AdminNosy banned?

I don't see the difference. And I don't see the basis for an argument that one's opinion is always immune to criticism or response; that one's opinion must always be taken as valid and legitimate, no matter what. But I see that's not what you're saying, exactly. Well, I agree 100% obviously.

Sorry about the retread then.AbE: You appeared to be saying that nwr's opinion was rejecting science and that he was attempting to "posit and dodge". To make sure... I was disagreeing with that assessment. Well that's somewhat ironic as he himself has declined such invitations in the past, stating that if that is what is desired then the other person should leave. Apparently when he is in the wrong or feels others are not understanding him then debate is of interest, even if to improve the nature of debate. When others feel the same it is simply "extending the argument".If he were to take his own advice in this matter, he should have never engaged in the behavior he did with nwr, and then taken his lumps from whatever an admin decided regarding it without further explanation (respecting authority and all that).I don't mean to punk on Percy or NWR just for the hell of it, or just to gloat over apparent hypocrisy. This is something I thought was an important matter in the past and I think it remains such today. What I'd love to see emerge from this is a recognition of how posters should be treated both by other posters as well as by admins.In this case (poster to poster issue) I think how creos are treated here, or tolerance for how they may be treated, has been revealed in how an evo was treated. Frankly I think the same thing has happened before but not by people as "respectable" as nwr and percy, which I guess elevates it for discussion.Its a debate site to be sure, which means some zingers and brilliant blows can be dealt, but it doesn't have to be a place where self-styled scientists come to beat on creos (or nonliberals) for fun. Edited by holmes, : abe

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

so emo.it's just the internet. really.

This is cool, a debate forum and a reality show all in one!Now back to the regular scheduled programming.

so [internet insult word], it's only [noun].[re-stress].woo! It's not a real internet drama until someone makes a post pointing out what it only is. Now that is over and done with we can get down to the real drama safe in the knowledge that it is taking place not in a brick coffee house, but throughout a series of interconnected networks utilizing the TCP/IP suite of protocols.With that in mind, a message to Percy and nwr:

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*rolls eyes*so gay. it's only a debate. seriously.

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Now, where is that sticky out tongue device that one uses in these situations? The two character sigil that is a quicker way of saying, apologies for the jocularity but I couldn't resist being a little cheeky.Ah here it is, colon-p

Have had a busy day, I'm just poking in quickly, can't stay, but I'll be back in tomorrow morning.First, I think it is important that we not speak ill of those who have chosen to leave. They acted upon principle.Second, I thank Modulous for his clarifications. I think he has bent over backwards to be fair to me, because in the Admin forum he challenged me pretty strongly on some things.Third, some people may return. Not entirely sure at this point.Fourth, I think dialog is healthy, even when heated and people get upset.That's all for now.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Complex systems resist linear regulation.A community is a complex system. Debate is a circumscribed, linear process.

quote:

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Governing a society is like cooking a small fish.
You ruin it with too much poking.

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Trust the people. Leave them alone.

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-- Lao Tze, Tao Te Ching

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_Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

One of the central issues of the recent disagreement is the right of someone to declare a position private and off-limits to discussion. If it isn't clear to everyone yet let me be as clear as I can now: there is no such right at EvC Forum. There never has been.We've worked hard over the years to keep the Forum Guidelines down to 10. The previous version of the guidelines can be found at http:///WebPages/ForumRules.html. Here's the earlier rule 4:

4. Make your points by providing supporting evidence and/or argument. Avoid bare assertions. Because it is often not possible to tell which points will prove controversial, it is acceptable to wait until a point is challenged before supporting it.

