relax, let yourself free, speak your mind, and many times be freer on the forum than in rl, because of various reasons. Be able to vent and rant when things are not going your way, be able to just write about anything and everything.

Let alone that the RD forum was a welcoming place for new atheists, for people struggling with their newfound atheism, and they were helped through by the community.

I know I'm going to be an active user there. Everyone needs to be aware of the latest scientific advances in homeopathy, aromatherapy etc, how vaccines cause autism and how tin foil prevents the government from reading your mind!

If I don't post these very important articles, then who will?!

I know it'll be of no use to me in the new format, I'm not scientifically minded at all and liked that you didn't have to be, I liked to read the heavier stuff and learnt alot from it but mostly I enjoyed the debunking creationism threads, the funny lighthearted ones. Most of all I liked the regulars and hope we can recreate some of that atmosphere here

[Babel]

And just in case it hasn't been mentioned, either Josh or Andrew (Chalkers) while logged on as "Admin" have gone through and erased the records of their admin actions. All of the deleted posts, deleted threads, summary banning of specific members and deletion of their entire post history, locking out of the Mods, shutting down the PM system, etc etc, has now been removed from the Admin logs. Unfortunately for Josh/Andrew, one of the recently evicted Forum Admin staff was still able to access the Forum and saw the cover up of their grievous actions happening. It smells very much as though they are deleting evidence of their heavy handed and patently unfair actions.

And to clarify one other issue, non of us ex-Mods resigned. We did our best to try and inform the membership what was really happening behind the scenes and Topsy, Mazille, Gallstones and Darwinsbulldog to name a few had posts not only removed but deleted by Josh/Andrew. We tried desperately to communicate with Josh/Andrew, but our pleas for explanations went unanswered and about 40 minutes after the membership was shut out, the entire Mod team were too. We couldn't PM, post, edit posts or perform mod actions. We were able to view the Mod and Admin logs (The latter for the 4 admin guys only) but not do anything except add a comment in a member's usernotes - a few of us left Andrew/Josh some love letters and requested communication, which have been ignored as well. We did not resign. We were shafted like the rest of the membership, but at least tried to go down fighting.

Durro

Well, going through all that effort of covering up is really all the proof one should need to know who's to blame for this. I don't know whose quote this is, but it applies:
In case of crisis, the one who is smiling either has found someone to blame, a way to cover up his mistakes or both.

[z8000783]

What I like is a forum community. It is to read up and see other people's comments and posts, and most of all the silly threads which were great. I loved the LOLcats, and read it, I want to talk about Avatar and Star Trek and Doctor Who, and whether cats are better than dogs or whatever little thread there is. You don't go to a forum just to be serious, but also to relax, let yourself free, speak your mind, and many times be freer on the forum than in rl, because of various reasons. Be able to vent and rant when things are not going your way, be able to just write about anything and everything.

Let alone that the RD forum was a welcoming place for new atheists, for people struggling with their newfound atheism, and they were helped through by the community.

Josh seemed to be quite clear that a forum of that type is not going to be the way forward and I presume that is also what RD wants.

To be fair the site belongs to RD/Foundation so they can do what they like with it, there is no right or wrong.

What they do not seem to have learned from the events last time is how to manage the process but then again do they even care?

John

[95Theses]

And just in case it hasn't been mentioned, either Josh or Andrew (Chalkers) while logged on as "Admin" have gone through and erased the records of their admin actions. All of the deleted posts, deleted threads, summary banning of specific members and deletion of their entire post history, locking out of the Mods, shutting down the PM system, etc etc, has now been removed from the Admin logs. Unfortunately for Josh/Andrew, one of the recently evicted Forum Admin staff was still able to access the Forum and saw the cover up of their grievous actions happening. It smells very much as though they are deleting evidence of their heavy handed and patently unfair actions.

And to clarify one other issue, non of us ex-Mods resigned. We did our best to try and inform the membership what was really happening behind the scenes and Topsy, Mazille, Gallstones and Darwinsbulldog to name a few had posts not only removed but deleted by Josh/Andrew. We tried desperately to communicate with Josh/Andrew, but our pleas for explanations went unanswered and about 40 minutes after the membership was shut out, the entire Mod team were too. We couldn't PM, post, edit posts or perform mod actions. We were able to view the Mod and Admin logs (The latter for the 4 admin guys only) but not do anything except add a comment in a member's usernotes - a few of us left Andrew/Josh some love letters and requested communication, which have been ignored as well. We did not resign. We were shafted like the rest of the membership, but at least tried to go down fighting.

Durro

Did people get evidence of this?

There can be only 1 reason for hiding it, and that is pure terror that Richard is going to find out what actually happened.

[Nora_Leonard]

Another RDF refugee here.

Do any of you ex-RDF'ers have any links to some threads explaining what really happened? I am still kind of in the dark here. Was it something I said?

If you start reading part 1 of this thread, it all unfolds pretty quickly in there.

Peter Harrison has written an excellent account of it, as has Darkchilde (don't have a link to her blog on me at the moment). (Sorry if someone has already posted these links, I haven't read through the entire thread yet.)

EDIT: Okay I see that Peter has posted a link to his blog above. However it is worth repeating it .

[Agrippina]

[Darkchilde]

Another RDF refugee here.

Do any of you ex-RDF'ers have any links to some threads explaining what really happened? I am still kind of in the dark here. Was it something I said?

If you start reading part 1 of this thread, it all unfolds pretty quickly in there.

Peter Harrison has written an excellent account of it, as has Darkchilde (don't have a link to her blog on me at the moment). (Sorry if someone has already posted these links, I haven't read through the entire thread yet.)

Link is in my signature.

