Richard Dawkins sues Josh Timonen

[princepatel]

I am all very excited.

[Sophus]

Would anyone here like to contribute to Timonen's legal defense fund?
 

^^ That link has the latest updates on the case for those who wish to follow it.

[Whitney]

Here's Josh's response:

PPS: I should note that RDF have apparently removed my name off of articles that I wrote on RichardDawkins.net.  Both ‘Surviving Jesus Camp’ and ‘Expelled Overview’ say they were written by “The Richard Dawkins Foundation” and not me personally.  And they’ve also taken the line off of the website which stated “Designed by Josh Timonen”.  Lovely.  

It screams guilty to me.  

I don't know much of the background on this but If I were innocent I wouldn't be signing up for a lot of forums trying to defend my name; I'd let the courts prove I was not in the wrong.  I also wouldn't be making public statements before my lawyer okayed my public statement (lol, that's stupid even if you are innocent).

I quoted the above to point out one thing.  He was a salaried work for hire (according to the law suit) work for hire means that all of the work you do is the sole property of those who are paying you.  Getting to have your name on work for hire projects is at the sole discretion of your client; just like if you were working as an employee of the company. Even if he is innocent him making a big fuss about his name being removed should be reason enough for no one to ever hire him again because they won't want him bitching if they decide to take his name off their website for whatever reason they may have.

[Whitney]

Does the ugliness of Sam Harris' new book have something to do with atheists no longer hiring Josh Timonen?  

::wonders how I can get my business card to Dawkins::

[Recusant]

Thanks for the link, Sophus.  I'm looking forward to reading the opposition to the demurrer.  The demurrer itself reads as if Dawkins' lawyer didn't do his homework as well as he should have. Then again, of course it would.  None of this makes the Timonen look any more honest, and really the demurrer basically says, "Legally, the defendants were entitled to take the plaintiffs for a ride."

[McQ]

Wow. This is an ugly thread. You guys don't hold back. Anyone actually know this guy, Josh? I'd be interested in knowing why people seem to hate him so much. I have never heard of him, never seen his name that I can recall, and don't know who he is. So why all the dogpile on this guy?

Edited to add: I can't speak for anyone else here, but in all honesty I can't imagine how I would react/act if people, by the hundreds, were splattering me all over the internets like this. It's difficult to judge how an "innocent" or "guilty" person would act in a situation such as this.

[Velma]

Wow. This is an ugly thread. You guys don't hold back. Anyone actually know this guy, Josh? I'd be interested in knowing why people seem to hate him so much. I have never heard of him, never seen his name that I can recall, and don't know who he is. So why all the dogpile on this guy?

Edited to add: I can't speak for anyone else here, but in all honesty I can't imagine how I would react/act if people, by the hundreds, were splattering me all over the internets like this. It's difficult to judge how an "innocent" or "guilty" person would act in a situation such as this.

Josh Timonen used to run both the store and the entire website for the Richard Dawkins foundation.  He's the one who closed down the old Richard Dawkins' forum, deleted the entire posting histories of those who complained when he announced his plan, and then disabled the PM system so people could not get in touch with each other - he then proceeded to erase the admin logs so no one could tell who had done what.  Pretty much as if the manager of a popular club announced he was going to shut down the club, then proceeded to vaporize any one who complained and then erased everyone's cell phones so they could not contact anyone they had become friends with at the club.  I've had dealings with him and IMO, he's little more than a sniveling weasel.

I was on staff there when it happened.  This is the best account of what happened that I've read.

[LegendarySandwich]

Wow. This is an ugly thread. You guys don't hold back. Anyone actually know this guy, Josh? I'd be interested in knowing why people seem to hate him so much. I have never heard of him, never seen his name that I can recall, and don't know who he is. So why all the dogpile on this guy?

Edited to add: I can't speak for anyone else here, but in all honesty I can't imagine how I would react/act if people, by the hundreds, were splattering me all over the internets like this. It's difficult to judge how an "innocent" or "guilty" person would act in a situation such as this.

