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.
How about instead making an apology to the person whose trust you violated & identity you attacked, instead of to the moderators, who are simply responsible (though only Mung has shown acknowledgement of the blatant rule violation) for cleaning up the mess? Does Joshua really care? It really doesn’t seem so.
Truth check: outing me (here), threatening to dox me (here) & then actually doxxing me (at PS, which was later removed) simply cannot be considered an action that S. Joshua Swamidass did “out of ignorance.” It was intentional & malicious, with a clear aim to hurt. And Joshua, just as Mung indicated by quoting him, knew already what doxxing meant before committing it himself. That ‘outing’ is wrong virtually everyone knows. So no, sorry, “out of ignorance” and “my confusion” is not a mea culpa by Joshua that is believable here.
The reason Joshua aimed to hurt me is imo because I have revealed both the foolishness of him defending ‘methodological naturalism’ as he does, as well as his obvious strategy of promoting what he calls ‘genealogical Adam’ (usually without mentioning Eve, with no clear explanation given of why sometimes he avoids her and sometimes he includes her as an afterthought) & “the Science of Adam” first & foremost to fellow evangelicals & at evangelical churches and not to or among actual scientists, while yet claiming his approach is ‘scientific.’ These things seem to really upset him to read about his views, though they are accurate criticisms. I also really don’t like the way he is calling people out (like Faz Rana) with what appears to be braggadocio, arrogance and pride that I couldn’t have imagined a ‘new figure’ in the science, philosophy & theology/worldview discourse would possess & use as a kind of weapon in what he calls “the Creation Wars”. While my writing on blogs such as this one is often sharp & direct, as a person that no one here knows or has met, I must admit I prefer a much humbler approach than what Swamidass has taken, towards me and others as well.
It’s not at all ‘unpleasant,’ however, for me to speak about what goes on at PS involving people’s views since as a sociologist that’s what I’m trained to do. I can likewise openly & honestly speak of what appears to be extreme ambition (following a sad event) in Joshua’s ’empty chair’ & ‘fifth voice’ strategies while addressing posts at PS, none of which I made. If Joshua wanted constructive criticism rather than just fandom (e.g. George the ‘frantic’ Unitarian Universalist & Patrick the self-described ‘militant atheist’), then he should instead welcome & with dignity face my challenges to his claims, not hide from them, wield institutional power to silence them or simply attack the messenger as we have witnessed here.
What we can see in this recent exchange here at TSZ even more clearly is that Joshua has proven he has the same psychological phobia as Dennis Venema, Ted Davis and others. This desire to attack the other person at the moment when clearly starting to lose an argument is on them, not on me. And it is callous of them to keep pressing on me as a person, simply because they don’t like my calm & clear yet sometimes edgy arguments against their positions. Argue the positions, not the person; unless you want to have to tell your family that you’re the kind of person who outs & doxes people on the internet, which is now sadly part of Joshua Swamidass’ unrepentant personal history going forward.
Incomplete sentence. What to do with it? No, it’s not charming; simply bad communication habits that insult your dialogue partners. Please stop putting the burden on your interlocutor to fill in your gaps & take responsibility for your own communicative failures.
No, what bothered me was being lied about. At least the moderation here, unlike the heavy handed use of thread splitting & putting titles on threads that the author of the post wouldn’t accept but is forced on them anyway, knows that I did not actually do what was being asserted about me over at PS. I don’t know many people who aren’t ‘bothered’ when people lie about them.
Again, for the record, I have never outed anyone on the internet. Jon Garvey lied to Joshua about me (the email I have kept from PS reveals this), and is perhaps still lying to him for all I know. Though like Joshua, Garvey in his comfortable British numbness doesn’t seem to care one bit & has showed no remorse. If Joshua would like to clear his name & confirm his believe that I did not actually ‘out’ anyone at TSZ on the thread in question, then at least he would regain some dignity in this soiled affair. Otherwise, what kind of ‘Christian’ representation is Joshua actually confessing to with his grandiose claims of ‘bringing peace’?
