In Praise of Josh Timonen

[life]

You forgot rick-rolling people trying to backup the forum, which really is a measure of the sort of person we're dealing with here.

You're stating that Josh went so far as to prank those trying to archive the forum - hence obviously deliberately and smugly stoking flames?

Is there any specific good evidence you could post to verify this?

[Mac_Guffin]

Josh was very respectful and sensitive about the members' feelings. He handled this well and didn't at all resort to patronising tones.

[klr]

Josh was very respectful and sensitive about the members' feelings. He handled this well and didn't at all resort to patronising tones.

You have a long career in politics in front of you.

[Alan C]

Tosh;

[Jerome23]

http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2010/02/2 ... h-timonen/

I found something nice to say at last!



j x

[fredbear]

http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2010/02/2 ... h-timonen/

I found something nice to say at last!



j x

hi jerome,
ashamed to say that although i heard your moniker bandied about i never really came across you much on rdf. blame my poor science education which confined me to the barracks of ot. i have been so impressed with your posts here though and your eloquent responses on other blogs. anyhoo i have put your blog on my favourites. just don't expect a baptism any tome soon.
fred/lucy

[Luis Dias]

You forgot rick-rolling people trying to backup the forum, which really is a measure of the sort of person we're dealing with here.

You're stating that Josh went so far as to prank those trying to archive the forum - hence obviously deliberately and smugly stoking flames?

Is there any specific good evidence you could post to verify this?

WTF does this mean?!? Is intent here unquestioned?

Please explain this code for us laymen....

[Bella Fortuna]

Josh was very respectful and sensitive about the members' feelings. He handled this well and didn't at all resort to patronising tones.

Sorry, I believe you meant to post that here.

[lordpasternack]

This is the post from Richard Dawkins: http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 6#p2753033

A Message from Richard Dawkins about the website updates

Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an “utter twat” a “suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum inside a dead skunk that’s been shoved up a week-old dead rhino’s twat.” Or suppose that somebody on the same website expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails” down your throat. Also to “trip you up and kick you in the guts.” And imagine seeing your face described, again by an anonymous poster, as “a slack jawed turd in the mouth mug if ever I saw one.”

What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?

None of the above. What you have to do is write a letter like this:

Dear forum members,

We wanted you all to know at the earliest opportunity about our new website currently in development. RichardDawkins.net will have a new look and feel, improved security, and much more. Visits to the site have really grown over the past 3 1/2 years, and this update gives us an opportunity to address several issues. Over the years we've become one of the world's leading resources for breaking rational and scientific news from all over the net and creating original content. We are focusing on quality content distribution, and will be bringing more original articles, video and other content as we grow.

The new RichardDawkins.net will have a fully-integrated discussion section. This will be a new feature for the site, similar to the current forum, but not identical. We feel the new system will be much cleaner and easier to use, and hopefully this will encourage participation from a wider variety of users.

We will leave the current forum up for 30 days, giving regular users an opportunity to locally archive any content they value. When the new website goes live, you are welcome to submit these posts as new discussions. The forum will then be taken down from the web. You will not loose your username on the new system.

The new discussion area will not be a new forum. It will be different. We will be using a system of tags to categorize items, instead of sub-forums. Discussions can have multiple tags, such as "Education", "Children", and "Critical Thinking". Starting a new discussion will require approval, so we ask that you only submit new discussions that are truly relevant to reason and science. Subsequent responses on the thread will not need approval—however anything off topic or violating the new terms of service will be removed. The approval process will be there to ensure the quality of posts on the site. This is purely an editorial exercise to help new visitors find quality content quickly. We hope this discussion area will reflect the foundation's goals and values.

We know that this is a big decision. We know some of you will be against this change. We ask that you respect our decision and help make this transition as smooth as possible.

We're confident that these changes will improve the site experience and we look forward to seeing what you do with the new system.

Many thanks again.

