News coverage

[SnowLeopard]

Here are two examples of people coming for advice that touched some of us over the last days of the forum

http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 35&start=0
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 2&t=109935

Obviously the people concerned just got cut off like everyone else.

This is also what upsets me most about the situation after getting over the concern about not being able to keep in touch with friends. I know there are other atheist forums out there, but people seek out that place because of Richards work and may not be aware of any other places. People see or read his programs or books and are inspired to cast off the chains of indoctrination, often very young people with no one else to turn to if they live in a deeply christian area, come to that forum for advice and help. Giving these people a refuge is not "frivolous". Taking that refuge away from them however.

[klr]

Oh my Good lord.

Times Online:

Dawkins unleashes tirade against fans :



http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/ ... -fans.html

He kinds of confuses cause and effect there.

At least the fifth reference. ILoveLucy has started a new thread.

[CTC]

I can say that the "other side's" perspective, whether you disagree with it or not, is that they had to do this for technical reasons and then you all behaved badly, especially due to the language used. They also are of the opinion (now don't get mad at me. I am only the messenger) that this is a small matter which will blow over, that you have overstated your importance to RDF, and that basically if you all leave RDF will not suffer one jot as in time others will replace you. Again, please don't get mad at me.

So to get some concrete facts about this is from all of you; how many of there are you that feel this strongly about what has happened? Does anyone have any numbers? And, this is a difficult one to measure, how will the RDF be affected by your departure? Will it continue on its merry way without you, or will it indeed be greatly diminshed?

It's funny that you put the former remarks in terms of 'perspective' and 'disagreement' and the latter in terms of 'concrete facts', since the latter are largely opinions while the former is little more than spin control.

The notion that "this change was necessary for technical reasons" is rubbish. I'm sure a number of the moderators would hold forth at length about the difficulty of the proposed changes and how necessary an eventual shutdown truly was. Peter Harrison's blog post seems to suggest little to that effect. In fact, from everything he and others have had to say in these threads so far, it would seem changes were not simple but were possible, and Josh/Andrew were either too incompetent to perform them or didn't want to be bothered. This does not translate into "had to do this for technical reasons" unless you are horribly lazy or you take cues from, I don't know, Sarah Palin. And it would behoove you and your colleagues to do proper diligence on this matter, rather than simply taking the Foundation at face value on the timeline of events.

[95Theses]

I have this comment waiting for approval. Wonder if I'll get it

I think the article misses the point somewhat.

No one denies Richard's right to do whatever he pleases with his own website. People were upset by the heavy handed actions of his Tech guy Josh Timonen and his sidekick Andrew Chalkley.

The original thread on RDF discussing this was vocal but civil. These two then deleted that, banned members and deleted over 30k science posts as punishment for showing dissent.

Then they made the forum read only, removed PM functionality and signatures to ensure that people couldn't swap contact info with friends they had made on the site.

The vitriolic comments Richard highlights were made on another forum, after the wholesale vandalism of members years of effort on RDF, and ar taken out of context and seek to portray only the small minority of what was actually said.

Despite stating in the message to the forum that 'The website will stay open for 30 days to allow archival of members posts' in reality anyone attempting to do so was directed to a rick-roll by the site Admins.

Yes people are up in arms, but it isn't because Richard wanted to change his own site, it's because of the terrible way he has treated many members and staff who have worked diligently for years to further his cause.

[Peter Brown]

Regrettably what Prof Dawkins has done is nothing new to me and I can expect billions of people can remember a favourite community place which the owner closed and redeveloped. My practical experience of such happenings over the years has been after the facelift the establishments tried to attracted new cliental and were eventually sold off as they failed to achieve a new market. So it is hard to have feelings other than typical here we go again.

So you are in effect saying that, yes, this this will blow over, but in time this may be the beggining of the end of the forum? And thus have a great impact on the RD Foundation?

Do I understand you correctly?