Obviously I’m not the only one who disagrees with Joshua’s style & approach to this conversation, one in which he is basically championing himself as a ‘saviour’ of peace. From today:
Yet Joshua banned me in particular because he can’t take the heat of my criticisms & immediately made it personal when his arguments were failing. Okey dokey, Swamidass! = P
I have submitted a new OP to be published
Thanks, J-mac
Yippee!
Gregory,
Are you a psychologist?
New post in queue…
Any hope wrt adding the page links at the top of the page? (Seems like that wouldn’t be terribly difficult…..)
It might be a matter of substituting one plug in for another…WordPress has limitations though…
it would appear to be the case that there are no atheist moderators here at TSZ.
Mung,
Joshua himself has acknowledged that and assures us it will not happen again.
Maybe you need one to perform a simple task,
Well, you say “new” but it’s really just recycled creationist tropes.
Gregory wrote elsewhere:at TSZ
See above for my view. Swamidass has acknowledged his comment linking your handle here to a pseudonymous account at Peaceful Science. broke the rule on outing as described by Lizzie. I accept his statement that he was unaware of our specific rule and his assurance it won’t happen again. If other admins disagree that no further action is required then I guess we need to take the majority view.
I’m happy to edit out the offending material if you would like me to.
I am not sure I understand Gregory’s complaint regarding JS’s behavior at TSZ.
Is it simply that JS used Gregory’s full name, thereby ‘outing’ him?
DNA_Jock,
Not as I understand things. Gregory was also posting under a pseudonym that Swamidass identified here. I’ve edited it out now.
If you ever have remembered at least one of the old ones, would I have to try to help you to recall them again and again?
Isn’t it why you have chosen your nickname OMagain?
Oh! My! again?! 😂🤣
Thanks for acknowledging that S. Joshua Swamidass did indeed break TSZ rules set by Lizzie in outing me here.
Did Dr. Swamidass himself acknowledge that he broke the rules, knowingly or not, or did he fall short of doing so?
Swamidass wrote:
The ‘If’ statement seems to fall short of acknowledgment, other than to admit his confusion about whether or not outing & doxxing people is wrong (as if he needed TSZ’s rules to know that). He had already gone to his PS site, written my name beside a pseudonym & published it publicly. Later, perhaps realising his wrath had got the best of him & that he was making matters worse after outing me here, by doxxing me on his site, then removed my full name from PS. That’s the sequence of events as far as I can tell.
Swamidass has apologised to the TSZ Moderators. However, that’s the limit of his apology so far. He has my email address.
Thanks for cleaning up with editing a few days after the fact.
I see no reason to continue to keep keiths in the moderation queue. I’ve removed that restriction. At least I think I have.
Testing.
ETA: It worked. Thanks, Mung. It’s good to see you standing up against moderation abuses.
Several months after the effusive welcome by Swamidass to you, it seems his ‘charade of kindness’ (behind which he outs & doxxes people, without apology) wore off at PS pretty quickly:
This kinda thing Joshua does might be called ‘Swamidassian sincerity.’
Gregory,
Yes, Swamidass certainly hasn’t done himself any favors with his rash and impulsive behavior toward critics.
So much for “open discussion” and “bridge building”.
Hey, we have a new moderator, whattya know!
Welcome, welcome!
New post ready in queue
Can someone please remind Jock of the rules here, and give him a warning next time he will be banned?
I think if he can not follow simple rules, it makes sense to put him in moderation queue for now, until he can show that he will improve.
Mung?
Thanks, though it doesn’t really bother me. It’s not like DNA_Jock knows what a good or mediocre sociologist is either. = P
DNA_Jock, to Gregory:
Lizzie, on the rules page:
phoodoo:
Perhaps Alan will do the honors, since he paints himself as ever so concerned with the rules and the “prime directive”:
Good point.
