Many short replies vs. fewer but longer messages

I've touched on this before, but it has never had it's own topic.I now bring it up again, as a response to JESUS Freak's numerous short messages being posted in the "The lies behind the Miller experiment" topic, more or less currently at message 95.My bringing this up IS NOT intended as a condemation of JESUS Freak's methods.The (old) "problem" is that creationist messages tend to trigger multiple responses from the evo side. Thus, the creo is obligated to make multiple messages in reply.Now, JESUS Freak is making use of the "reply to specific message" reply button (a good thing), and is posting numerous very short messages. While not wrong, this is resulting in his/her thoughts being fragmented into a bunch of scattered bits and pieces.Personally, I would like rather see larger unified messages. But this would call for the use of the "general reply" (The big "Post Reply") button, and thus would loose the links to the messages being replied to.Essentially, we have two different ways of posting replies. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.Comments?Adminnemooseus (quite possibly posting in the blather mode)

Creationists are put in a tough spot when having to reply to numerous responses. As a suggestion for us evo's, when this occurs we should be patient and realize that our opponents may not have enough time to respond to everybody. For this reason, perhaps a summary post would be the best option for creationists who are in this tight spot.My suggestion to the creationists is to pick out what you think are important quotes from other posts. Respond to these in one message in a logical manner. Then, using the little red reply button, respond to individual posters with the message "Reply to your post in message #XX". Us, as evos, should try to apply general responses to our specific questions wherever possible. If you feel that your questions have not been answered sufficiently then a friendly suggestion like "could you please answer message #XX" would be fine, IMO.

Perhaps us evos should recognize when a point has already been made by another evo and leave it be, at least until such time as the point has been responded to. If we want to expand on a point that's already been made by another evo, perhaps we should post our response to the evo with whom we agree rather than the creo with whom we disagree.

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Dog is my copilot.

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Perhaps us evos should recognize when a point has already been made by another evo and leave it be, at least until such time as the point has been responded to. If we want to expand on a point that's already been made by another evo, perhaps we should post our response to the evo with whom we agree rather than the creo with whom we disagree.

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Very good point. I am as guilty of piling on as anyone else. We often complain that creationists don't understand this or that about science or a particular theory. Perhaps our job as evos should extend beyond defending a theory. That is, instead of piling on, we should help clarify other evo's posts (eg use analogies, reword an argument in non-scientific language) instead of muddying the waters with further technical posts.The most prolific evo posters are usually the most argumentative, so this might be a difficult task. The only times I have seen a "teaching" like attitude is when a creationists admits that their scientific knowledge is lacking. Those same creationists tend to ask questions instead of asserting without evidence. When this happens I have often seen several evos trying to explain the same thing, something more akin to a communal effort than an individual attack. The answer to "more short vs fewer long" may have to start with the attitude of the creationist as well as the behavior of the evos.

and yet, unsuprisingly, every time i ask a very direct question, such as where the bible says something specific, i never get an answer. even when i ask repeatedly.

http://EvC Forum: Suggestion for evolutionists -->EvC Forum: Suggestion for evolutionistsI used to be a lot more serious with my posts.In that link, a long time ago I suggested that we not pile information on them. I wasn't feeling merciful for them. I just didn't want to see them dodging important questions. Ha! The homosexuality and the bible thread is a perfect example of this happening. It was a very simple question that I asked and people's been discussing about stoning freshly raped women.This message has been edited by Lam, 11-15-2004 03:38 PM

The only way I see to 'fix' this problem (quotes explained below) is to implement some way to reply to more than one message at once:Some suggestions:

• For the original poster of a message, have a "reply to all replies" button that appears... somewhere. This seems clearly easily abused by people who 'reply to all replies' by simply ignoring some responses. Then again, it would also (hopefully) FORCE people to be more careful NOT to pile on.
• Add a way for people to SPECIFY which messages they are replying to. Maybe when you post a message, there's a textbox with a comma-delimited list of messages you're replying to. For a "big-white button reply", it's empty. For a 'red button reply", it has one number. And either way, it's editable. This seems hard to use though, and I doubt people would use it.
  

Either way, it requires further programming as well, which is a lot to ask. I just wanted to make some suggestions that came to mind.No matter how you provide a 'multiple reply' functionality, however, it can be abused by those who want to skirt a question. It would be up to the original replyer to do so. To avoid it, I guess you'd have to implement permissions for using the functionality, so that you could revoke the permission for those who abused it.BenP.S. I don't mean to be trying to pile work on y'all, just to suggest an idea.

Those are good ideas. New policy. He who suggests, implements. Do you know CGI and Perl?

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Well... as a former MSFT employee (branding myself for future villification?), I've mostly dealt with JScript and VBScript within the ASP framework. However, I am willing to learn and do it myself.And I think that's a good policy. Do you have a testbed forum available? Are you being serious? And I can't guarantee that I'll finish the project, because I don't know what kind of programmatic framework (i.e. what interfaces) you've made available for extensible programming, so I don't know how much time to estimate it would take.But, as it is, I'm willing to try. Let me know.Ben

VBScript experience is probably not relevant. I don't know JScript, but as it is based upon JavaScript it is probably very relevant when used in a browser context.But most of this board is written in Perl, which is more like C-gone-wild than anything else. All the dynamic stuff is written in JavaScript, but there isn't much at this time. If you can create dynamic menus in Javascript your skills would be especially valuable.The InfoPop software the board currently uses will be going away within a week or so, to be replaced with dBoard software from PerSoft. It will use the same databases as the InfoPop software, but all the software will be new. Actually, a little of it is in use here already - I kind of shoehorned code in if there were features I wanted sooner rather than later.If a codevelopment situation ever developed (NosyNed has occasionally expressed interest in helping out) I'd put up a test board for people to test code in before releasing it to a common development area. It's actually easiest to develop code on a local machine so you're not constantly uploading files to the server. All one needs is to install the free Apache server and the free Perl compiler on your local PC. The only difference between the webserver and a PC is that the server is Linux and is case-dependent.The ultimate goal is commercial release, so there'd have to be non-disclosure.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Well, I have to run for now. But as stated before, as long as completing the feature is optional, then I'm more than willing to work with the system and see how it goes. It doesn't have to be now, either. You can keep it as an open-ended offer.Ben