Josh Timonen used to run both the store and the entire website for the Richard Dawkins foundation.  He's the one who closed down the old Richard Dawkins' forum, deleted the entire posting histories of those who complained when he announced his plan, and then disabled the PM system so people could not get in touch with each other - he then proceeded to erase the admin logs so no one could tell who had done what.  Pretty much as if the manager of a popular club announced he was going to shut down the club, then proceeded to vaporize any one who complained and then erased everyone's cell phones so they could not contact anyone they had become friends with at the club.  I've had dealings with him and IMO, he's little more than a sniveling weasel.

I was on staff there when it happened.  This is the best account of what happened that I've read.

Wow. He sounds like a dick.

[McQ]

Velma, thanks for the information. I spent about twenty minutes reading up on things, starting from the link you posted. I'm beginning to see why there is so much animosity toward Josh Timonen now! I really never heard of the guy. I can only go by what you and others have posted. Since you had direct interaction with him, I guess you'd know about all of that mess first hand. It's amazing things got so crazy over there.

Looks like things are going to come back around to bite him now.

[karadan]

Velma, thanks for the information. I spent about twenty minutes reading up on things, starting from the link you posted. I'm beginning to see why there is so much animosity toward Josh Timonen now! I really never heard of the guy. I can only go by what you and others have posted. Since you had direct interaction with him, I guess you'd know about all of that mess first hand. It's amazing things got so crazy over there.

Looks like things are going to come back around to bite him now.

What goes around comes around.

[hackenslash]

I wonder if this will turn out to be one of those things where, years from now, people will be saying 'I was there'.

I was, incidentally. One of the members here, who I will not identify as I don't know who knows, was one of the posters who had more than 10,000 posts deleted.

[Velma]

Velma, thanks for the information. I spent about twenty minutes reading up on things, starting from the link you posted. I'm beginning to see why there is so much animosity toward Josh Timonen now! I really never heard of the guy. I can only go by what you and others have posted. Since you had direct interaction with him, I guess you'd know about all of that mess first hand. It's amazing things got so crazy over there.

Looks like things are going to come back around to bite him now.

Yep.  He had made up his mind that the forum was going to be shut down, but things would have been so much different if he had listened to a tenth of what the staff tried to tell him or had acted like a human being after the announcement.  People generally don't like change, but they will usually adjust if you give them time to do so and allow for a bit of complaining and armchair-quarterbacking along the way.  This was a textbook case of how not to handle such a situation.

[karadan]

I wonder if this will turn out to be one of those things where, years from now, people will be saying 'I was there'.

I was, incidentally. One of the members here, who I will not identify as I don't know who knows, was one of the posters who had more than 10,000 posts deleted.

My goodness, that must have been soul-crushing.

[Tank]

I wonder if this will turn out to be one of those things where, years from now, people will be saying 'I was there'.

I was, incidentally. One of the members here, who I will not identify as I don't know who knows, was one of the posters who had more than 10,000 posts deleted.

My goodness, that must have been soul-crushing.

It was 13,600 posts. I was pretty much astonished at the time that Josh Timonen and Andrew Chalkley could be so wantonly destructive. There were 5 or 6 members who had there accounts deleted with just over 40,000 posts in total. I had a high post count because I was a relativity early member and I made it a point to greet all the people who posted in the welcome forum. When I last checked that constituted 4.5k of my posts there.

The account that had the greatest value was that of Mazilla who organised the science writing competition. The topic threads related to that now are just shreds of their former selves.

At one point Dawkins was going to delete the forum from the site. I sent personal emails to him pointing out what an act of criminal intellectual vandalism that would be and although he never replied to those emails the forum (still missing the deleted accounts) has been retained on the site.

[hackenslash]

I sent personal emails to him pointing out what an act of criminal intellectual vandalism that would be and although he never replied to those emails the forum (still missing the deleted accounts) has been retained on the site.

I sent him several e-mails as well. I was more placatory in tone, suggesting that even if the forum were to close, there was no reason we couldn't at least retain some measure of working together.

I also posted about the destruction of the forum and the aftermath thereof on my blog:

http://reciprocity-hackenslash.blogspot.com/
http://hackenslash-reciprocitypartdeux.blogspot.com/

The other account that constituted a fair bit of really excellent content was that of DarwinsBulldog who, among other things, posted a lot of articles on breaking science, as well as a good deal of anti-creationist material.