Has the bias made this forum essentially irrelevant?

I would suggest that the responses show quite the opposite. Twelve quick response to this nothing of a topic shows that we're starving for some real debate.

Well, odds are he's got to eventually be right about something I suppose.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent him from supplying it except his own unwillingness to do so.

But you are currently involved in a debate with ICANT, yes?
Or do you think that EvC should satisfy ALL your debating needs?
That would seem to be a worthy aspiration, but not one that would often be achieved - by any web-site.
Or can you name a forum that satisfies your debating needs?And it seems to me that BD is confusing 'evilutionists' with 'people that agree with each other'.
People discuss more that just creation vs evolution on this site and they rarely agree.
Anyway, if we feel that the discussions are lacking then the onus is on us to make it better - not the moderators.BD's patently false assertion that "all of the dissenting voices have pretty much disappeared" is mainly caused by his on-going sulk since being told-off for poor forum behaviour.
And even if all the dissenting voices did leave, then there is no reason to blame the moderators.
The fact that his post was promoted shows how ironic (and wrong) his OP is.

Wow, that may be a record-a debate that was lost the moment it was promoted.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

​

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

​

It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

I think it is on a par with the other topics: "How do I get a topic promoted?" and "Why can't we swear on this fucking forum?".

Sigh. Yes... I don't know if I have debating needs, and I'm not complaining about the forum. I'm just saying that perhaps a large number of posts responding to what appears to be stinky troll bait might indicate something negative. I believe that Bolder-dash is simply ramping up to yet another suspension. I suppose I could pretend to be a creationist. Not disagreeing with any of that.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

duplicate removedEdited by NoNukes, : Gotta stop responding to myself

First, you were never here to debate. You are here to incite, insult then whine about the results. Second, I suppose you could leave.

This is a perennial question, but since it has been being asked almost since I joined here 8 years ago I think the answer kind of speaks for itself. What happens is that debaters on both sides come and go. There is probably a higher attrition rate on those on the creationist/IDist side but I'd ascribe that more to the pressure of being subjected to consistent dogpiling than necessarily to any moderating bias.So we get a few drive-by posters who ask one question and then never return, we get a few who stay for a few thread, maybe because they have a few quite specific issues they want addressed and we get some who stick it out for the duration. The number of creationists/IDers who get permanently suspended is much smaller than the numbers that just don't seem to feel invested enough to persist here.You might see the proportions of frequently posting evolutionist/creationist members itself to produce a form of inherent bias but it isn't really one that can be addressed short of going to creationist forums and begging creationists to come here and be dogpiled on. Increasing the numbers of creationists might not sognificantly affect this as most of the creationist/idists here seem to have their own very distinct ideas both about what specifically proves evolution to be wrong and what is a suitable replacement.to a large extent I think the problem is that the evolutionarily inclined members tend to be fairly reactive in the science forums. By this I mean that the usual situation is that a creationist/IDist starts a thread positing some problem or raising some objection to evolution, this is usually followed by anything between 3 and 15 evolutionarily inclined members responding directly to the OP.To me it seems less common for those on the evolutionary side to start threads in the Biological Evolution and Intelligent Design forums, and those that do seem to be much shorter threads generally.TTFN,WK

I am a believer in God (Christian one, whatever that means )and quite frankly I would rather be at a site where people disagree with me. I can learn so much more this way. (If I would ever let go of my bias)

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I didn't want to hijack Bolder-dash's thread by posting before he'd had a chance to respond, but it's been a couple days, so I'll say a little bit about why I promoted this thread.First, if Bolder-dash would like to discuss moderation then Adminnemooseus created a thread for that a while back: General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List')But what intrigued me about Bolder-dash's thread proposal was the suggestion that activity at EvC Forum has diminished. I'm not sure what he's basing this on. I'm going from memory a bit, but I think 2009 had around 52,000 posts, 2010 had 57,000, and this year projects out at 45,000. Moderation hasn't changed in any significant way that I'm aware of during this period.We do have a creationist moderator, AdminSlev, and the couple times that AdminSlev has responded to Bolder-dash he's been ignored.But while I can't produce any statistics, I do believe that Bolder-dash is correct that creationist participation at EvC Forum is significantly diminished, particularly informed creationist participation. I have been noting this change since the beginning of 2006, shortly after Judge Jones released his Kitzmiller vs. Dover decision.In my mind Dover and reduced creationist participation here are intimately connected. The Kitzmiller decision marked the end of creationist and ID efforts to overtly promote their views as science within public school systems. This seems to have reduced how much creationists know about their own views. Dover marked the beginning of not only a period of diminished numbers of IDists here, it also increased the number of traditional creationists notable by how little knew, not only about science but even about the very creationist views they were promoting.In the old days, incoherent and irrational creationists like Ray Martinez were outnumbered by those like Tranquility Base, TrueCreation and Peter Borger. Today our creationist ranks are dominated by those who lack both knowledge and rationality, like Dawn Bertot, Robert Byers, and, when he loses patience, Bolder-dash himself.I take this change as an indication that while we've won the public battle, the war itself has retreated to less public arenas. There's now less public dialog between the two sides, but the creationist movement is very successfully cementing itself even more firmly among evangelicals. Their new strategy of avoiding public conflict with science (and the public defeats that go with it) while still influencing schools at the local level must be considered a success. The ICR and Discovery Institute approach of aggressively taking on science is becoming more and more a thing of the past.This means our big "victory" at Dover was hollow, as I predict all such victories will be. The creation/evolution wars will continue to ebb and flow. It will only be a matter of time before creationists develop new strategies for attacking the science they think is wrong, and then creationist participation will increase again.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

You used to post site statistcs in charts. I'd like to see those occasionally again.

I liked them, too. There's three reasons I don't post them anymore:

1. Each time the webhost control panel is reinstalled the history is lost, introducing discontinuities and inaccuracies. It shouldn't be necessary to reinstall the control panel very often, but somehow or other things come up that make it necessary. Last year it was the hackers. The year before that it was upgrading the server. The year before that it was changing webhosting companies. And so on.
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2. The way the information is presented changes with each control panel version, sometimes in minor ways, sometimes in major ways.
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3. The number of search engines now scanning the site on a daily basis has skewed the numbers so as to be meaningless. Besides Google, Yahoo and Bing there are a number of others.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director