I can only say currently I could not in good faith refer anybody to the RDF for sound information. Prof Dawkins and team have deleted it and alienated the many people who might have answered questions by his actions in closing the forum.

Of course the whole event will blow over for the majority who were not personally insulted by the RDF team. What I witnessed that night on the RDF message board was something like a riot squad crushing a peaceful protest. I’m not surprised the former community members reacted as they did.

The internet is a wonderful accolade to mankind and communication. Former users will find a new meeting place, and word will spread via the net where that new community is.

[trubble76]

I added my own mewlings to the thread, FWIW



"He goes on to ponder what could possible be wrong with people who "over-react so spectacularly to something so trivial" "

Well, let's think about that for a second. The only options seem to be (a)The people that frequented that forum (myself included) were unstable and prone to completely irrational outbursts of overstated emotion or (b)it's not so trivial after all

Considering that the forum was mostly inhabited by rationalists, it suggests that the answer is (b)

Also, i would hasten to point out that the majority of the ill-feeling is NOT as a result of the proposed changes, but as a response to how those changes were put into effect.

I would suggest that to turn on those that have supported you through thick and thin is an unwise move, but history will tell.

Posted by: Toby | 25 Feb 2010 13:54:37

[Spearthrower]

For my part; I was a member.... I live in Bangkok..... I went to bed with the forum working just fine..... woke up 6 hours later and it was already read-only. 'Knee-jerk reaction' doesn't even remotely cover such ridiculous behaviour from Josh Timonen. Had he not been so downright rude to the forum moderators, staff who gave their free-time willingly to the forums and foundation, they would not have felt obliged to make the regular members aware that they were not directly responsible. Josh was rude enough to delete the accounts, including 13,000 posts on scientific topics with responses from numerous other people, of moderators who had given their time for years to make that foundation operate.

I wasn't awake, so I can't comment on the language used; however, Josh et al would most certainly have expected the announcement of change in 30 days to cause some friction. They could simply have left it to the moderators to deal with - the people who had actually been running the site for the last few years. Instead, he went power mad, knocking down the tower of reason of which he was only a single brick.

Richard Dawkins, I am sorry to say, seems blithely unaware of much that occurred in his absence. His response makes that crystal clear. Unfortunately, it seems he places so much trust in Josh that he would actively alienate himself from hundreds of his foundation's most supportive members.

In my opinion, this has been a massive blow to the stated principles of the foundation. Zero transparency, irrational decision making, aggressive responses to criticism, actively stifling a secularist community that he has repeatedly stated is hard to come by, then nailing the coffin by burning all the records. By this, and we have evidence for this, that Josh or the IT guy has gone through the forum posts, deleted users and their entire posting records, deleted threads from much further back including Richard Dawkin's own posts, then actively deleted the admin records to cover his tracks. Something fishy is afoot there, without a doubt.

That's not all - burning all the records gets a little more literal than that when they pull the plug on millions of threads, a fair percentage of which present excellent explanations for scientific topics from diverse academic areas, political commentary on the last few years of current affairs (a historical record, Richard!), legendary posts known throughout the internet like Robert Byers' Why Polar Bears are White thread, or the monstrously comprehensive Great Flood Debunked thread..... I want to know which one of those gentlemen involved with this decision is prepared to make a public explanation of why they intend to delete it.

Quite simply, how can Richard permit this to occur and still stand and face an audience promoting rational thinking? It would be rank hypocrisy!

Is saying this is akin to "book burning" too strong? Obviously that conjurs up all sorts of nasty images.

I didn't say it was "akin to "book burning"" - I said they are "burning all the records" and then provided a litany of examples, both of the methods they have employed, and what stands to be lost.

[locutus7]

Chris,

There seems to be a bit of confusion on one point: I, and many others, donated money to RD Foundation. My donation was specifically for improving the website (during a period when it was plagued with technical problems). They accepted our money, albeit without thanks or acknowledgement (in my case at least).

So I think we cannot just say the site was his and he could do what he wants. RD accepted our money and the moderators' time and resources. I believe a case could be made that he had some responsibility to his members.

