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[Thinking Aloud]

You can find the thread here.

Just to be clear, this retrieval from cache only contains pages 7-20 of what was a 28 page thread (to my knowledge) - some people have been confused by the display of "Page 7 of 9" near the top of the page - this is an artefact of the cache from my browser, and subsequent pages can be found by scrolling down.

As others have said, the insults quoted by Dawkins can be found on this site, some of which weren't even person-specific.

Even if it is only pages 7-20 of a 28 page thread, surely no one can think we spent 7 pages rabidly threatening Josh, then 14 pages being perfectly reasonable, then switched back to rabid insults on page 21?

I agree completely. I'm just reiterating that it's not a complete record of that thread, but should be taken as indicative. I wish I'd stayed up another hour that night.

[CJ]

CRITICAL YOU READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO RECOVER DELETED POSTS http://www.rationalskepticism.org/viewt ... ?f=2&t=716

Pardon if this has been posted elsewhere, it works currently on this at the moment!

[Chris Wilkins]

Oh, and in case you haven't seen it yet, here is a retrieved copy of the deleted thread that started this débâcle.


Oh, and you will see a reference in there to a thread entitled 'cunts and n**gers'. Before that gets jumped on, it was actually a thread about the comparative abusiveness of particulr words, and was actually a quite enlightened discussion. You can find the thread here. The thread title was changed to 'The C word and the N word', to protect the sensibilities of those that may have gotten the wrong impression.

Ah, I see why they pulled the plug early. You were all talking about copying the forum and going elsewhere openly. The deadline had to be moved up. At least in their eyes.

[RPizzle]

Oh, and in case you haven't seen it yet, here is a retrieved copy of the deleted thread that started this débâcle.


Oh, and you will see a reference in there to a thread entitled 'cunts and n**gers'. Before that gets jumped on, it was actually a thread about the comparative abusiveness of particulr words, and was actually a quite enlightened discussion. You can find the thread here. The thread title was changed to 'The C word and the N word', to protect the sensibilities of those that may have gotten the wrong impression.

Ah, I see why they pulled the plug early. You were all talking about copying the forum and going elsewhere openly. The deadline had to be moved up. At least in their eyes.

I think I missed that little, "Once you join, you are ours forever...Mwahahhaha!" clause when I signed up. Honestly, just how ballsy do you have to be to not only destroy a forum, but tell everyone they are hostages of said forum.

[CJ]

There is of course another possibility. The forum was created as a research tool and has now gone beyond its usefulness, Dawkins is now through the research phase and moving on to the exploitation phase and he wants to get the data out of the public eye. We may all have been taken for mugs in the most unethical way possible. The proof of this conjecture will be the publishing of a book by Dawkins at some point based, at least in part on posting in the forum.

[kiki5711]

Perhaps Mr Dawkins thinks we have the attention span of a frog and that after 27 days we'll forget about all of it and we'll come back and continue glorifying his books and him.

There should be an announcement in front of his new forum. "Certified scientist, and those that only agree wit me are accepted."

Apparently he has grown too self centered about his legacy that he forgot what friendship means.

[Thinking Aloud]

Oh, and in case you haven't seen it yet, here is a retrieved copy of the deleted thread that started this débâcle.


Oh, and you will see a reference in there to a thread entitled 'cunts and n**gers'. Before that gets jumped on, it was actually a thread about the comparative abusiveness of particulr words, and was actually a quite enlightened discussion. You can find the thread here. The thread title was changed to 'The C word and the N word', to protect the sensibilities of those that may have gotten the wrong impression.

Ah, I see why they pulled the plug early. You were all talking about copying the forum and going elsewhere openly. The deadline had to be moved up. At least in their eyes.

They'd just told RDF members that they'd have 30 days to retrieve any posts they considered valuable, and discussion clearly was considering how best to do that - talk about copying the forum was a consequence of the closure notice. Given that the forum content only really makes sense in the context of threads, how else could it be retrieved and still have any value?

Emphasis on the "writing a book" or "copying" idea as a reason to shut it down doesn't follow from the fact that neither RD nor JT appeared to value the forum at all. Besides, why close something down like that, if there were plans to write a book, when by doing so would provide the greatest possible dramatic conclusion for such a book?

My own take on the "lock down" was simply that the entire mod staff quit in protest at their treatment; immediatly a handful of people posted things like, "so can we say felch and cunt now?," knowing that there would be no reprimand from mods; the Admins knew that leaving the forum editable for another 30 days without any moderators would turn the site into a serious embarrassment as disaffected people took advantage of the lack of policing. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the "actions of the moderators" that official announcements claim caused the lock down could simply be that they quit.