I believe it is important to keep the list of rules short and to the point, and for that reason I've often said to people to try to follow the spirit of the Forum Guidelines. If even the old rule 4 doesn't seem clear to anyone about barring the tactic of publicly declaring a position and then ruling discussion of it out of bounds, then I apologize, but brevity was a goal because we felt lengthy guidelines would never be read.The reason the old rules 2 and 4 were combined was to make room for a new rule, rule 1, which is to follow moderator requests. At the time of that particular revision some members were claiming they were being treated unfairly because there was nothing in the rules about having to listen to moderators - I know, seems incredible!The reason the current wording that leaves out the part about supporting your points was chosen was because at the time this seemed to be generally well accepted and understood.But times change and there's turnover among active participants, so maybe the rule about having to support your points isn't one that is as widely shared by the current active membership as it was in prior days. Maybe that part needs to be explicitly stated once again.Revision of the Forum Guidelines is a collective process among moderators, and I don't know if and when we would embark upon this periodic task, but it will certainly be on the table for discussion at the next moderator meeting. In the meantime let me be perfectly clear: if you state a position here at EvC Forum, you're expected to defend it. You can certainly decide not to defend it, but in that case you have to stop stating it. And you certainly cannot cite as a reason for not defending it that it is private. It ceased to be private when you posted it.Let me say it again: The only reason you can have for not defending a position is that you've chosen not to defend it, and in that case you have to stop repeating it.AbE: I've decided it would be a good idea to provide an example. Person A is clearly trying to disengage from discussion about Grobistan independence. Disengaging can be difficult to do, and it certainly seems fair to allow a few posts for this to happen. But at some point Person A just has to either resume defending his position or stop reiterating that he's not changing his mind. In particular, he can't keep switching back and forth between defending and disengaging, e.g.: If this were his final post in the thread then this isn't too bad, certainly within acceptable bounds, I guess. But if he posts again? Hopefully it is clear to everyone that as Person A continues to post his reluctance to continue a defense while reiterating his position that he is getting closer and closer to violating the Forum Guidelines. Naturally, at what point he actually crosses the line will vary according to individual moderators, but that he is moving closer and closer to a violation cannot be in doubt.Putting this in the context of the recent controversy, Nwr was so eager to defend his position that he even responded to my post to Cavediver (see Message 70) after he had already successfully disengaged. Unfortunately, by responding yet again he gave up any right yet again to a claim of privacy, and this message was where he made his most inexplicably erroneous statement, the one about the luminiferous aether (see Message 75). Nwr concluded, "I have a higher threshold than you for adopting explanations."And apparently a lower threshold for actually getting anything right. Getting your ducks in a row and your facts straight is what debate is all about.Edited by Admin, : Spelling.Edited by Admin, : Added example.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This makes sense, but only up to a point. Your example is clear, but not universal as to what constitutes stating a position... particularly when discussing personal opinion.Personal opinion is separate from knowledge in that it does not require reason or evidence. As such it carries no weight in an argument.As long as one admits that "X" is their personal opinion, that as such inherently does not advance that position, and should mean nothing for anyone else, then you are simply beating a dead horse to continue. This logically and practically removes X from debate, because the person is ceding the point to you.It is when a person admits this then continues to repeat X as if to convince others, retreating to "it's just an opinion" when it is again confronted, that a ploy at feigning mere opinion while actually advancing an argument is revealed.On top of this, there are also underlying opinions which can exist, can be advanced, and yet are beyond debate. These have to do with feelings. That I feel something is beyond debate. I mean according to your theory of debate "strawberries taste great" has just opened the door for an excruciating attempt to convince another person otherwise.And more to the point, the opinion that "I don't know X" has a factual practical value everyone SHOULD appreciate. When a person advances that "I don't know X", why should anyone want to argue further? Unless it is used as a plank in an making another argument, it should remain what it is... as statement that the person really doesn't know!I find your argument for debate particularly double-standardish. If NWR had stated the simple opinion "I feel the BB is satisfactory as an explanation", my guess is you would not have peppered him with any of your questions. Yet, he may have had the same level of ignorance on that topic, as he had with feeling it was NOT satisfactory.Indeed I feel confident in arguing that many members have quite a bit of ignorance on that topic and so stating that they "feel satisfied" with BB, or hold the opinion it is true, is more erroneous than nwr's tantamount admission that he did not know.One might make the argument that stating one has doubts in X is more than saying I don't know. But I don't believe that is the case when one clearly states that those doubts are based on a less than full understanding of all the data, that others should not use that as a reason to have their own doubts, and generally has to do with a feeling about the extent of evidence one would like to have in a field before proclaiming X to be known. That is it is a statement about how reliable the knowledge may be in standing up over time.I don't know of any objective standard there is for telling a person "this much evidence must be sufficient for you to feel like it will stand up over time". Again the point by point discussion of what does exist, may not effect the overall position. There is no doubt that nwr didn't "let it go" and so reopened debate. However, you seem to distance yourself from the fact that you didn't let it go yourself, and pretty much insulted him to another poster. After officially closing with nwr, you still felt confident in needling him to someone else. But that gets into the whole discussion of when people should "let it go" vs the rather human trait of feeling provoked to respond.It seems to me you and nwr both seem to feel that YOU are allowed to be provoked into response, but no one else should do so.Yet this is a digression from your discussion on opinion. In this case NWR's response to your post was NOT to discuss the specifics of BB theory. He was trying to discuss a difference between the two of you on how science operates. He has a different epistemic methodology. His examples (and there was more than just the luminous ether) were meant to point out a way of viewing scientific conclusions, methods more important than concrete explanations.This lead to the conclusion, and it is valid, that it takes more for him to accept an explanation. Your idea that someone can be argued that he should lower his standards is strange. Getting anything right? He at best used a less than perfect example for what he was talking about. His discussion of Newton was okay. I could, and have, added the example of heliocentrim/geocentrism.In any case, he was not advancing a position against BB. He was stating a personal position, and one that did not include any alternatives. Thus an admission he did not know and in specific he was not knowledgable enough with BB to say he knew that. He felt there was enough room that there could be changes, some perhaps significant, in the future.Big deal. Again, that seems more honest, than the opposite, which is to ignorantly parrot scientific findings in a pretense to knowledge.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