And so Alan pointlessly guanoes Jock’s comment — a comment that even Gregory said he wasn’t bothered by:
Perhaps we can get Alan, Jock and Neil to simultaneously ban each other. Sort of a circular firing squad.
phoodoo, Alan, and keiths.v.1 are right, and keiths.v.2 [??] is wrong.
While the bulk of my comment addressed Gregory’s posts, specifically his incompetence and motive-mongering, my claim that he appeared to be a bad sociologist was a rule violation, since it was NOT based on his writings here.
As Gregory rightly notes, I am not qualified to make that judgement; I relied on the judgement of his peers.
My apologies.
Were you banned or just temporarily required to use an intermediary to post?
No vilification of Alan’s moderation tyranny?
Given that I am standing in the middle I don’t like that idea at all.
However, the needs of the many….
Mung,
Well, kneeling technically. 😉
DNA_Jock,
What do you expect other than character assassination from someone who admits they smell like soiled gonch?
I’m out of the Academy & feel no threat whatsoever from a mere biologist making claims beyond what he/she knows or even cares about regarding sociology or philosophy. My record speaks well enough on its own, including being the most read writer on a platform with nearly 100 international colleagues from almost 30 countries, even beyond the founder of the site. Do it really matter if an online biologist sock puppet continually aims to impugn my character? It’s an atheist expressing anti-theist envy of a more meaningful life, apparently.
This particular attack seems to have arisen simply because I suggested prayer. Wow, calm the rage, it really might help!
You have a meaningful life? Why are you wasting your time here at TSZ then?
Your life isn’t meaningful?
Ah, yes — especially that deeply felt need to brag about yourself.
Corneel,
LOL! Beat me to the edit. Ultimate & proximate meaning.
It’s an atheist expressing anti-theist envy of a more meaningful and less self-centered life, apparently. Man wrapped up in self alone is small package.
Neil Rickert,
In response to someone violating site rules to attack me? Sorry for some felt need for small defense. I’m human, after all. = P
I’m good. I have minecraft installed.
Glad you spotted the joke. But that is a warped view of atheists you have there. I doubt that Jock recognises himself in that (I don’t).
Corneel,
Yes, atheists themselves vary quite widely. Yet what ‘atheism’ means is not misunderstood in my above response. As an Abrahamic monotheist who knows enough atheists personally to know/have heard what their atheism entails, re: ultimate meaning & self-centredness, I respectfully submit that the ‘warped’ part might actually come from them. There’s too much beauty, truth & goodness around us to hide our light under such darkness as some CHOOSE to do. It’s the power to choose that is born within us and which enables more than atheism could ever promise in temptation away from our Creator.
ROTFL! You may be right about that, yet without seeing the larger picture that extends beyond your personal worldview.
Don’t forget what WUSTL ‘natural scientist’ S. Joshua Swamidass wrote recently about this site, apparently with sincerity:
Who here would wish to disagree? Then again, Joshua recently called Michael Behe his ‘hero’ and then not long afterwards removed that designation, within a few hours that quickly not his hero anymore. So Swamidass could, just maybe, be exaggerating about TSZ for his own political purposes (which of course he will deny having). Who really knows best?
LoL.
Btw, Alan, that linked just provided above to Swamidass’ words should be redacted also, based on violating the same principle for which you redacted the other one: outing with the intent to hurt. Thanks.
Metaphorically speaking.
Gregory,
Sorry, which link, Gregory?
My guess is that Gregory is alluding to the sentence that begins “Don’t forget what”, which is a candidate for redaction, IMO.
However, given that he could still edit it himself, he appears to be gunning for matyrdom…edit: My apologies: Gregory is referencing the use of his full name.
Oh the irony!
Alan Fox,
And just to mention, I haven’t forgotten about trying to improve the pagination. I have had some helpful suggestions and will try and find time over the next week.