Please sign here/Open Letter - RE: Richard Dawkins Forum

[Gawd]

Because that's what really important in life.

ETA: Can one leave a support message for Dawkins?

Josh, is that you?

[Fred Hsu]

Submitted.

[virphen]

Oh, you're here.

Please, curb your enthusiasm, it's positively indecent.

[week15]

Love this little smiley...

Posted. Thanks for giving a place for a response.

[Elena]

Done. Thanks life.

Topsy/Flora, great letter at PZ's.

[pErvinalia]

Signed.

We should keep bumping this thread so that as many of us as possible can sign this letter. I think the idea of delivering it to RD in Australia at the atheist convention is a good idea.

[Oldskeptic]

Here's mine


I want to give you the benefit of doubt that what you really wanted to do is create a better web forum, so I’ll wait and see, but I‘m not setting my hopes very high.

I’ll admit that we were a pretty varied and rambunctious crowd, but I think that you should have been proud of that. You created it; a place where atheists disagreed and discussed among themselves almost as often as they disagreed with believers that came to debate.

Your forum had high visibility and most of the people participating were intelligent and did their research well. The moderators were wise and fair beyond belief, and your now defunct forum was not afraid to let the loony sounding dissenters in.

You had the best attended and run web forum on the internet. It was a real community as far as the internet can go. And that was blasted apart.

I read The Selfish Gene in the late ‘70’s. I’ve read almost a every book that you have written. My favorite is The Ancestors Tale. I have so much admiration for your accomplishments that what is going on now is really confusing.

I have defended your ideas in many threads, not because I am an disciple, but because what you have written makes sense to me.

But this does not make sense. You have shattered and scattered your base supporters. Not all of us agreed with everything that you have written or said, but we were generally in your corner.

[maiforpeace]

My open letter:

Dear Professor Dawkins,

I just read your reply to the the RD.net Foruim community regarding the recent debaucle due to the abrupt closure of the Forum. I have a simple question to ask. If Mr. Timonen behaved in a professional, respectful and ethical manner towards his volunteer moderator staff, would there not at least one person of that staff that could defend his actions? The only one who is defending his actions is you, and you weren't even there when the whole forum disaster occurred.

The group of moderators who put in hours and hours of their free time managing a forum on your behalf deserve to have their say. They have donated countless valuable hours of unpaid time managing a forum and sharing their unique expertise that has not only served the community, but has served you. A large part of your success specific to your website is due to them. I know several of those moderators volunteered their free time representing you at conventions as well.

The successful management of volunteer staff is a unique and difficult skill, and there is no doubt after this gross mismanagment that Mr. Timonen clearly lacked the expertise in this area. He has caused a lot of damage in the internal staff, as well as in the larger community with his actions. How can you dismiss the perspective of a good number of volunteer moderator staff over one/two administrators? Can a whole group of staff members be over-reacting and hysterical?

I therefore urge you to do the right thing. Please give the volunteer moderator staff, staff who has worked hours with such passion, love and dedication for you and the atheist community an opportunity to be heard. They deserve your utmost respect and attention at a time when they are legitimately distressed and concerned about a community they care deeply for.

Respectfully,

Mai Dao-Horton
Ethical Culture Society of Silicon Valley

[Damien Karras]

Dunnit. Wroted vis:

"I wasn't on RDF long - 6 weeks or so - but within days of joining I found I was learning (and laughing, shouting at my screen etc) so much with each visit that I couldn't wait to come back.

I hope, Richard, having read your announcement on RDF today, that you are unaware of the details of what's been done to it; I hope this letter changes that."

[goodboyCerberus]

Added mine.

Get on StumbleUpon and up-vote the open letter. There are over 5,000 members of the atheist/agnostic group on SU (the largest in religion, with more members than all the other groups with the word "Christ" in them combined), and those are just the ones affiliated with the group.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/group/atheistagnostic/

...
By the way, I'm getting this every other time I try to edit a post:

Code: Select all

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Table './rationalia/search_wordmatch' is marked as crashed and should be repaired [145]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

[cherries]

done

[Skylarking]

I'm going to paraphrase a post I've just left on another thread in this forum, as a response to Clinton Richard Dakwin's "official" response announcement.


I'll edit and tell you guys if I managed to get it through correctly.



EDIT: OK. Sealed, signed and delivered. Delivered to whom? I don't know. I highly doubt Richard will ever stumble across the blog and then proceed to read our cries, or pleas, or angst, and our disillusioned sorrow, but it is there and spoken for.

[Robert_S]

Added mine.

Get on StumbleUpon and up-vote the open letter. There are over 5,000 members of the atheist/agnostic group on SU (the largest in religion, with more members than all the other groups with the word "Christ" in them combined), and those are just the ones affiliated with the group.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/group/atheistagnostic/

Theres 2 of us liked that on Stumbleupon so far

[NineOneFour]

Nice letters, all.

[Lazar]

signed! Nice note 914.