If I seemed somewhere to be implying that I, too, was trying to let it go, I never meant to give that impression. I was aggressively pursuing Nwr's misstatements. When Nwr disengaged, since Cavediver had agreed with Nwr about the desirability of direct distance measurements of distant galaxies, I attempted to pick up discussion with Cavediver. Nwr responded, something I never expected - I assumed he would stick by his decision to to leave the discussion. If you're wondering why in my post to Cavediver I specifically said that he and Nwr had shared this opinion, instead of just not mentioning Nwr, it was because I felt then Cavediver could rightfully respond, "Well, wait a minute, it wasn't just me who thinks this desirable, it was Nwr, too. In fact, it was his idea in the first place." I wasn't trying to needle Nwr back into the thread. You're leaving me guessing what you're referring to. You're talking about Message 70 when you say I was trying to needle Nwr back into the thread, so where's the "pretty much an insult"? And if you weren't talking about that message then this just highlights the necessity of providing enough information to make it clear what you're talking about.But this is minutia, and it points out the problems of reaching significant conclusions from tiny snippets of messages. It's important to stay focused on the significant issues. Where there's no smoke I do not suspect fire. Who does? Get real. Possibly. But what if he had made an error while trying to be supportive of the BB? What if he had said something like, "The BB is strongly supported by the evidence, and one important piece of that evidence was the discovery of the luminiferous aether by Michelson-Morley." If he had made such a momentous blunder, or even much more minor blunders, then I would have challenged it. In fact, I would probably wish he would go away - I don't want someone clueless arguing for my side. I would have responded in the exact same manner as I did to what he actually did say when he was making errors while trying to support a position that the evidence for the BB is "less than satisfying". There is only one part of that that looks even remotely familiar with regard to Nwr's approach. This is probably a reference to Nwr's statement that he takes an epistemic approach. There are two problems with that. First, he only resorted to an epistemological claim after seeing my rebuttal that pointed out that almost nothing he cited in support of his position was correct. In other words, in reply to my rebuttal pointing out that almost everything he said was wrong, he suddenly changes tack and says he's taking an epistemic approach, as if being wrong in the factual foundation for his position didn't really count. Second, he was beginning to disengage while reiterating his position. As I said earlier, it can take a few messages to disengage, and I have no problems with attempting to disengage, you won't find any protests from me about it in that thread, but Nwr kept flip-flopping between disengaging and reengaging. But Nwr never allowed the discussion to progress to the point of examining actual evidence for (or against) the BB. Practically everything he said was either spurious or wrong. Yes, and I asked him several times how BB theory was different in some qualitative or quantitative epistemological way from other theories that leads him to conclude its evidence is unsatisfying, while other theories' evidence is satisfying. I asked this question several different ways. Nwr's responses varied somewhat, but the general idea was that I just didn't understand his position, and that it was private and not open to discussion anyway. Not sure where you're coming from here. I never felt provoked. It was just a case of "see error, cite error", not a case of provocation. Yes, much more. I've already mentioned his false use of tentativity, and his citations of tired light and Olber's paradox. His errors continued throughout the entire thread. It's not a case of Nwr getting a few things wrong. It's a case of getting almost nothing right. This is why the defenses of Nwr that people are making seem so weird to me - it's almost as if some believe that errors shouldn't be challenged, and that running away from defending your ideas while still promoting them is honorable. Yeah, I know. And every time he attempted a response to the questions about how an epistemic approach revealed something different in character from the evidence for the BB versus other theories, he could only cite things that were wrong, or at best, irrelevant. Are we speaking English here? He said, "The evidence that the cosmos is expanding, however, is far from satisfying." Maybe in your version of English that's not a position against the BB, so okay then, he wasn't advancing a position against the BB, have it your way. I questioned the statement he actually made that I just quoted. And I quoted it in Message 34, inviting him to defend it as an example of how to skeptically approach accepted scientific views. And he accepted the invitation and proceeded to reveal he knew almost nothing.Going in, I had no idea he knew nothing. I thought I was going to learn something. I was surprised that he was so full of misconceptions, but once faced with them I had to respond honestly to them. His response was to distance himself from them, claim he had no responsibility to defend his views, and to continue making misstatements.As I said to Modulous in the admin forum, I understand that perhaps the epistemic case Nwr was attempting to make had some validity, but nothing he ever posted brought it to that point. And valid points are supported with valid information and evidence, not continual error. I can only respond to what Nwr actually posted.I remain as mystified by this whole dispute as ever. I may have had my faults in that discussion, but compared to Nwr's lengthy performance of error and evasion I was an angel. Keep in mind my Message 34, where I extended the invitation to Nwr by saying, "I think it would provide a wonderful counterpoint to Bob's approach if you'd elaborate on this so as to provide an example of the proper way to skeptically approach accepted scientific views." How in the world is anything Nwr did a good example of how to do this? What he did is what I would point to as a perfect example of what to avoid in any skeptical approach.What I would recommend to anyone challenging an accepted scientific theory is this:

