Report Discussion Problems Here 4.0

We switched to having Moose approve registrations a couple years ago (the registration process can be modified through control panel settings), but registrations diminished, so we abandoned that to see if registrations would pick up again. I don't think they have, so if Moose wants to resume approving registrations then that would be fine. Right, makes no sense, unless they were just testing their software. I believe it was mostly driven by software, since they were posting faster and with more accounts than a single person could handle.

The moderator in question doesn't understand this belief, either, since it isn't one he holds, and it certainly isn't what he said in reply to you in Message 17 of the Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win. thread.

Hi Faith,Just for the sake of discussion let's say I agree with you that people don't understand what you're saying. How are you going to help them understand? By repeating the exact same explanations again and again? By telling them they don't get it? By declaring their arguments wrong or irrelevant? Seriously?Your new thread, A New Run at the End of Evolution by Genetic Processes Argument, drew negative responses right out of the gate because it repeated arguments you've made before as if they hadn't already been discussed innumerable times in past threads. You knew what the rebuttals would be when you wrote Message 1 of that thread because you'd seen them in past threads, and you knew that people didn't see your prior responses as addressing any of the problems raised. When somebody did address everything you said, as RAZD did in great detail in his Message 49 of the current thread, you never replied. He's referred you to that message many times, and you have yet to respond to his detailed rebuttal.In your new thread you're using the same techniques you displayed in past threads to avoid discussion. You repeat the original arguments unchanged over and over again as if no one had made counterarguments, you declare you've already explained it or proved it, you tell people they're not getting it, you engage in a great deal of topic avoidance and ad hominem, but you never actually address the rebuttals. People have pointed out some very serious and fundamental problems in your ideas, and all they're asking is that you resolve those problems. They're not asking any more of you than they do of each other when discussing outside topics where they have many disagreements among themselves, for instance in the Gun Control Again thread or the More on Diet and Carbohydrates thread.It would make no sense for a moderator to demand that other participants ignore all the open questions that you're working hard to avoid addressing. You make it impossible for any admin to moderate in your favor with this kind of behavior.Stick to the facts and address the responses and the rest will take care of itself.

Okay, Faith. Until you can find some common ground with board moderation I'd like to request that you refrain from posting to the discussion threads for now.

More like behave outrageously and illogically while doing whatever you please, then claim persecution when requested to stop. The Forum Guidelines are for everyone, including you. I can't enforce the guidelines for everyone but you.I would have objected to the short shrift given your opening post were it not for the short shrift you gave all the prior feedback from earlier threads. When I asked you to take your off-topic posts to a new thread it was accompanied with the request that you explain your ideas, not just repeat the same explanations yet again and tell people to "think about it beyond their usual level." I wouldn't have promoted your thread myself without requesting more explanation or clarification.No one even understands why you think what you're doing has any validity. You strongly reject evolution, yet you wouldn't accept people just telling you to "think about it beyond your usual level," right? So if you wouldn't accept that argument directed at you, why do you think it's okay to direct it at others?You're free to resume discussion just as soon as you adopt a willingness to actually discuss, which means at least attempting to make your ideas make sense to others.

Hi Faith,We're just going to have to disagree. As I said before, you're free to resume discussion just as soon as you adopt a willingness to actually discuss, which means at least attempting to make your ideas make sense to others. That's all that's being asked of you, that's all that's being asked of anybody. No one here is exempt from answering challenges to their ideas. I can't believe you're even asking for something so outlandish.

Faith's suspension has nothing to do with whether any of her positions are right or wrong, and everything to do with how she handles feedback and differences of opinion and new information, and how well she conforms to the Forum Guidelines. EvC Forum's Forum Guidelines help maintain our high quality of discussion.For the past year or so I've tried several different approaches hoping to nudge Faith toward better compliance, but she has instead became worse. I hoped she might begin seeing some things a little from other people's point of view, but that never happened. I hoped she might become persuaded to stay more tightly focused on facts, but that never happened, either. I hoped she might begin listening to strict moderation, but that also didn't work. If any one of these things, or other things I tried, had happened I think it might have been enough, but none of them did. Faith's certitude of her righteousness causes her to reject all counsel but her own.Faith's suspension will expire later today. I will no longer explore approaches that might coax Faith into constructive discussion. For now I'll just enforce the Forum Guidelines. She knows what the rules are, so whether she stays or goes is up her.

Your Message 417 described, in part, how a fundamentalist upbringing can alienate children from the religion. Faith wanted you to know that she experienced a conversion as an adult, not an indoctrination as a child.She also says she "was a pretty standard liberal atheist humanities-educated person," and in the past she's also said she accepted evolution, though she exhibits no evidence today of ever knowing much about it. She probably means she accepted the word of scientists that evolution was true, the way most people do for most things about science.

Though it was closed a few days ago, I presume you're referring to With a dying white race, why are we not encouraging more white births?. Discussion had been moderate in tone, so I'll open it up again.

Hi herebedragons,I appreciate the feedback and understand the point you're making, but it is my view that to accept that "there is a continuum between chemicals and biotic organisms" is to accept the quibbling about definitions. As Percy I did at one point express my willingness to accept AlphaOmegakids' vocabulary with the proviso that it be understood it was just to help discussion move forward and that I believed there was no particularly meaningful difference between life/chemicals and living/non-living (see my 2nd para of Message 275). He didn't follow up in any meaningful or constructive way.The way people generally make clear their meaning is not by contriving ever more precise word definitions that are then employed in neat and precise sentences. Rather, people make clear what they mean by explaining over and over again using a variety of approaches and vocabulary. It becomes easier as common understandings develop, to the point where people usually understand what is meant even when wrong words are used or words are missing. Some of us do have a gift for brief and clear explanations composed on the fly, but most people struggle to achieve brevity and clarity, probably because brevity and clarity are at cross purposes with complexity and detail.

I've been following the discussion but had decided not to intercede until someone posted here. I'll check the latest posts and decide what to do.

One can't lie about the facts of the world - they are out there and readily checked. You need to bring the facts supporting your position to people's attention. Continuing in the manner of your posts here and as you have been recently in other threads is a significant distraction to discussion and should stop.Please, no discussion on this.

Because discussion is being severely impacted in several threads, beginning now I will be handing out suspensions for Forum Guidelines violations.

The The Science in Creationism thread is in the Free For All forum and is unmoderated. I haven't been monitoring it. I think returning to a limit on thread length is a good idea for some discussion threads, but I'm not sure 300 is the right number. The old 300 post limit was an artificial limit imposed by technical constraints that no longer exist. If we did return to post limits as the standard instead of the exception, what do people think it should be?

The participants feature is planned for release 5.0 and will be under the control of moderators. It will have two modes of operation: inclusive (all members on the list can participate) and exclusive (all members on the list are excluded from participation). The default setting for all new threads will be exclusive with an empty member list.