Please use this thread for (and only for) alerting admins to moderation issues and for raising complaints arising from particular decisions. We remind participants that TSZ is a benign dictatorship, the property of Dr. Elizabeth Liddle. All decisions regarding policy and implementation are hers alone.
I have not noticed this.
I mostly use Opera (based on chromium) and Konqueror (with “webengine” based on chromium) for accessing TSZ.
Is Elizabeth waiting for us to repent and turn from our evil ways before She returns?
ETA: If anyone is touch with her tell her I said hello and that I miss her.
Don’t be naive! She is not returning… Would you, after Allan Miller’s sex evolution fiasco? 😆
I always hold out hope that this site can be better than what it is.
It’s not… just face the really the same way that Trump is going to win another election against all odds…😉
Hard to believe that you are not visiting this site enough so that you have not noticed it. Anyway, it lasted only a couple of minutes and looked like a web server configuration glitch.
As for your browsers, I recommend Vivaldi over Opera (Vivaldi has the same engine, but more interesting stuff in the interface, plus a handy shortcut to vanish the interface, leaving just the viewport) and I am happy that Konqueror is still around. Konqueror started the webkit engine, which was taken as the basis of Safari first and Chrome/Chromium a bit later, and now (a modification of) this engine has conquered the world wide web, while Konqueror itself remains virtually unknown.
Thanks for the info. Trying it out – seems cleaner and faster than Firefox or Chrome.
Yeah, that’ll teach me to overestimate the intellectual capacity of my readers …
In my own surfing, I use different browsers in parallel. Basically, some websites work better in one browser and others in another, the difference being mostly determined by the rendering engine.
Firefox has a radically different rendering engine than Chrome. Therefore I use both – actually, I use neither of the named browsers, but I use browsers that have the respective rendering engines.
Also, different browsers have different capabilities in relation to the desktop environment. The nifty thing about Firefox (applies to all Mozilla’ites AFAIK) is the ability to conform to the desktop theme: Go to Preferences > Appearance/Content > Colors, select Use system colors and Always override the colors specified by the page https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-fonts-and-colors-websites-use#w_change-font-color
You will get a whole different experience of the web (which may be impractical depending on your desktop theme). Amazingly MS IE can do the same, while modern Chrome’ites cannot. It is progress I guess.
In terms of determining one’s own colors for webpages, the best is of course text browsers in terminal such as w3m, but this removes all scripts and therefore breaks much intended functionality on pages. Excellent for viewing, but not good for interaction.
Erik,
As I said, that problem is not the browser issue.
And I agree. It is some occasional glitch in WordPress. My point is that to verify that it is not a browser issue is to try out a bunch of browsers. And even in general I like to have a bunch of browsers aboard.
I do have Vivaldi installed, and I used it for a while. Both Vivaldi and Opera work pretty well for me.
I don’t actually like Konqueror. But it shares cookes with Akregator, and I do use Akregator (rss feed reader).
I submitted a thread for possible punlication just now. just saying so it gets noticed. thanks.
Here is the post Alan said he was “reluctant” to move to guano:
There you have it, the great unbiased Alan, “reluctantly” moving a post, because well, he just can’t be sure if it broke the rules or not, but he wanted to err on the side of caution. What a hero you are Alan.
phoodoo,
I fully agree with the sentiments expressed but the comment broke TSZ rules. So I moved the comment to guano. So your point is?
What does it matter if you agree with the sentiments? The post clearly broke pretty much EVERY rule, so YOUR point is what? Your use of the word “reluctant” means it pains you to do your job, when you agree with the poster? That is how difficult it is for you to do the job of moderator Alan?
Just fucking quit already you dam hack. You think people here are begging you to stay?
Nope, my use of the word “reluctant” was to indicate that I agree wholeheartedly with the comment I was sending to guano. The rules favour trolls, unfortunately.
Alan Fox,
You agree that I am a liar, and I am also a troll? Then your “reluctant comment also breaks the rules.
But you don’t actually care, because you are one of the biggest abusers of the rules on this site. And you hate moderating so much. And you refuse to quit.
phoodoo, I agree that it is impossible to interpret some of your comments as other than* dishonest and I agree you spend a considerable amount of your time here trolling.
ETA *”other than”
Hey Alan, do the job you hate doing, guano this post from Entropy-
“So, I insist. You neither have the intellectual nor the moral standard to call anything a just-so-story. You’re defending a fable. You stand for a fable. Worst of it: you lack any standard for siding with your fable. Every time you laugh at something and call it a just-so-story, you’re arguing against yourself. Is it so bad to ask for a tiny bit of honesty and self-respect from the likes of you?”
phoodoo,
On what grounds, troll?
Alan Fox,
You still don’t know the rules on this site? What a surprise.
phoodoo,
Exactly! You can’t justify your claim. Quelle surprise! 😉
Aren’t we all.
You seem to be trying to convince me that you’re one too.
Oh, you forgot this one:
You don’t want phoodoo to get started about how much of a hypocrite you are and such, right?
(It got an appropriate response though.)
You full well know the rules here and continually flaunt them, knowingly and willfully.
