Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
keiths refused to defend the video he posted.
I say we allow one OP per lifetime. That’s fair to everyone.
Down deep he knows it stinks…My kids were suspicious of Dial’s experiment from the beginning…
Yup…but I would give Harshman one more chance to explain how ostriches independently evolved the urine “bladder”… 😉
Mung,
Mung, Are you into alternate reality movies?
Such as? Can you give me an example?
I come here to TSZ because it’s like shifting into an alternate reality.
It is …I call it the dream it out loud reality…lol
Primer or Coherence?
Never heard of either of them, lol.
Restricting the number of OPs from a given member is a bad idea for a very simple reason. It almost certainly guarantees a reduction in diversity of topics.
I recommend Coherence for starters…provided you can survive the first 20 minute of nonsense… pay close attention to the very beginning though…
You will either love it or hate it…
Remember, after you learn quantum mechanics you’re never really the same again… 😉
It will definitely limit the number of experimental footages I can post here…
walto,
There, I did it! Is that better. 🙂
EDIT: Yikes. It didn’t provide automatic quotes. I didn’t know I had to do extra work.
Yes. Thanks!
I would–although it’s true that the quality of J-Mac’s (and Byers’) posts are particularly bad. But it certainly is conceivable that some atheist might wants to put up nonsense here every day or two. There’s only one front page, diversity is actually served by letting everybody have a shot at it. And you can always get a few more of your religious buddies to post here if you like.
Having one person post every day is like giving one person at a dinner a megaphone. It’s annoying even if you agree with the person.
Lizzie’s interests evidently lie elsewhere. She won’t pull the plug on TSZ, but she won’t do anything to keep it from dying. WordPress is not appropriate for the sort of forum that she wanted to host. There’s little point in saying how we want the forum to work when there’s little chance that Lizzie will switch platforms.
I’m willing to pay to host a new site, and to allow a group of philosopher-kings to decide how it should operate (because I know that I do not know how it should operate). It would be better to spread the costs among the philosopher-kings, so that it’s impossible for the issue of who’s paying the bills ever to arise. But I would not mind paying the bills.
So… I’ve said my bit again, knowing that few are interested in moving to a new site. I’ll keep using TSZ for what it’s worth, as long as I see the worth. I appreciate greatly the work that Neil and Alan do for us. They’re much better at it than most of us, myself included, would be.
It would be quite simple to set up a front page, with more regulation than we have now, and a back page, with less regulation than we have now. How simple the change would be is irrelevant, however, because we’re unlikely to have any change at all.
Does WP permit ignoring particular OPs/threads on the regular member side, the same way as members can ignore each other? This should solve all the problems. Let’s gather round and ignore each other evermore!
Your level of participation suggests that you’re much in need of an alternative to whatever else it is that you call reality.
Let’s swap the two pages. It would be hilarious to see the prolific complain that their posts have greater visibility than those on the regulated page.
I’ve got an even better idea. Resist the urge to post rule breaking comments and save yourself some time for useful stuff.
Just to be clear, the current rules on posting comments have not changed and will not change unless Lizzie decides to make changes.
Well, I’ve tinkered with the front page and it now shows the last twenty OPs. I’d ask authors of future OPs to insert a “read more” tag in or after the first paragraph. I’ll edit in a tag if authors overlook it.
I’m still not convinced about the OP restriction and will not be enforcing it. No reason it can’t operate voluntarily.
ETA and please, authors, make your Titles snappier!
Sounds like something along the lines of a group blog. Not sure about the practicalities using basic WordPress software but, in principal, it could work.
Regarding major changes to this site, the primary issue is to establish whether Lizzie wishes to invest more time here or is thinking of moving on. In the latter case, preserving the TSZ archive, I think, is of prime importance.
So, I’ll just repeat, I’m happy to make whatever small changes that are within my capabilities and available within WordPress software, wherever it seems appropriate and in order to improve reader/member experience . I’m not prepared to make any significant changes to rules without input from Lizzie and I will try and make contact with her again.
As fellow admin, Neil is, of course, free to take his own view and I’m sure we can compromise on any difference in policy until we have clarification from Lizzie.
Alan,
Then hopefully Neil will enforce it, if needed, since he sees the value of it and you’re on your way out anyway.
