In the midst of attempting to resolve the issue of the lost plugins, I’ve had a couple of brief exchanges with Lizzie (Dr Liddle, owner of this website) and Vincent (Torley, fellow admin, currently our most prolific contributor) regarding what options there are for the site and what could be done to bring those about. Lizzie suggested that one thing we could do is to solicit suggestions from our contributors and readers. By this post, I invite you to do so.
Below is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of interlinked issues that occurred to me
- The preservation of and access to The Skeptical Zone as it is now
- What to do to ensure TSZ continues in future
- Copyright
- Is Lizzie happy continuing to provide and pay for webhosting indefinitely
- Would Lizzie prefer to retain ownership of the URL
- Backing up
I have my own thoughts, but rather than pre-empt discussion, I’ll wait to see what others have to say. Whether this post receives comments is itself a comment, I suppose.
The fact that no one has replied points to another option. There seem to be only be six or so people who post here. Maybe it’s time to go the way of Uncommon Descent and archive TSZ as of historical significance but not keep it ative.
I’m not sure whether to be sad or happy, but the “serious” discussion of intelligent design seems to have evaporated.
What remains here is discussions of philosophy and theology. These do not seem to generate strong opinions or heat.
Please keep it going! I remember Dr. Liddle’s very first interaction with uncommondescent. The last few months, the site has been hard to access, not sure why. Love all the posts (when i get to read them!)
“serious discussion of Intelligent Design” – since Dr. Liddle’s very first post at UD, I’m not sure they have advanced their cause one single iota – not a single new finding, idea, “research” – nothing … apart from commenting on posts at evolutionnews, not sure what “seriousdiscussion” even means. On a related topic, I loved when evolutionnews posted an article at Xmas on “the star” as more proof of intelligent design.
I would suggest turning it into a site for plumbers and calling it The Septical Zone
Hi petrushka and SkepticCO,
Thanks very much for your input. I’d be happy to contribute some articles on Intelligent Design, if people are still interested in reading them. In fact, I have one in the pipeline. My own feeling is that this is a Website where people should be free to voice their skepticism of any belief, be it scientific, philosophical, religious, historical or otherwise. Regarding contributors: I’d certainly welcome anyone who wants to post here. The more the merrier! Cheers.
Well, we seem to have resolved the immediate issue of the site crashing. We have updated from an old version of PHP (which I believe was the culprit) and I’m restoring plugins after checking for issues.
I agree that the site should be preserved and that we could discuss the options. The current site is very bloated now so, whilst there’s no immediate rush, my feeling is we should, after ensuring the safety of the archive, have some sort of restart with continuity that loses the bloat. That may or may not sustain interest, but there’s no harm in trying.
Thanks for the kind words. 🙂
Bloat is not something I think of in reference to this site. Is that a reference to plugins?
The database that holds posts, comments, etc has grown to nearly 300,000 lines. Archiving the site for posterity would allow starting with a new clean database which would be faster and leaner.
Ah. It’s full. That’s about 30 megs. Doesn’t seem like much. Some image files are that big. But it depends on the server.
The whole TSZ site occupies around 6 gigabytes of server space, around 60% of the allotted space. I guess this is fine with the current level of activity. WordPress “Health Check” no longer shows any critical issues and the site is being regularly backed up again.
On the other hand is there anyone still out there? Are the war in Ukraine, the possibility of World War III, and/or the extinction of humanity due to runaway climate change distracting people from discussing important issues here?
One more thought if i may. WIth the demise of UncommonDescent – where do people go to read criticisms of the utterly vacuous “research” that is posted on EvolutionNews? To responses to those articles? (pandasthumb?) If you keep going only with the kind of content you have recently been posting, I would be very happy with that. However, maybe there is now a new reason to have more ID content (since there is no uncommondescent to respond to any more).
Just this morning in their post “Ignorance of Evolutionary Theory as a “Superpower” – there is this little masterpiece “Of course, if you believed that all biological systems were built with care by a designer, ….[]”
“with care by a designer”. grrr.
The Sandwalk still follows Evolutionnews.
Your remark prompted me to have a quick look. Eric Hedin, Günter Bechly, Guillermo Gonzalez. A motley crew if ever I saw one. It’s hard to judge whether ENV retains much in the way of readership or influence when there is no comment facility there.