Does that make you an uneducable idiot?
In my time as an admin here both those posts would have gone to Guano, yours and phoodoo’s. but I’m no longer an admin here, so I no longer have to try to be unbiased.
🙂
I actually considered that. But I noticed them at an inconvenient time, so I decided to be lazy.
That at least has the appearance of being fair. 🙂
Mung:
You mean ‘flout’, not ‘flaunt’.
So? I know they can be guanoed. I’m still very satisfied to tell things as they are. The message gets across regardless.
Nope. It just makes me honest. I’m not too inclined to sweeten the truth. When creationists behave dishonestly and stupidly I’d rather tell them. It would be disrespectful if I didn’t. Do you think that if I’m wrong in my judgement they could not easily demonstrate so? Heck. if they did demonstrate the contrary I’d offer apologies.
I don’t care. I was just making fun of phoodoo’s “sense of justice.” I truly wouldn’t mind if phoodoo’s comment would’t go to guano, yet mine did.
Careful , they will dock your pay.
Not a big line of folks volunteering to work with no pay while people call you a damn hack.
newton,
Well, if Alan is going to claim he doesn’t want to do this job, and no one is clamoring for him to do it, isn’t there really only one conclusion?
It’s the perfect scenario, you don’t want to do, and no one else wants you too either. It’s like if someone said, OK we will pay you not to do it, and Alan said, yea, but you are going to pay me, and I don’t want to, and no one else wants me, how to decide??
I am sure others would be willing to do the minimal amount of admin work this site requires. Which is probably just about zero.
I don’t mind at all helping to keep the site going. Though I do find phoodoo’s trolling a bit wearisome at times.
ID in a nutshell. Someone else will do the work
Why would anyone need to clamour? Mind you if there were general clamour for me not to do the odd bit of administration, I might be a bit discouraged.
Spell it out, man.
OMagain,
Well, I was wondering if phoodoo was offering but the wording makes it plain enough.
I wonder if phoodoo would troll as much is he didn’t have Mung constantly acting as his enabler.
Yes, he respects the obligation he took on to keep the site running with an absentee owner.
Unfortunately for your argument , it is not the actual scenario. But please go on.
More like , would you agree to take this thankless job to help me run this site.
More like , sure , be glad to too help out, while thinking the he would be able to bow out at some point in the future since the owner would still be active managing the site. Since there is no profit, it would always be pro bono.
But it is your thought experiment, Alan is demanding payment to moderate the site.
That makes little sense even as a thought experiment , I expect he wanted to help out, you have yet to establish that no one else wants Alan as a moderator.
But in that case , he would get paid so he wouldn’t be a moderator, and you would be complaining about Neil. Plus choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.
Really, is that just a hunch because your uncle was a super-genius at MIT?
Yes
Adapa,
It’s a shame that phoodoo:s level of interaction encourages a general lowering of standard of discussion.
It’s a shame that Alan’s impulsive, immature and vindictive actions have caused so much trouble at TSZ.
I have Adapa on ignore but I can see when someone else quotes him or her. I took an extended absence from TSZ. Did anything about phoodoo change? I seriously doubt it. Hardly seems likely then that I am “a phoodoo enabler.”
Frankly i think it is the phoodoo haters who are the enablers, much like it is those who hate Trump who enable him.
I see that little has changed here at TSZ. Sad, really. The site needs a serious re-think, unless everyone is just happy with the way things are.
Which certainly appears to be the case.
The main purpose of this site was to oppose “Uncommon Descent”. TSZ arose after Lizzie got banned there. Uncommon Descent is a cesspool for low level IDists, who aren’t worth taking seriously. Dembski started it, but rarely posts there any more. Denyse O’Leary is the only thing that links it with the IDM, and she’s hardly a credible figure in the conversation; more like a half-crazy provocateur who gets a paycheck as the IDM’s ideological journalist/News.
After a few years, the focus at TSZ switched to “Peaceful Science”, which is more accurately “Peaceful Scientism”. Around 10 or so people from this site now post there, something I encouraged & still would encourage, including one of the remaining TSZ moderators, Neil Rickert, who sometimes posts there more than here. And Neil obviously has better conversations there than here, at least with a chance of uplift instead of downlift, except for his anti-religious / non-religious attitude gets in the way. At least PS has a positive mission, even though it is mired in Swamidass’ aspirational personality-cult, where he pretends he sits on an ’empty chair’, after forcibly removing himself / being removed from BioLogos (ugly accusations flying both ways), whose mission he “somewhat echoes” in his own non-mainline evangelical Protestant way.
keiths was banned at PS, so was that crazy person here who tries to defend “religion” yet who holds no known “religion” that anyone else knows. And so was I banned under pseudonym for my opposition to Swamidass’ MNism (“falsely so-called”) & his seduction of atheism on-site, particularly via FFRF-fan Patrick Trischitta, who fawns over his scientism & MNism. The fact that IDist/YECist Paul Nelson showed up in the last thread I participated in on MNism & Swamidass knew that a combination of Paul & I would easily have sunk his pretense to “balance” on the topic, only adds to the absurdity.