• Completely familiarize yourself with the theory.
• Stick to what you know in making your points.

The reason one needs to be so careful in this is that theories don't become accepted in any casual manner. This has never been pointed out better (or more forcefully) than by Schraf, who accurately describes the withering examination new ideas are subjected to before becoming accepted. As I told Nwr, if he thinks he can come up with legitimate objections to BB theory from his armchair then he's sadly mistaken. My suggestion to him was to at least familiarize himself with what cosmologists view as the weaknesses in the theory, as a starting point if nothing else. By knowing so little about what he was criticizing, Nwr doomed himself to failure.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This rule is certainly reasonable, Percy. One of the things that has made this forum function so well is that people can't just get on a soapbox and make declarations. They have to support their statements.It is not credible, though, that over half a dozen experienced EvC admins and members would suddenly walk off the premises because they discovered Rule #4. They know the rule is there. They've enforced it.Your rationalizaiton that generational 'turnover' at EvC is to blame for this is likewise not credible. The people who have walked off the premises are not greenhorns. Many, as noted, were admins. You made them admins for a reason. Others, like CK and Ringo, were experienced contributors. All have made investments here.Your hypothesis thus stands falsified by the evidence. Observed data do not support the idea that the walkout owes its origin to widespread ignorance of Rule #4.A different hypothesis is called for. Let me suggest one.The problem does not stem from any rule. The problem does not stem from any one thread.The problem is that you--laudable as your goals are--are mistaking some crucial things about groups and how they function. A walkoff of this magnitude involving experienced subscribers, any way you spin it, amounts to one thing. It's a vote of no confidence.

1. The Nature of Debate

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Quality debate is your stated goal. It is thus a bad sign when the person aggressively enforcing standards of debate at such costs shows gross misunderstanding of what a real debate is.