You will notice that the forum has in fact been closed to comments (not taken down) sooner than the 30 days alluded to in the letter. This is purely and simply because of the over-the-top hostility of the comments that were immediately sent in. Note that there is no suggestion of abolishing the principle of a forum in which commenters can start their own threads. Just an editorial re-organization, which will include a change such that the choice of new threads will be subject to editorial control. Editorial control, mark you, by the person who, more than any other individual, has earned the right to the editor’s chair by founding the site in the first place, then maintaining its high standard by hard work and sheer talent. The aim of the letter is to describe an exciting new revamping of our site, one in which quality will take precedence over quantity, where original articles on reason and science, on atheism and scepticism, will be commissioned, where frivolous gossip will be reduced. The new plan may succeed or it may fail, but I think it is worth trying. And even if it fails, it most certainly will not deserve the splenetic hysteria that the mere suggestion of it has received.

Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.

If you are one of those who have dealt out such ludicrously hyperbolic animosity, you know who should receive your private apology. And if you are one of those who are as disgusted by it as I am, you know where to send your warm letter of support.

Richard

I would again direct Richard to explore our further grievances over Josh's very real dickheadery, outside of this carefully crafted executive announcement of his.

I'd seen references to Josh closing down the PM system, then limiting the number of PMs that could be sent, and also deleting the accounts of individuals trying to contact Richard. Could anyone verify this?

[klr]

...

I'd seen references to Josh closing down the PM system, then limiting the number of PMs that could be sent, and also deleting the accounts of individuals trying to contact Richard. Could anyone verify this?

Closing down the PM system entirely: Not sure about that at all.

Restricting the number/frequency of PMs: Definitely - very widely reported.

Deleting not only specific accounts but also entire post histories: Definitely. 5 or 6 cases, including the likes of CJ, Mazille and Darwin's Bulldog - ripping the heart out of many science/evolution threads in the process.

We don't know that it was actually Josh in all of these BTW, or even in any of them. Based on IP address analysis, some of the (now former) RD.net forum staff suspect it was Andrew Chalkley.

Other offences include suppressing the display of signatures and trying to erase admin logs of what was done.

[lordpasternack]

While I'm here I'd like to point out a blatant inconsistency in this soundbite:

We originally posted a private message to the moderators only asking them not to use the information in the foundation's database to cause trouble, email Richard en masse, ask all of the users to go to a separate forum, or anything like that. We take the privacy of the users' data held by the foundation seriously—to that end the data shouldn't be used to solicit and promote other services. This is not what our users signed up for. This was only directed toward the small group of moderators, who had the access to the administration panel. Against the foundation's wishes, they turned around and posted this message publicly in the forum, and many people misinterpreted this to be directed at regular users. We were not telling the regular users what they could and couldn't do, they were all welcome to move to a separate forum.

So forum staff soliciting users to come over to another forum is "troublemaking" and something that RD.net would take seriously, as it values users' privacy, and they did not sign up for such solicitation. But it is perfectly welcome for regular users to do the self-same thing, only with a fewer number of members of course, since they don't have access to the database.

Grand. Now I'd love for Josh to explain, as a corollary of this theological reasoning, why on earth he disabled signatures - the little taglines of text that go under a member's posts - with no other immediately clear rationale other than to stifle the public advertising of alternative arenas by the general membership? Are we going to get some hogwash about it counting as spam, or unreasonable soliciting - or might Josh have another mind-bending piece of reasoning to explain that one away?

Well, he may indeed have some actual explanation, but I'm not holding my breath. My current working hypothesis is that he ought to get a bib for all that shit drivelling out of his mouth.

Edit: In response to klr's post above, I'd acknowledge that some of the events might have been the work of Andrew rather than Josh, or perhaps they were colluding.

[lordpasternack]

Other offences include suppressing the display of signatures and trying to erase admin logs of what was done.

When you say "trying", do you mean to imply that they were not entirely successful? And if so, would there be any incriminating screen-caps taken?