It was expected that RD would push the counter-narrative that we are a few malcontents. His people are out pushing their story. And it was expected that he would back Josh, even if Josh erred in judgment. Josh is his man.

But what surprises me is that he did not realize the bonds that had developed among forum members, and the psychological purposes the forum served beyond simple science education, the helping of people who were wrestling with faith.

[melchior]

Regrettably what Prof Dawkins has done is nothing new to me and I can expect billions of people can remember a favourite community place which the owner closed and redeveloped. My practical experience of such happenings over the years has been after the facelift the establishments tried to attracted new cliental and were eventually sold off as they failed to achieve a new market. So it is hard to have feelings other than typical here we go again.

So you are in effect saying that, yes, this this will blow over, but in time this may be the beggining of the end of the forum? And thus have a great impact on the RD Foundation?

Do I understand you correctly?

I joined the forum nearly 4 years ago. I'm not a particularly prolific poster, but it was a constant 'thing' to come back to and learn things from.

Over the time that I have been looking at the forum I have seen it develop into something very special. The quality of the information made available on the forum during the course of debates was unrivaled. Those were comments made by 'us', the great unwashed. Not Dawkins or his tech team.

The moderators, and the diverse membership who posted freely on there, have made the foundation what it is today. Dawkins own profile has benefited from that.

To 'control' and dare I say it 'curtail' the content on the forum will have an impact on the Foundation.

I think that Dawkins and his team will be quite surprised to see that 'we' are not expendable after all.

[laklak]

Perhaps the forum's growth did surprise them. Perhaps it took on a life of its own and was evolving into something they did not want. Ya know, these things happen. If they wanted the forum to concentrate on science and atheism (with a bit of hero-worship thrown in), then they should not have dedicated so many forums and sub-forums to non-scientific topics. There were forums for Off-Topic discussions, Politics and Current Affairs, General Discussion, The Book Nook, Philosophy and Technology, for instance.

There are any number of ways the Good Professor could have approached this. If he thought the language was getting a bit out of hand he could have sent a mass PM to members, in his name, saying something to the effect of "please tone it down, folks". I, for one, would have complied. It's his website, after all.

They could have stuck with their original plan to keep the forums open for 30 days. The bitching prior to the shutdown was nothing compared to what occurred afterward.

They could have offered the forum content to the members. I certainly would have contributed both time and money to establish a new site unconnected with Dawkins.

Above all, they could have treated their mods and volunteers with a bit of respect.

Any of these approaches would have been preferable to the high-handed and cowardly path they choose to take. They got called nasty names on another forum, well, poor babies. You'd think The World's Greatest Atheist Thinker would have developed a thicker skin by now.

[Chris Wilkins]

For my part; I was a member.... I live in Bangkok..... I went to bed with the forum working just fine..... woke up 6 hours later and it was already read-only. 'Knee-jerk reaction' doesn't even remotely cover such ridiculous behaviour from Josh Timonen. Had he not been so downright rude to the forum moderators, staff who gave their free-time willingly to the forums and foundation, they would not have felt obliged to make the regular members aware that they were not directly responsible. Josh was rude enough to delete the accounts, including 13,000 posts on scientific topics with responses from numerous other people, of moderators who had given their time for years to make that foundation operate.

I wasn't awake, so I can't comment on the language used; however, Josh et al would most certainly have expected the announcement of change in 30 days to cause some friction. They could simply have left it to the moderators to deal with - the people who had actually been running the site for the last few years. Instead, he went power mad, knocking down the tower of reason of which he was only a single brick.

Richard Dawkins, I am sorry to say, seems blithely unaware of much that occurred in his absence. His response makes that crystal clear. Unfortunately, it seems he places so much trust in Josh that he would actively alienate himself from hundreds of his foundation's most supportive members.