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Earlier in this thread you used the example of televised election-year debates to illustrate your goals for the group. Any freshman on a school debate team can tell you that televised election 'debates' are not real debates at all. They are mutual press conferences with a side order of photo op. These rituals have their value, but that value is not measured in the logical, rational points used to score real debates. A candidate 'wins' a TV debate by getting votes, not debate points. Votes are won a lot of ways.

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It's fine to want debate. Real debates can be very constructive. Even fake ones have their uses, as our democratic election rituals prove.

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But let's be clear about it. The two are not the same. Election debates are to real debates as professional wrestling is to brain surgery.

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Anyone setting and enforcing standards of quality debate is first obliged to understand what quality debate is.

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2. The Realism of Your Expectations

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The next thing to do, if one wants a quality product, is to form contracts with the people who can supply that product. This leads us to your next big misunderstanding.

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It is not realistic to expect quality debate from an online come-as-you-are party thrown open to the general public. That's like an editor expecting a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from a slush pile. It's like a college president expecting to build an Ivy League-caliber school without asking applicants to pass SATs. It's like a coach expecting to build a champino team from walk-on players. Getting elite results from a cattle call happens so rarely that you may as well depend on the Lotto to pay for your retirement.

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Most members of the general public lack training in debate points. Most have no experience in structured debate at all. They will not be good at it. Some individuals will eventually get the hang of it. Most--like most of the novels in the slush pile--will have to be discarded after their tryout.

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Your egalitarian recruitment process for participants in 'quality debate' bears no logical connection to the elite nature of the stated goal.

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You can go one of two ways in correcting this problem. One option is to qualify your debate participants. Not just anyone can post. Another is to allow the group to remain diverse and allow the group to pursue diverse goals, of which debate is only one.

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Until now the latter group is the one people here thought they had. People join the forum for many reasons. They get many things out of it. They invest their time, their concern, and their volunteer efforts on this basis. They have been operating under the impression that the forum is a safe environment for doing this.

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The way discussions here really work--whatever rules an admin makes--is that each thread has its own parameters. Some are for science education, some are for laughs, some are for irony (you've started one of these yourself), some are to compare philosophical notes. The participants themselves make the rules. They signal each other about what goes in this thread and what doesn't, others read the signals and convey their acceptance of the contract, and the discussion proceeds. Some threads are very confined. Some are wide open. All have value.

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You have sent the signal that this forum is not the safe environment for this that participants took it to be. You seem to have trouble seing or admitting the many varieties of value that exist here. You seem to want a debate forum and only that.

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That is your prerogative. But if debate is all you want, you must first understand what it is, then find actors who can present the show. An all-call to the general public is a wasteful and irrational way to seek such actors. Quality debate requires qualified debaters. The sensible way to meet your goal is to seek them out, assign them their roles, and put on a good online show. Everyone else is a spectator. It's a blog format. Other people can offer comments, perhaps, but they are not in the arena.

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Your stated goals require a different invitation process. Right now you are inviting sports fans to join the game and run all over the field, then getting frustrated that they don't act more like your idea of pro athletes.

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Well, duh. Of course they don't.

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3. EvC is more than a debate forum. It is a community.

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That's what you have had here. Not every forum generates this kind of acceptance. It is a rare thing to have YECs sitting down and sharing common community-building goals with atheists. It is a rarity, offline, for them to meet a real live atheist at all. It's a rare thing for anyone to have access to a qualified geneticist who can bring us up to speed on the latest discoveries without charging fees.

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You have accomplished something special here, Percy. It saddens me that you seem to be so tone deaf to the achievement. You seem not to realize the value your community already has--the many needs it serves, the long odds it has already beaten.

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You got more than you bargained for? Fine. I'd say that's a nice problem to have. Why chip away at your own accomplishment until you make it into something less? Why not let the people who are willing help you make it into more?

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One thing is sure. If you insist on having less, you will get it.