Had a quick look there too. It previously seemed Sandwalk had suspended operations but Dr. Moran has posted quite regularly recently.
Well, the technical issues are no longer pressing, so…
Re Sandwalk, I was intrigued to see the neutralist/adaptionist debate is still lively.
Here in the comments there is a sharp exchange between Larry and Joe Felsenstein.
Go, Joe!
Just to report that running the “health check” now returns “OK” on 25 parameters. It lists 2 items that could be improved but they are not important. The site doesn’t use HTTPS (but as no financial or other sensitive information is not shared, there’s no point) and the database could use a newer version of SQL (but that should be for the hosting service to deal with).
Also the backup system is working again. I also get the impression the site is quicker to load.
All we need now is contributors, posts, comments, and readership.
I never expected to be one of the last active members.
I have debated posting my thoughts on this site and have decided to go ahead.
My understanding is the site was created as a home for people banned from uncommon descent, and who wanted to continue discussing evolution vs intelligent design.
There was no explicit intention to discuss religion or philosophy, but somehow these were deemed relevant. I spent little time participating in these threads, because I simply don’t find them interesting. I think of myself as metaphorically colorblind with regard to them. I simply lack the ability to see them as interesting. I see the list of questions being addressed, see no evidence that answers are possible, and move on to problems that I think might be answerable. So when these became dominant threads, I pretty much dropped out.
Another reason I limited my participation is that certain topics generated a lot of ad hominem attacks. This is not supposed to be possible here, but I think it was rampant and contributed to the falloff in participation. Symptoms of this include a morbid propensity to research posters’ past histories for gotchas. Emerson, I think is relevant here. Inability to reconsider past positions is a hobgoblin. In practice, it seems to be an attempt to discredit people rather than to address current arguments. I find it bitter poison.
Another manifestation of ad hominem is pigeonholing people by political affiliation. It just shouldn’t happen. There is, I think, a pandemic of humorlessness, here, and at the world at large. It radiates from an unwillingness to see debate opponents as human beings. I look at the defining motto of this site, and despair.
I could go on, but I’ll wait to see if anyone cares.
I’m happy to keep paying for hosting and to remain the owner of the domain name for as long as there is a demand! I might even find time to post here regularly again!
However, I’ve lost whatever skills and knowledge I once had regarding what is necessary to keep things running, so I am very much in Alan’s debt for sorting things out. Withouth Alan, the site would probably just degrade unless someone else with sysadmin skills was available. Potentially however I could find someone if there was still a demand.
I’m happy to have been able to help resolve the issues. I had a bit of a hiatus around October last year but I now wonder if long Covid or post-vital symptoms may have brought it on.
I’ve never minded doing the back-office stuff and I’m almost fully retired now (though Mrs F keeps a list pinned above my desk) so it’s no problem for me to find the odd moment for admin.
The interminable moderation discussions were a bit discouraging but have now subsided.
One thing I’m absolutely convinced of. If Lizzie were to find time to participate here again, even just a little, we would see a revival of activity.
I think there were many differing views on how moderation should work and I perhaps was inconsistent in intervening, not at all (my preferred stance), to too little, to too much.
Sorry about that.
I do not require heavy moderation. I merely point out that when the discussion becomes personal, I will limit my participation.
My personal goal (which bears some resemblance to my weight loss goal) is to state an opinion, or state my understanding of fact, just one time. There are several possible outcomes: It will be ignored; it will be corrected; it will be supported or accepted or extended.
I see no point in repeating myself, nor in repeating a counter argument or a correction.
I post for entertainment. I do not find hostility entertaining. I joined here because the subject was interesting, and there were people who could teach.
My posts, from my point of view, were not to inform people who already knew more than me, but to test my understanding by summarizing arguments.
FYI: I’ll be putting up a post on the panda’s thumb in the near future.
Here’s some background reading:
https://faculty.washington.edu/lynnhank/Gould.pdf
I can’t think of anything that could refute intelligent design.
That’s the problem.
Hi everyone. I’ve just put up a new post on intelligent design and the panda’s “thumb” in response to Professor Stephen Dilley, over at Evolution News. Enjoy!
vjtorley,
I unstickied the “Dublin” post so yours will be more visible.