[klr]

While I'm here I'd like to point out a blatant inconsistency in this soundbite:

We originally posted a private message to the moderators only asking them not to use the information in the foundation's database to cause trouble, email Richard en masse, ask all of the users to go to a separate forum, or anything like that. We take the privacy of the users' data held by the foundation seriously—to that end the data shouldn't be used to solicit and promote other services. This is not what our users signed up for. This was only directed toward the small group of moderators, who had the access to the administration panel. Against the foundation's wishes, they turned around and posted this message publicly in the forum, and many people misinterpreted this to be directed at regular users. We were not telling the regular users what they could and couldn't do, they were all welcome to move to a separate forum.

So forum staff soliciting users to come over to another forum is "troublemaking" and something that RD.net would take seriously, as it values users' privacy, and they did not sign up for such solicitation. But it is perfectly welcome for regular users to do the self-same thing, only with a fewer number of members of course, since they don't have access to the database.

Grand. Now I'd love for Josh to explain, as a corollary of this theological reasoning, why on earth he disabled signatures - the little taglines of text that go under a member's posts - with no other immediately clear rationale other than to stifle the public advertising of alternative arenas by the general membership? Are we going to get some hogwash about it counting as spam, or unreasonable soliciting - or might Josh have another mind-bending piece of reasoning to explain that one away?

Well, he may indeed have some actual explanation, but I'm not holding my breath. My current working hypothesis is that he ought to get a bib for all that shit drivelling out of his mouth.

Trust me, we've all been over and back over these and related issues over the past few days. The suppression of signatures has to be construed as an attempt to prevent people advertising alternative forums: People were quite open about what they were doing in this respect, and of course it's never really been a major problem before, not even back you-know-when. And of course the suppression of signatures applied to everybody.

Re berating the staff about not using their privileges to "assist" migration: I too would be very miffed to be told "don't abuse your access to email addresses" when I had never abused such information, and had no intention of doing so. That went down like a lead balloon with the staff.

In fact, as I recall, the only time email addresses were abused was when someone hacked into the system last year. Come to think of if it, we were never given a clear explanation as to how that happened, and who might have been to blame in terms of lack of due diligence, etc.

[lordpasternack]

In fact, as I recall, the only time email addresses were abused was when someone hacked into the system last year. Come to think of if it, we were never given a clear explanation as to how that happened, and who might have been to blame in terms of lack of due diligence, etc.

A little birdy told me that Richard Prins had quit over a dispute with Josh over that, saying that Josh tried to heap some blame onto him. However, the birdy in question does seem to have an inclination for not remembering events absolutely accurately, so I'd leave it to some further enquiry. (I keep correcting his versions of events in certain small nitty-gritty details of stuff we've done together in the past that he recounts. I can be fastidious like that. )

[klr]

In fact, as I recall, the only time email addresses were abused was when someone hacked into the system last year. Come to think of if it, we were never given a clear explanation as to how that happened, and who might have been to blame in terms of lack of due diligence, etc.

A little birdy told me that Richard Prins had quit over a dispute with Josh over that, saying that Josh tried to heap some blame onto him. However, the birdy in question does seem to have an inclination for not remembering events absolutely accurately, so I'd leave it to some further enquiry. (I keep correcting his versions of events in certain small nitty-gritty details of stuff we've done together in the past that he recounts. I can be fastidious like that. )

Another little birdy told me that the plans for site re-development also drew RP's ire around the same time, and in fact RP stated in the past couple of days (not sure where) that there were never any serious plans to migrate the post history to the new forum. That would not surprise me. It's a difficult task if you don't have the will and the know-how to go about it, and time-consuming no matter what. But I suspect that it was indeed never really an option for Josh et al, and that the forum staff and users were led down the garden path.

I suspect that there might be a significant element of truth in both accounts. Incidentally, the forum admin account wasn't used for several months after the hacking incident, which meant that Josh would have very likely lost touch with the forum altogether.