_____Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Admin, : Add missing close blockquote.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I was trying to point out that there are opinions which are beyond questioning. That are reasonably not open to attack, mainly because they rely on emotion and not logic or evidence. As long as a person admits it is an opinion which holds no value as knowledge, then I am not sure what your point is in suggesting further attack is justified. If you are going to begin attacking me personally, then I am not interested in further discussion. This can be done without calling my reading comprehension skills into question.The thrust of your argument seems to be that you feel nwr was not merely stating a personal opinion. I would grant that his first statement which led to your asking him to explain what he meant could be read as either advancing a position, or making a personal statement of opinion. The fact that he used an emotional term ("satisfying") rather than a factual term ("conclusive", "suggestive"...) hit me as a personal position.However, I don't see how his response to your request can be read any other way than a nonadvancing statement of personal opinion... That appears to me to be a statement of lack of knowledge on the subject and that his opinion can hold no force, before he even begins. It concludes with him saying... Here he describes that it is his skepticism He does not appear to be saying it should be YOUR skepticism or anyone else's. He makes it temporary and conditional, which means he can't be slamming it as strongly as you seem to make out for his position.Now he could very well have been wrong about that whole redshift thing. It seems he is. But then all you revealed is that nwr may have had more than just the redshifting issue underlying his personal doubt. And that seems to be what he tried to explain to you. In other words after being shown that he was more ignorant of the facts than he already admitted he was, he explained that there was a greater underlying level of doubt he legitimately could appeal to?If a person claims that they meant something other than what they appear to have said, or that they hold another position on top of points already expressed, why not take them at their word? I mean you can say "it looks like he did X", but what's the point of arguing that? Frankly I believe nwr's statement. It seems to align with things he has said in the past.The question to you is is his position (new or not) valid? Does it square with what he said in his very first explanatory post, or not? To my mind the answer to both is yes.That is unless one wants to start with your position and read everything in the light of your position of what he was doing. It seems to me that is what YOU are doing. You thought he meant something which he didn't, and then began an attack you could not pull out of and in the process became so convinced your interpretation of his position is right, you resist any explanation to the contrary.Indeed you seem to be arguing people are defending him to a degree you cannot understand. Couldn't it be that is because you are not allowing your interpretation to drop and see what people are saying? See it from a different perspective?I have no vested interest in whether nwr was right or not, whether he was evading or not. Why would I make such a thing up? I mean its not even like I'm arguing he was pure in this. His reiterated position was that he was not comfortable in accepting the BB theory, after appealing to (or defining yet again, depending on how you read him before) a nonevidentiary based reason. I'm not seeing what the problem is with this.At worst that seems to be defining the form of his disengagement. I am not trying to take sides on who acted worse.I agree with what you say regarding anyone challenging a scientific theory. I agree with your definition/outline of scientific method (which apparently nwr does not agree with). I even agree that in a debate forum you can go for the jugular on an error.The problem is that you seemed to want to create a foil for your position to such a degree that you stopped listening to what nwr was actually saying... and now others. You passed by any utility your argument had and have shifted into the personal realm.NWR had his own problems. I'm not talking to nwr so what does it matter what they were?I don't believe that he was as bad as you made out. In any case his final position (ad hoc or otherwise) was valid and did not allow him to advance anything so it should have ended there. Pursuing the luminous aether issue (to my mind) shows you totally missing the point on what he was using it for.Frankly I don't need an apology from you or him on what happened. I've been in reasonably worse (length and hostility) fiascos, so I can't wag a finger at you for that.The point from this to me is what can we learn about how posters treat posters and how admins treat posters? Well that would be the double standard I am discussing. This is where creos have had a point. They are savaged for points of fact they may be errant on, yet most evos would be just as errant if called into question on the same things. I've seen enough total bs getting stated as "science" and "logic" by evos around here, that do not get questioned simply because they are supporting some "evo" position.In this case you had an evo discussing his personal opinion that he doesn't know something regarding BB, he has a doubt, and he gets savaged... as if that is supposed to convince him or anyone else that they should know? That you know?Perhaps a bit more civility and realism could emerge in the handling of others, especially on points of opposing OPINION. Perhaps we could look more into correcting flawed info or logic on all sides, rather than killing whatever states something out of step with evo and classic liberal positions?Hmmm... gotta go back to real life now, so I'm ending this post here.