New RDF website to be launched next week

[CJ]

So, did this ever actually happen?

Allegedly.

[lordpasternack]

Ahhhhhh... Almost a year after the forum went down pending the imminent unveiling of the very exciting new site - which then arrived around three months late - they're still, well they're still beta-testing, the damn thing!

Even as a very casual infrequent user of the site, and a non-expert, I'm picking up on various tinkerings, and subsequent faults that have arisen from said tinkerings that they're doing all the while. They're trying I suppose to make sure the shit is gilded properly this time, with no obvious cracks or creases through which one can see the glaring familiar brown underneath - but everytime they handle the shit, it just keeps shifting about and opening new cracks that need to be re-gilded.

Honestly, the technical aesthetics of the site are FUCKING AWFUL, if on some level basically functional - and it beggars belief that anyone on RDFRS is actually equanamous about the amateurishness of the overall style of the site, and of the makeshift patches that have been put in place to try to compensate for this. Do they know how these things are actually supposed to be done? Would it be worth giving any kind of helpful criticism that might amount to the proverbial giving someone a fish to feed them for a day? Would any criticism that they subsequently take on board and enact still be mere window-dressing over the fact that the pertinent individuals are generally not competent, experienced or fully qualified for what they're supposed to be doing in the first place?

Or maybe this is all part of their "vision" that I'm failing to appreciate. Maybe it's all part of the plan to have a naff site and to more than halve pageviews since the inception of the new look. Maybe there's method in that madness. And if so, good luck to them. May they long continue to have traffic trends that are EXACTLY reflective of the combined competence, experience, wisdom, savvy and talent behind the site!

Or if it isn't part of the plan - my advice is, to RDFRS, to Richard Dawkins - simply: Please hire more people who actually know what they're doing. Hiring a PROPER web-developer would be a very fair start. You'll be pleasantly surprised to find that they're generally far cheaper and far more talented and qualified than an average Josh Timonen. Thus ends my message. Thank you for your attention.

PS. Oh, and there's a new minor fault I've spotted on the site just now. I'm just registering this to see how long it takes for the tech whizzes at RDF to spot it and fix it. I'll say what it is, and congratulate them, when they do.

[devogue]

I'm delighted it's a load of shit. Hell slap it up Dawkins.

[Clinton Huxley]

5 years ago I was excited by the prospect of a Dawk website. Now I'm more excited by the little bits of black fluff I find stuck to the bottom of my foot when I take my socks off.

[lordpasternack]

Oh - I have an extra piece of advice for them there people: Bloody well listen to us various unwashed masses of godless people. It may have escaped your attention previously - but there's a fair amount of intellect, knowledge and wisdom spread between us all, across our various diaspora, offered up for free. And chances are, and demonstrable from some recent history - together we probably know better than any hired "experts", or any of your best second guesses or gut feelings.

And I mean, at the end of the day, plain folks like them are only the kinds of folks that would likely be the very kinds of folks to USE that kinda website... Y'all know what I'm sayin'?

[devogue]

It may have escaped your attention previously - but there's a fair amount of intellect, knowledge and wisdom spread between us all, across our various diaspora, offered up for free.

The thing is, I think Dawkins fears inadvertently providing a platform for an atheist with a greater intellect and greater charisma than he has.

The Dawkins brand is far more important to Dawkins than just atheism. Atheism is merely the conduit through which he has found fame, fortune and genuine adulation. He loves it, and he doesn't want to share it with anyone.

[lordpasternack]

The thing is, I think Dawkins fears inadvertently providing a platform for an atheist with a greater intellect and greater charisma than he has.

So he'd make his website a damp squib just to reduce that possibility?

It's an interesting conjecture - but I'm not sure if it bears out.

The Dawkins brand is far more important to Dawkins than just atheism.

Interesting, and possibly rings a little more true... You also need to remember that his main focus is in theory on "reason and science", rather than atheism as such. They don't quite mean the same thing. In practice, methinks anti-religion sometimes trumps pro-reason and pro-science (*cough* Bill Maher *cough*)...

[devogue]

The thing is, I think Dawkins fears inadvertently providing a platform for an atheist with a greater intellect and greater charisma than he has.

So he'd make his website a damp squib just to reduce that possibility?

It's an interesting conjecture - but I'm not sure if it bears out.

Yep. His career has been going swimmingly, regardless of his online presence (and the internet does tend to attract undesirable types like me to exciting crusades).

The Dawkins brand is far more important to Dawkins than just atheism.

Interesting, and possibly rings a little more true... You also need to remember that his main focus is in theory on "reason and science", rather than atheism as such. They don't quite mean the same thing. In practice, methinks anti-religion sometimes trumps pro-reason (*cough* Bill Maher *cough*)...

[lordpasternack]

Comic timing…

[Trolldor]

Just wondering, lp, are you ever gonna let this go?

There's just a small bit of 'sweet vengence' in your behaviour.

[lordpasternack]

Just wondering, lp, are you ever gonna let this go?

There's just a small bit of 'sweet vengence' in your behaviour.

It's better if you call it "vindication" - but no, really - it's more complex than that. I had an attachment to RD.net, I watched various dramas being enacted, I protested with plenty of others, who were pretty much ignored. I took the time, growing more indifferent and mostly keeping my mouth shut through the year - and now that I feel I have reason to think the sentiment expressed by myself and others was right, and in some way verifiably so - people might be more willing to listen, and maybe make RD.net more attractive again. If I wanted simply to be a gloating bastard, rather than make valid points sardonically, then I'd do that.

In short - mixture of feelings…

[Trolldor]

It's better if you call it "vindication" - but no, really - it's more complex than that. I had an attachment to RD.net, I watched various dramas being enacted, I protested with plenty of others, who were pretty much ignored. I took the time, growing more indifferent and mostly keeping my mouth shut through the year - and now that I feel I have reason to think the sentiment expressed by myself and others was right, and in some way verifiably so - people might be more willing to listen, and maybe make RD.net more attractive again. If I wanted simply to be a gloating bastard, rather than make valid points sardonically, then I'd do that.

In short - mixture of feelings…

Ok, apologies for misunderstanding.

Just getting the feeling that you have something resting on the 'rise or fall' and...

Ah, nevermind.

[lordpasternack]

Well, I don't know, it's a mixture of things. It's like watching a local authority do something that you and all your colleagues think is quite ludicrous. A representative from said local authority treats you and others like riff-raff. He's a wanker. It takes months for the full extent of his undesirability to come out - and a full year on, the original scheme has proved to be the damp squib many foresaw it to be. There's a bit of vindication, a bit of exasperation, a bit of schadenfreude, a bit of other emotions…

I think I'm either going to be indifferent or a bit sardonic about things as they're panning out now. If I decide I can't be bothered to give a shit, then I'll drift off - if not, then it'll come out a touch cynically, I'm afraid.