Mung was chased out of PS by Swamidass but not banned, with a strange personality fetish (“tell us about yourself” – https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/the-mystery-of-mung/2101 – just as Swamidass did with hyper-IDist “Eddie”) & called a “sealion” by Swamidass, who has shown he simply can’t “tolerate” certain approaches to conversation that he doesn’t like or feel comfortable with b/c they expose his ignorance quickly. This was revealed at TSZ as Swamidass chased me here on a couple of occasions for telling the truth about his ambitious MNist evangelizing plans, wherein he exposed his personality by outing and doxxing me, both here and on his site, then apologizing only to Moderators as if he didn’t know that such behaviour online is wrong. Yet in his defense of scientism at PS, Swamidass nevertheless appeals to people like the credible biologist Joe Felsenstein, who nevertheless have no interest in furthering Swamidass’ bid to protect YECism from scientific scrutiny, saying simply that ‘science cannot rule against de novo creation’.
This site is pretty much worthless except as a counter-point to other sites. It has no goal of its own worth noting. There is nothing noble about TSZ. Ideological “skepticism” cannot be what anyone “normal” strives for, only which people exercise on certain appropriate topics, like YECism & IDism. The IDists here aren’t published & will never try to get published, largely aren’t qualified to speak about the topics they raise here, aren’t relevant beyond blogs, and have proven themselves to be largely a waste of time to dialogue with, including Bill Cole & “phoodoo” & EricMH. They only engage here b/c they know that the last thing Lizzie’s tribe of “skeptics” will do is back down to anything a YECist says. The fact that an incoherent thread by Robert Byers has over a 100 posts & counting testifies to this. YECists & anti-YECists need each other in order to exist, just as IDists & anti-IDists need each other. Anyone half intelligent or sane avoids both of these ridiculous “movements” of people as damaging to their intellectual & spiritual health.
This site is one of the worst examples of the “USAmerican culture war” that has no point or purpose in being continued. Is it finally time to drop the series & give people back their extra free time?
Vincent Torley hasn’t posted here in months; a post-IDist, who hopefully has shrunk his time online with “skeptics” & anti-theists who don’t wish anything better for him than apostasy & self-doubt.
BioLogos continues its valid mission to de-convert YECists to accept theistic evolution or “evolutionary creation”, iow, to “get educated” with contemporary science in a way that doesn’t contradict their religious faith; a laudable goal in itself, yet conducted by reactionary post-YECist “liberal Christians” like the Haarsmas, who delve in heresy to over-compensate for their YECist pasts. Since none of the “skeptics” here participate or have any interested in doing so at BioLogos, that site isn’t on the radar of most people here.
Mung got unceremoniously chased away from TSZ as the only Moderator who was a theist, thus cementing the lack of credibility of TSZ’s all-atheist/agnostic/apatheist moderation team.
I’ve only continued here to keep a check on Swamidass because I think it is important for people to know what he’s actually up to outside of the echo chamber he’s developed at PS with mainly right-wing evangelicals, particularly supported by a few strange fanatics, like George Brooks, Jon Garvey & Patrick. Thankfully, people like Jay Johnson at BioLogos have had their eye carefully watching Swamidass too, and won’t let him get away with his revisionist history.
If TSZ had any sense, it would focus all efforts on Mind Matters & the new Bradley Centre. In a sense, it is doing this through Tom English’s exposure of EricMH’s ideological IDism. No other person of relevance or importance from the IDM has posted here except Paul Nelson, who understandably doesn’t wish to stick around for discussion in a place where the resident “philosopher” is actually a tradition-destroying philosophist bent on promoting scientism, naturalism, Marxism & a host of other odious ideologies that only post-modern pampering could produce.
Not much going for this site, really. Please do share otherwise, if there are positives to this place that I’ve somehow missed. It’s a dehumanizing affair from start to finish, with little hope of redemption without a significant change of hearts.
There was a great deal of ceremony involved! It just took place behind the scenes and without my involvement or Elizabeth’s approval (unless one considers absence as approval).
Where did I get the idea that DNA_Jock is a theist?
ETA: I absented myself from this site voluntarily, in protest, just as I absented myself from ‘Peaceful Science” voluntarily and in protest.
My return to TSZ stands in stark contrast to my continued absence from “Peaceful Science.”
Mung,
Ah, right, the hidden ceremony. Couldn’t have been much “skeptical” fun.
Perhaps phoodoo day-dreamed it once under fever & tried to pawn it off as real?
phoodoo’s phantasies?
Not quite on the scale of the fantasy that DNA_Jock concocted.as his justification, that I might do irreparable damage to the site. Perhaps even bar he and Alan and Neil and take over in a coup! Hard to even credit such phantastical thinking as even remotely rational.
But even so I find myself wondering if DNA_Jock and I might find a way forward and move on, even find things we can discuss without rancor as envisioned by Elizabeth.
But no such thoughts about Swamidass. I wonder why.
Let me materialize from a cloud of mist at the mention of my name. Where did I utter that phrase? Or have I failed to parse the grammar of that sentence correctly?
Joe, it’s a matter of phylogenetic reconstruction. 🙂