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Hi Archer,Good observations. Yes, you're right, we've built a community. I'm not unaware of that. You can do much more than just debate here. But while you're debating we do have rules. So when you say this: The real reasons have nothing to do with rule 4. The reasons have to do with interpersonal relationships and feeling like you're respected and listened to. If I haven't described that well enough you probably at least understand what I'm getting at.About one small thing you said in passing, while this doesn't alter the significance of your point, it wouldn't be correct to say that "I made them admins for a reason." Moose is in charge of moderator recruitment. The only people I selected myself were Buzsaw, Randman and Faith. And Moose a long, long time ago. He'd sometimes ask if I had an opinion on someone, but by and large he demonstrated skill at this task and I let him do his job.About the idea of recruiting a subset of the community and/or additional members to engage in more serious debate, if this is something you're interested in pursuing then let me know. I forget if I've voiced this publicly or only in the admin forum, but I've been concerned that we are not continuing to move forward, and this is an initiative I have been interested in exploring for some time. Why can't we do things like set up a debates between people like Ken Miller and Kent Hovind, for example (I hear Kent might have a lot of time on his hands soon)?More than a couple years ago I was already making noises to the admin crew and others I thought might be interested about things like an EvC Forum store, a private messaging system, more automation for assisting one-on-one debates, etc., but as it has turned out, for the most part if I don't do it, it doesn't happen, so other than the chat room, the only thing I had time for, nothing has happened.I am unfortunately hogtied regarding free time for the foreseeable future. All coding has come to an end, and while there may be a spike over the Christmas holidays, there won't be any significant time available for coding and other initiatives until July at the earliest. This could be a far, far better place than it currently is, but not if we're just playing out the story of the little red hen in real life. Or online life, I guess I should say, which sure feels pretty real sometimes. The site doesn't need money, since this is a very inexpensive hobby as hobbies go. It costs far less to rent a server than to do woodworking or play golf. What the site needs is expertise from people who can code, and from people who know how to put together websites.But I know that even if these types of things interest you that that's not why you're writing. Yes, we are a community. Our greatest failing is that we're a community of 1st class evolutionist citizens and 2nd class creationist citizens. The promotion of creationist members in to the Admin role was also solely my initiative, and while the results have been decided poor so far, I continue to believe that this is important. My belief that it is important to treat both sides equally is probably the most significant reason for concluding that integrity demanded that I aggressively challenge erroneous statements even though made by someone from the evolutionist side.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I didn't think he was bad, I only said he was worse than me. I still don't understand what the ruckus was about. Nwr's complaints are those of someone with too much pride and too thin a skin. If I had made the embarrassing errors that Nwr had made I would be so mortified that I would hide under a rock for month.Here's a little tidbit for you. After Nwr complained about me publicly and the thread started picking up comments, when Crash defended me Nwr then posted a complaint in the Admin forum for someone to do something about it. Omni obliged. Now, you tell me what's really going on. Like Archer, I don't believe it really has very much to do with rule 4 or rule 10 or anything like that at all.I don't really see what Nwr was doing in the way you do at all. For example, concerning his statement that the luminiferous aether was better supported than the Big Bang, you say there was a point I was missing there. Don't you think enormous blunders like this tend to not just obscure but to defeat any associated point? I'm afraid I can't see it any other way.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This statement articulates in one short paragraph what Archer has so masterfully detailed. No IDist creationist no matter what the credentials can possibly qualify for your on-limits discussion/debate fora as per your bill of rights you have established for this site.Furthermore all evolutionists must not assume the right of dissent when it comes to discussion/debate here nor freedom to state personal doubt concerning such matters as BB, redshift, evolution, et al. You essentially demand that All science debate MUST assume EvC perrogatives as THE science and if the position does not conform to THE science, the messenger needs to find another site.You keep on keeping on about NWR here when, as Archer implies, this is not the problem at all but simply another symptom of the problem. You can't have it both ways. You need to listen to Archer, Holmes, the good folks that left and others and decide what kind of a site you want here. NWR began to speak in the same vein, occasionally suggesting that diversity of opinion was good for productive debate and discussion. Imo, that's when you began keeping a watchful eye on him and putting him down.Percy, you're really quite alone in your stubborn unrelenting stance here. People are trying to kindly show you that you need to loosen up a bit. If you don't, I'm afraid you'll eventually find yourself with some hardliners quite alone discussing your collective ideology. I've recapped the statements in Archer's message which hit on the points which I suggest that you pay especially close attention to.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28