ETA: Re your last comment: It’s odd that you’re suddenly reluctant to make changes without Lizzie’s approval, considering that you’ve barged ahead in the past, including with respect to J-Mac.
But I’d certainly be happy if she would evaluate the two proposals for dealing with the front-page flooding issue.
There may be mileage in changing the front page to a mission statement and rule summary with links to OPs. In this way members would see a list of OPs, their authors and number of comments and would need to click through to a particular thread. What do others think?
Also, what happened here?
You wrote:
Yet Neil says:
That doesn’t sound like agreement.
Alan,
No, it’s a problem we do have, which is why you reacted by changing J-Mac to contributor status and threatening him with censorship based on the content of his OPs.
It isn’t overkill at all with respect to J-Mac. Quite the opposite — it’s gentler on J-Mac. Your proposal punishes J-Mac for doing something that was perfectly within the rules. Our proposal punishes neither him nor anyone else unless they violate the rule.
Not at all. It requires no software changes and — if people (including J-Mac) actually follow the rule — less moderator involvement than the course you’ve embarked on now, which requires you to approve every one of J-Mac’s OPs.
The rate limit proposal also has the advantages, as mentioned earlier, of a) being fair, b) not allowing censorship, and c) not requiring the moderators to judge OPs based on content.
J-Mac,
You could render the whole issue moot by agreeing to be bound by walto’s suggested limit of two OPs per month.
If the rest of us honor that limit, will you do so as well?
ETA: And Alan, if J-Mac agrees to the limit, will you restore his previous status and rescind your censorship threat?
I don’t think it is going to work because Harshman and the rest of the naturalistic Trinity don’t want to see their work criticized not to mention experimentally contradicted…One would have to be totally blind not to see what this is all about…
BTW: Lizzies invitation to people from UD and others in her introductory post back in 2011 looks like a joke when you look at the discussion on this thread…If she had mentioned that all are welcome …BUT as long as they post what Harshman’s team of bullies wants to hear, why would anybody even bother to come? No wonder Dembski, Ewert and Marks ignored Evo-Info challange…They knew what it would come into in the end…It’s pitiful…
Alan Fox,
The brute-force approach is to set up two blogs linking to each other, and to make them look like a single blog. However, …
How to Easily Add Two Blogs to a Single WordPress Site
I emphasize that I am not pushing this on you. But I would love to see you and Neil extricate yourselves from perennial conflict with certain users, and regulate threads that authors want regulated. You might sell it to Lizzie, sweetly and simply, by saying that you want to add a virtual blog with light moderation for people who object to your attempts to provide the kind of environment that she had in mind.
J-Mac,
Of course they do, that’s what they live for. A scientist goes to work hoping they’ll prove themselves wrong, as then we have a better more accurate understanding of the world.
That you don’t understand this seems to indicate you don’t understand science or scientists.
What a great idea Tom!
But why not go even further and create 4 blogs or even more?
The first one would be called: What you want to hear blog
The second one would be called: What you want to believe blog
The third one would be called: Everything else materialists want to hear or believe in blog
The forth one would be called: the truth blog…
Your math and the likes of Krauss’ could fit into the first 3 and if you want to invite Dembski’s team, you can ask them to publish and comment on the forth but you wouldn’t have to visit it there…You could criticize them on the first three though…
What do you think? Would you Harshman and Felseinstein be satisfied with this arrangement?
J-Mac is the kind of “Christian” who thinks that Harshman is a dogmatic true believer who doesn’t want his cherished beliefs to be questioned because he doesn’t understand why his uninformed (and really quite silly) “objections” failed to convince us. It never occurs to Christians of that kind that evolutionary theory is the sort of thing that one really needs to study carefully before having an informed opinion about it. They just need to reject it completely because they just know that it’s not consistent with Christianity. (But when asked how they know that, they never have a plausible answer. And they continue to just know it, no matter how many times their assumptions are shown to be empty or even contradictory.)
This completely misunderstand’s John’s objections. He wants to see higher quality posts. He’s okay with being contradicted with a high quality post (even a creationist post). His complaint is about quality (such as effectiveness of argumentation, evidence, etc). It is not about content.