In my opinion, this has been a massive blow to the stated principles of the foundation. Zero transparency, irrational decision making, aggressive responses to criticism, actively stifling a secularist community that he has repeatedly stated is hard to come by, then nailing the coffin by burning all the records. By this, and we have evidence for this, that Josh or the IT guy has gone through the forum posts, deleted users and their entire posting records, deleted threads from much further back including Richard Dawkin's own posts, then actively deleted the admin records to cover his tracks. Something fishy is afoot there, without a doubt.

That's not all - burning all the records gets a little more literal than that when they pull the plug on millions of threads, a fair percentage of which present excellent explanations for scientific topics from diverse academic areas, political commentary on the last few years of current affairs (a historical record, Richard!), legendary posts known throughout the internet like Robert Byers' Why Polar Bears are White thread, or the monstrously comprehensive Great Flood Debunked thread..... I want to know which one of those gentlemen involved with this decision is prepared to make a public explanation of why they intend to delete it.

Quite simply, how can Richard permit this to occur and still stand and face an audience promoting rational thinking? It would be rank hypocrisy!

Is saying this is akin to "book burning" too strong? Obviously that conjurs up all sorts of nasty images.

I didn't say it was "akin to "book burning"" - I said they are "burning all the records" and then provided a litany of examples, both of the methods they have employed, and what stands to be lost.

Well, okay. They aren't actually burning dead trees. But they are erasing electronic information. Not a good thing if this body on information was more than a "forum" but a body of scientific papers, peer reviewed docs, reports, intellectual debates, etc. etc. If this is the case, for a scientist to be responsible for such an act, is truly amazing.

How would Richard feel if people started burning his books, text that he crafted into literary works? I daresay he would be apopleptic with rage.

I cannot see the difference. Perhaps the only difference is that his was an obvious textual work, sitting on a bookshelf, but with the forum's data it sat in a computer somewhere and, to the public's eye, was invisible.

[locutus7]

Someone maybe could provide Chris with an example of the type of thing we are talking about: one of Cali's posts, or Hack, or Susu, etc, so he can see what we mean when we say scientific posts.

[Chris Wilkins]

Someone maybe could provide Chris with an example of the type of thing we are talking about: one of Cali's posts, or Hack, or Susu, etc, so he can see what we mean when we say scientific posts.

That would be fantastic.

[RPizzle]

Someone maybe could provide Chris with an example of the type of thing we are talking about: one of Cali's posts, or Hack, or Susu, etc, so he can see what we mean when we say scientific posts.

That would be fantastic.

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 3&start=45

Look for the blue butterfly. Some of those posts I believe are authored by him, while some may be select fun threads from various creationists.

[goodboyCerberus]

http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 0#p1693459, this and Cali's response right below my post:

Oh, by the way, if you're looking for scientific papers covering documented speciation events, there are several extant in the literature. Here are the ones I am familiar with, which is by NO means a complete list - in fact, I suspect the complete list of papers easily runs into the hundreds. But, this lot should whet your appetite for the time being:

Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory by J.R. Weinberg V. R. Starczak and P. Jora, Evolution vol 46, pp 1214-1220, 1992

Experimentally Created Incipient Species of Drosophila by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Olga Pavlovsky, Nature 230, pp 289 - 292 (02 April 1971)

Founder-flush speciation in Drosophila pseudoobscura: a large scale experiment by A. Galiana, A. Moya and F. J. Alaya, Evolution vol 47, pp 432-444, 1993

Related to these is this paper, which contains a direct experimental test of selection mechanisms and their implications for speciation:

Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura by E. del Solar, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol 56, pp 484-487, 1966

One of the other users here, Draconic, posted a list of other speciation papers, but I've temporarily lost the file containing the data in my vast jungle of hard drive folders (which, despite being a nested hierarchy, is VERY convoluted).

STOP PRESS: Just found this one (full downloadable PDF) on estimation of speciation rates in mammals. Should make interesting reading.

The names of five scientific papers detailing recorded specialization events in the literature (despite what the creationists would have you believe), without breaking a sweat. This is nothing compared to Cali's more extensive, highly researched posts.