[Peter Brown]

Several thousand views of the blog entry now.

Searches bringing people to the forum:

reality is my religion
http://realityismyreligion.wordpress.com
dawkins forum closed
dawkins forum shut down
atheist
peter harrison magic
timonenfail
homeopathy what is the harm
cseti photo
peter harrison magic ebooks
busiest atheism forum closed
reptilian thermonuclear
reptile aliens
busiest atheism forum
crested gecko shedding
josh moderators mazille forum

Most traffic is coming from places like redit, and popular atheism websites like The Friendly Atheist.

You really do have a thing about reptiles don’t you I don't know how reptiles link to elderly Oxford professors though?

[CookieJon]

Simon! Your picture got bigger!

"Maximum power!"

[Ilovelucy]

Latest Update from Josh and it seems that it was the RDF mods who caused all the trouble - you bastards, you killed RDF

A few accounts have been deleted along with their posts due to the nature of their posts.

It's like saying a few people have been incinerated because they sneezed.

We're sorry that a few had to ruin it for the many.

Wow, Josh is actually coming clean about himself and Chalkers, well I'll give him some kudos for that at least...what?....you mean he's actually blaming it on us?!?!?!?

[InYourFaceNewYorker]

If Richard writes back to you, ozewiezeloose, let us know what he says.

[Chauncey Gardner]

As an outsider looking in....I must admit, the whole thing sounds very strange.

Why delete all the posts?

Wouldn't it be smarter to import those old posts into the new "discussion area" they have planned?

If that wasn't technically feasible (unlikely) why not ARCHIVE the old forum?

As an ex-poster on there, when I heard about the shutting down of the forum in the way they did suggested that the forum finally got hit with legals. In other words, I noticed that it was standard to post entire newspaper articles in the forum, which is not only illegal but very immoral, rather than adhering to fair use rules, where you post the headline, first few paras and a link to the full article. That might sound trivial, but, when you consider how many bible bashers would like to see such a busy forum for ideas and discussion, centred around atheism and anti-theism, shut down, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they ran into some sort of legal threat (engineered by people who would like to see it shut down) and were compelled to either sift through a few hundred thousand posts, or delete everything and quickly.

technically, I can't see why it's such a big hassle to import existing posts into a new discussion area. Furthermore, archiving it on free or very low cost servers would be a breeze.

leaving that aside, how the current situation has been handled is shambolic and very disrespectful to the community. Without the community of volunteer posters and moderators, the rd forum would be nothing. If I was one of the genuine people who invested a lot of time contributing to the forum, I would get in touch with others and setup an independent atheist site, with a forum, funded and maintained by the community....using the (very successful) co-operative model as the framework.

As an aside, one of the reasons I stopped posting there was because I noticed there was quite a lot of israeli street teamers on there...some of whom were moderators. I reported them to rd.net and later I was banned along with an email threatening legal action if I re-registered under a different name. I subsequently wrote a letter to RD himself alerting him to the fact that some of these people had infiltrated the moderators group but I never heard back. For the uniniated, the israeli gov. financed a huge PR campaign a few years ago, basically paying people to sit on message boards/forums all day posting positive messages about israel. It's simple street team tactics and very subtle.

Anyway...bottom line is I feel sorry for all those volunteer posters and genuine moderators who invested so much time in the rd forum. it must be a big kick in the teeth to logon and discover it's all gone.

From a branding point of view..this will hurt richard dawkins and he would be wise to make some sort of statement regarding what's going on.

[Ilovelucy]

If Richard writes back to you, ozewiezeloose, let us know what he says.

As far as I know, he's seen a vast majority of the pms he was sent. He ain't writing to no-one. I was open to the idea that Richard might be able to do something, or would at least reach out and make some kind of reconciliatory gesture, but as time passes by I think he wants nothing to do with this. He was either part of it the whole time, or has simply already ceded the control of the foundation to others and doesn't want to get involved.

[JimC]

What will happen when the people who made the forum happen and be the community it was, will not join in their new sanitized area? I will not go there, as there will be nothing for me.

I loved the debunking and science sections of the forum most of all. Especially the Debunking Creationism section was one of the busiest ones on the forum! That's where some of the most interesting posts were made, like Cali's bombs; when Mazille had the idea for the science competition, we all thought that it was a great idea, and pitched in our ideas of how to go about it, and it was picking up, with very interesting submissions.

What Josh wants to do is a boring, neat science front page area. That's all well and good, if I wanted that there are plenty of blogs that do the same and in a much more interesting format, and I can read the science news myself on sciencedaily, space.com and other sites, put them up on my blog and comment and write about it. It is the same thing with what Josh wants to do, anyone with a blog can do it. And those without a blog can do it too, as anyone can register on wordpress or blogger and open up a blog.

What I like is a forum community. It is to read up and see other people's comments and posts, and most of all the silly threads which were great. I loved the LOLcats, and read it, I want to talk about Avatar and Star Trek and Doctor Who, and whether cats are better than dogs or whatever little thread there is. You don't go to a forum just to be serious, but also to relax, let yourself free, speak your mind, and many times be freer on the forum than in rl, because of various reasons. Be able to vent and rant when things are not going your way, be able to just write about anything and everything.

Let alone that the RD forum was a welcoming place for new atheists, for people struggling with their newfound atheism, and they were helped through by the community.

Beautifuly put!

I hope you and others feel that Ratz will allow you to do all those things!

And especially contribute to vital discussions about gin!

[ozewiezeloose]

If Richard writes back to you, ozewiezeloose, let us know what he says.

Will do. The PM is still in my outbox so a) Josh-off hasn't deleted it, and b) Richard hasn't read it yet.

S.