Thanks for Being Awesome

[Sophus]

Just wanted to thank you and let you all know what a good bunch you are. There really are some great minds and friendly faces around here.
There's a lot of hostility at Richard Dawkins' "Clear Thinking Oasis" forum and they've been having quite the trouble recently. If you you didn't know about this I was going to repost Richard's post in disgust called "Outrage" about his so called fans' reaction to an announcement of his but it, along with the massive amounts of offending comments, have been deleted from the Richard Dawkins forum. But there's still this amusing litle article: http://christwire.org/2010/02/christian-prayer-forces-atheist-richard-dawkins-to-close-richarddawkins-net-forums/

[karadan]

Richard posted a comment in disgust? What was it about?

You're awesome too, by the way

[Cecilie]

...

[Whitney]

I'm a bit confused on what was going on over at RDF...from what I heard people were using it to say nasty things about Dawkins; they were told not to say nasty things, then people bitched about not being able to say nasty things about the owner of the site and then a bunch of deleting of posts and moderators was done by the main admin (apparently under Dawkin's direction) and then the forum itself was deleted after people bitched more about not being able to use the site in any way they want.

I'm sure it was more complicated than that but that's what I pieced together as the jist.

Considering that they had a huge split over who knows what that had some admins leaving in the not so remote past; I'm not sure that it was ever much of a "clear thinking oasis" typically people who are thinking clearly are able to sort out their differences without resorting to admins running off with part of the membership and pointless name calling.

[curiosityandthecat]

A private forum is not a democracy. If they don't like it, tough shit.

I swear, people will whine about anything.

Oh, and Sophus,

[elliebean]

Awww...you're awesome too, Sophus! Thank you!

[Sophus]

Richard posted a comment in disgust? What was it about?

You're awesome too, by the way

Ah I found some of it...

Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an “utter twat” a “suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum inside a dead skunk that’s been shoved up a week-old dead rhino’s twat.” Or suppose that somebody on the same website expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails” down your throat. Also to “trip you up and kick you in the guts.” And imagine seeing your face described, again by an anonymous poster, as “a slack jawed turd in the mouth mug if ever I saw one.”

What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?

None of the above. What you have to do is write a letter like this:...

[karadan]

Wow, he didn't take kindly to various aspects of it then. Tbh, I hadn't read anything from the fallout which personally attacked Dawkins. All I saw was the letter from Josh Timonen, which did seem rather offhanded and didn't really acknowledge any of the mods for their hard work and devotion over the last few years. I also read the posts from some of the mods (who seemed balanced in their response) as to why they were unhappy with Timonen's heavy-handed tactics. Obviously there were some bad apples but it seems everyone was painted with the same brush and any questioning of this motive were met with the banhammer and deletion of archives. That did seem rather harsh. If you transpose that to this forum, it would be akin to Whitney deciding she no longer liked the format of HAF and then banning anyone who asks why. I know i'd be pissed off because I like this place and have invested some effort creating a personality here. It is, after all, the only forum I regularly post on.

I guess once members start to get a number of posts under their belt, they feel certain ownership of that material, even though it is on a forum they do not own. If taken away, it can feel like theft. I'm really only basing that on the experience i had with Star Wars Galaxies. It was a community i took very seriously because of the enormous enjoyment myself and a bunch of friends received from that game. I was gutted when the people in charge decided to kill the community.  

[joeactor]

What's all this, then?  Warm and cuddly atheists?!?!?



All right, all right, all right!
Now cut that out!

Back to eating babies, the whole lot of you!

(ok, so it's pretty nice here... but you didn't hear it from me)
JoeActor

[Sophus]

Wow, he didn't take kindly to various aspects of it then.

I don't know... I thought they were just changing the layout or something. I believe that what they're still bent on doing.

All right, all right, all right!
Now cut that out!

Back to eating babies, the whole lot of you!

(ok, so it's pretty nice here... but you didn't hear it from me)
JoeActor

Oh... he said Warm and cuddly. Ah well...

[elliebean]

I just noticed... shouldn't that be "whose awesome?"

otherwise, the answer, "your awesome" doesn't make any sense.

Btw, your awesome what?