Where I disagree with John, is that I think he should just ignore posts that he considers of too low a quality.
So why would you want to restrict the number of OPs then if even 1 or 2 of OPs per month are not going to meet Harshman’s standards?
Can you also tell me since when Lizzie decided that Harshman is going to supersede your and Alan’s moderators authority?
Maybe I should email her and ask that, as well as the details regarding the invitation she extended to EVERYONE FROM UD AND BEYOND?
“… welcome to The Skeptical Zone, have a free virtual beer in celebration of its first post, and post any comments, objections, suggestions, and criticisms you may have.
All are welcome The only rule is: Park your priors by the door 🙂
Cheers
Lizzie
*and I’ll take this opportunity to thank the UD community for the welcome they extended to me, and to extend my invitation to them, here, in return.“
J-Mac accuses Harshman et al. of being dogmatists, while he went off on Sal for a while for not being dogmatic enough (as if!).
Not a speck of self-awareness in this pathetic dolt, and very little comprehension of anything. I’ve never quite figured out if Lizzie had never realized that people like J-Mac exist before making up a bunch of rules to basically allow them to crap all over this blog. It would be one thing if he could discuss anything beyond his own extremely limited understanding (he might get better), but he wallows happily in his own ignorance and magnanimously shares it with everyone he can.
Glen Davidson
To the operator of “J-Mac“:
I’ve seen through the spoof from the very beginning. You’ve sometimes slipped out of character — which is understandable, considering how uninteresting the character is.
The funny thing about some of these creationists like J-mac and Robert Beyers is they’re so incoherent I some times suspect it’s an “evolutionist” trying to make creationism look as bad as they can.
Snappier Pt 1
Snappier Pt 2
Snappier Pt 3
Like that?
LoL. I love how the problem has now shifted to one of being a front page flooding issue.
Lizzie’s response to the front-page flooding issue for undesired topics was to flood the front page with featured articles. I really thought that was funny. And censorship.
People who don’t like the site can leave. Nothing is preventing them. Shut up and go already. Go start your own blog.
I don’t see any problem here.
Perhaps we need to disable to Ignore feature for a while so that people who are using it appreciate it more if it ever comes back rather than bitching that it doesn’t do enough.
Let’s remember the original complaint here. John has J-Mac on Ignore and it really really irks him when he sees an OP by J-Mac because he can’t Ignore the OP. But of course, he really can Ignore the OP, if he so chooses.
So what problem?
keiths can’t have this. For keiths, it can’t be about quality, because that would be about content. And it can’t be about content, because that would be censorship.
Better to make up an alternative reason.
That said, John’s complaint is that he has to see the OP at all when it’s written by someone he wants to ignore. He’s already got his mind made up that it’s going to be something he doesn’t want to read (aka “poor quality”).
John should go start his own blog.
Or, they’re trying to make people like Dembski and Sal look good by comparison, as “sober IDists” who are in a way opposed to nonsensical bozo creationists who blurt out the first things that get into their heads.
But no, Sal, don’t blame J-Mac and Byers for making creationism look bad, you do quite well at it yourself.
Glen Davidson
My complaint is that you can’t ignore them, because they drive other posts off the front page. Well, OK, I do have another complaint. Some posts just shouldn’t be allowed to live because they’re either completely incoherent (I think we know who I’m talking about) or are clearly not intended seriously (the spur to the current discussion).
Make the main title short and to the point.
You can use a longer subtitle as the first line of text in the topic.
When editing, there’s a box containing “paragraph”. You can switch that to “header 1” or “header 2” for that subtitle line.
I would like to point out that I have only suggested banning two posts: one of Byers, for incoherence, and one of J-Mac’s, for lack of serious purpose. I have never complained about the bulk of J-Mac’s posts, because silly as they are, they seemed to be seriously intended.
OK. I give up. Just, as usual, a waste of time and failure to communicate, here due largely to repetitive self-contradictory remarks by the moderators.
If you’re not planning to do anything except the silly thing you’d already done, why bring it up in the first place? Just go your merry way.
That may be true, but many of them don’t like when OTHERS prove them wrong. Of course, that’s true of everybody–not just scientists.
Yes, for a minute I’d forgotten how ridiculous this place is.
I definitely thought that of Byers.