General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List')

A discussion is not formal, not necessarily on a set subject, has greater freedom in format and presentation.Debates are general more organized, with a very tightly set subject and procedures.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

You gave a two word phrase, key words that were usable in Google to come up with a link.Had you included a link with those key words, it still would be essentially a bare link. But Your link was so bare, there wasn't even a link.Need we have a forum rule prohibiting barer than bare links? I don't think so.Adminnemooseus

Thank you.

Prompting somebody to do his own search is often preferable to posting links. "Seek and ye shall find," is more likely to to provide enlightenment than, "Swallow what I feed you."

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If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate

While that may very well be true, and while such a procedure may be more acceptable in one of evcforum.net's "lite" topics, it is very contrary to evcforum.net's general operation standards - It is clearly a violation of forum rule 5:

quote:

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Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

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Jar's methodology makes me think of Jeopardy: Evcforum.net is not the place to be playing Jeopardy.Adminnemooseus

Where is the bare link?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Here: I'll call it an "implied bare link" - A link is implied but not presented. Had you actually had a link there, then it still would essentially have been a bare link.Look, if you had included a couple of sentences detailing the implications of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, and supplied a link to your source, I would have been happy and no suspension would have happened.Forum rule 5 calls for you to bring the information into your message and supply a source link. Giving key word(s) and saying "go Google" does not cut it.AdminnemooseusAdded by edit:Note: The relevant two Jar suspension announcements - 1 - 2Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Note.

Sorry, but I looked in the rules and found no references to implied bare links.But you did go look, even though you did not learn the whole lesson, I would give you at least partial credit, say a "c".Now is the risk posed by Cumbre Vieja only related to an eruption of the volcano?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

No set of rules of reasonable length can cover all contingencies, and so I've often asked people to follow the spirit of the guidelines. The goal of EvC Forum is productive discussion that promotes knowledge and understanding. Approaches that place too great an emphasis on a Socratic or overly terse and cryptic style tend to be provocative and are not consistent with EvC's philosophy. And in any event, whether anyone agrees or not, there's always rule 1:

1. Follow all moderator requests.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

SavageD commented/complained at message 214: Of course (IMO), his complaint does have merit. Generally, every SavageD reply gets several replies.In summary (as of message 214), SavageD posted 21 messages, to which he got 45 replies, to which he returned 19 replies. This says nothing about the quality or lack of quality of any of the involved messages.Anyway, one little Jar/SavageD/Jar exchange caught my attention (messages 161,163, and 168):161: 163: 168: Other than the quotes of previous message, the above quoted are the entire messages.I sure seems to me, that SavageD's "Natural Selection" definition was pretty good, and Jar was griping about it while agreeing with it.WTF?Adminnemooseus

SavageD's definition is pretty lousy. Backwards in fact. Natural selection doesn't CAUSE better adapted individuals to survive and have more offspring as he would have it. That's the basis of the process, not the outcome.If he had said that it was the process whereby adaptive traits spread through a population and identified the better reproductive success of better-adapted individuals as the cause of this it would have been much better.

SavageD may or may not have said something to that effect upthread, but I fail to see that (natural selection as a cause) in the above quoted. I don't see significant conflict between the SavageD and Jar statements quoted above.As I see it, SavageD's statement might have been worded better as: I fail to see how Jar's statement clarified the situation.Adminnemooseus

dictionary.com Seems pretty clear that he says that survival and better reproductive success are the result of the process. In reality differential reproductive success is the basic mechanism of the process, and survival is only important insofar as it contributes to reproductive success.

I agree with Adminnemooseus. I've seen evolutionists define natural selection in many different ways over the years, and this one seems okay, certainly more than adequate for a thread about the number of designers. If the thread were more directly about evolution then exerting effort getting the definition of natural selection precisely right would make more sense.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Percy,I bring up an issue that I feel needs the attention of the Head Master at this institution.We have seen moderators go in and hide messages, delete messages and banner messages as Off Topic. This is entirely appropriate and your crew here does a good job of keeping this herd of cats from getting too far out into la-la land.We have seen moderators go in and try to cleanup, linefeed and make paragraphs out of some of those awful solid pages of text that some submit in hope of, and fail in, communicating with other human beings. This is also a good thing and much appreciated.Now, this is trivial in action but leads to a greater issue.A moderator came into one of my posts and made a simple, trivial, capitalization change. Without my permission. Without my knowledge!Why?If this trivial change is within the moderators' purview then what other changes are the moderators free to make? Do the moderators have the freedom to make whatever changes they so choose to any post on the forum? Are there any limits? Is there some line drawn somewhere we do not know about?This issue should never have come about.First, EVC standards are intellectually well above the normal forum offerings on the Internet. As such this community has an expectation that members will, for the most part, make use of proper syntax and technical rules to facilitate communication. We also have the expectation of violating some rules for written and technical flexibility. Especially for those of us who understand the nuance involved and can recognize and make use of such devices.Second, we have an expectation of propriety, that our posts (errors, warts and all) will be faithfully conveyed to the community as we intend.Outside a required moderator action or the occasion of complete communication failure, our expectation is that no quarter should be given for any moderator to make any change to any of our messages at any time, ever!Questions:Are these expectations out of bounds? Do these moderator actions fit with your view of the community you have built here?Edited by AZPaul3, : emphasis