Edit: correction.

[kiki5711]

ThinkingAloud: My own take on the "lock down" was simply that the entire mod staff quit in protest at their treatment; immediatly a handful of people posted things like, "so can we say felch and cunt now?," knowing that there would be no reprimand from mods; the Admins knew that leaving the forum editable for another 30 days without any moderators would turn the site into a serious embarrassment as disaffected people took advantage. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the "actions of the moderators" that RD claims caused the lock down could simply be that they quit.

It wouldn't happen if there was an announcement in a respectable and grateful way of explaining the ultra change. But it was not.

[Thinking Aloud]

ThinkingAloud: My own take on the "lock down" was simply that the entire mod staff quit in protest at their treatment; immediatly a handful of people posted things like, "so can we say felch and cunt now?," knowing that there would be no reprimand from mods; the Admins knew that leaving the forum editable for another 30 days without any moderators would turn the site into a serious embarrassment as disaffected people took advantage. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the "actions of the moderators" that RD claims caused the lock down could simply be that they quit.

It wouldn't happen if there was an announcement in a respectable and grateful way of explaining the ultra change. But it was not.

I'm not disputing that it was done badly. Just finding excuses for things that were said, and things that were done by them.

[Heresiarch]

My own take on the "lock down" was simply that the entire mod staff quit in protest at their treatment; immediatly a handful of people posted things like, "so can we say felch and cunt now?," knowing that there would be no reprimand from mods; the Admins knew that leaving the forum editable for another 30 days without any moderators would turn the site into a serious embarrassment as disaffected people took advantage of the lack of policing. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the "actions of the moderators" that official announcements claim caused the lock down could simply be that they quit.

I tend to agree, but I haven't yet seen anything that justifies the deletion of the protest thread or the nuking of individual users entire posting histories.

[ficklefiend]

Hah, my quotes from that thread:

(one missing, page 2 I think where I said something like "Shame, this sounds like it will discourage newbies")

There is no reason a person can't both (a member of RDF and rationalia), especially if this goes the way it looks.
These new plans sound like they will good at fostering one very specific kind of forum environment, I've no doubt they'll fill up fine and I can't see arguing against the change will help any.

"How many members here, like me, contributed to the recent RDFRS fundraiser mostly because of the affinity created by this forum?"
I didn't think of that, too true.

"I'm With Stupid wrote: I'm sure I know what they've got in mind. Has anyone ever been on the BBC message boards? A fucking cow pat of a message board."
That's what came to my mind. Those boards are useless.

Yes, My enraged comments clearly shut down the forum.

[Thinking Aloud]

My own take on the "lock down" was simply that the entire mod staff quit in protest at their treatment; immediatly a handful of people posted things like, "so can we say felch and cunt now?," knowing that there would be no reprimand from mods; the Admins knew that leaving the forum editable for another 30 days without any moderators would turn the site into a serious embarrassment as disaffected people took advantage of the lack of policing. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the "actions of the moderators" that official announcements claim caused the lock down could simply be that they quit.

I tend to agree, but I haven't yet seen anything that justifies the deletion of the protest thread or the nuking of individual users entire posting histories.

Me neither.

[CJ]

ThinkingAloud: My own take on the "lock down" was simply that the entire mod staff quit in protest at their treatment; immediatly a handful of people posted things like, "so can we say felch and cunt now?," knowing that there would be no reprimand from mods; the Admins knew that leaving the forum editable for another 30 days without any moderators would turn the site into a serious embarrassment as disaffected people took advantage. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt, the "actions of the moderators" that RD claims caused the lock down could simply be that they quit.

It wouldn't happen if there was an announcement in a respectable and grateful way of explaining the ultra change. But it was not.

I'm not disputing that it was done badly. Just finding excuses for things that were said, and things that were done by them.

I agree that the lock down was an inevitable result of the the combination of the poor announcement and the Mods effectively downing tools. It was an effect not a cause as such a logic reaction at that moment. What happened before caused the lock-down.

[95Theses]

I find it telling that the things that could be construed as out of order actions by staff have all been freely admitted. No one is claiming to have been whiter than white if they weren't.

For example the mod DarwinsBulldog banned Chalkley as a troll after the destruction of a couple of peoples entre post histories in response to showing the members the note the staff were sent

Was that worthy of a demotion, or perhaps even a ban? Maybe, but was it worthy of deleting his 13,500 post history including thousands of science topics? No fucking way.

[Matt H]

I felt absolutely sick reading the article in The Guardian today. The journalist swallowed what Richard wrote hook, line and sinker. Couldn't be arsed to do any research. Disgraceful how they can get away with it, seeing how much money they get.