EvC Forum Facebook Page

From the Skepti-Forum pages, you may think about asking Knigel Holmes about how to set up Facebook pages. He set up all of the Skepti-forum network of pages on Facebook, including Skepti-Forum, GMO Skepti-Forum, Environment Skepti-Forum, Energy Skepti-Forum, and....you get the idea. He is a very pleasant person to chat with, so I am sure he would be willing to offer suggestions if you need help solving how to do something. Other than that, I am on my way to join up with the EVC folks in Facebook time!

Hey CS, I know from many of the Pro-GMO groups I participate in people have begun using aliases because of anti-GMO individuals making death threats against people defending biotechnology. The most recent one happened to someone and was received from someone in their own town, which was quite frightening for him, especially considering they threatened his family as well. Perhaps creating a Sock Facebook account for your EVC persona can allow you to retain your anonymity while debating, which should give you the freedom to continue to be a dick when you want to.

Myself, if someone wants to try and threaten me because of my viewpoints, I'll call them out on their crazy, so on Facebook I debate with my real name. I think that in debate, asking for anonymity, especially when individuals may threaten someone, is an understandable desire, however. So, I would say that Socking it would be the best route for you.

ABE - Worst case (as creating an account with a false name is technically against the rules), they will suspend the account if they determine it is fake and you would just have to make a new one.

Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

CS writes: So, I talk about stuff here that I never talk to my real life friends about. And I'd bet that some of them would be appalled by the things I've written here - its not that I actually believe them, but I did write them.

Definitely an understandable point and this is why I would suggest for you creating an alias on Facebook. Ask around on GMOLOL and someone there should be able to tell you how they manage to not get their alias account suspended.

Personally, I've decided that if people want to dislike me because of my opinions, which have generally been based on research and logical thought, then f*** 'em. My biggest concern with anonymity when I first started debating here was my parents finding out that I was atheist before I chose to tell them. This is no longer a problem as I have "come out of the no god closet" now and they have accepted it. This lack of the need of anonymity pushed me into further debating and challenging my ideas on other topics as well and I just don't stress about people hating me because of what I think. (I debate people in person often too, so it is slightly expected of me to be confrontational).

CS writes: On the other side, I don't want someone who hates me on here looking me up on Facebook and finding me in real life.

This I can understand as well, we have all pissed someone off on this board at one time or another. However, from most of my experiences on this board, I do not see a lot of hate thrown around even though we quite often disagree. We all respected Buzsaw, even though we did not agree with a thing he said, because he was passionate and enjoyed the debate. If you are willing to keep debating, even though you face immense odds (looking at you Faith), then I have enormous respect for your willingness to defend your ideas. It doesn't mean I agree with you, but I respect you for your moxy. Lol. Glad I could use the word moxy.

Now, does this mean your scenario isn't possible? No, it does not, I'm just not going to live my life in fear of it. If someone decides an internet debate is reason to murder me, then so be it.....Plus, law enforcement will have a nice online record of the recent comments to find them pretty easily, so I can rest assured that they will be punished. I have no children or significant other to protect from the loonies, they would have to come at me. I'm also not ashamed to report bodily threats and will gladly take a snapshot to save for posterity should someone attempt something. I can minimize the risk, but it is inherent without using an Alias.

CS writes: Thirdly, there's the creep factor... like: "Hey Matt, I didn't know you played percussion. And your girlfriend it pretty cute, but that green shirt is hideous. When did you go to San Fran? And is that your baby?"

I do play percussion! I am on the Arizona Cardinals Big Red Thunder Drumline! Great times. Ex-fiance, but ya know. A few years ago the Out of the Darkness walk to support suicide prevention was in San Francisco. Sixteen miles of walking through the hills of San Francisco....that was very tiring. The baby in any picture is not mine, but my brother's. See, the creep factor doesn't really bother me because I tend to be an open person anyways. Lol. I was always taught honesty is important and try to take that into my everyday life.

Again, I think some people, if they are more comfortable, should use Aliases, but I think we need to bring this forum onto Facebook as well. First, we can get new creationist opinions to debate against, something that has been lacking in the forums. No offense to Faith, she makes a valiant effort to strongly defend her peoples, but some new blood would be nice and could only increase the action on the board. Which, I find beneficial because it makes me look up information I had not heard about before.

Hey Percy, I am sending a message to Knigel from Skepti-forum right now to see if he has any possible solutions for the search problems we are experiencing. Once he gets back to me, I will let you know what he has to say on the problems and how to fix it. I'm going to include a link to this specific page of discussion, in case he needs some clarification.

ABE- Just heard back from him and it does appear that Facebook's search functions are very limited. I will include his entire message, but he says that Facebook details are closed to Google searches, so that explains why content can't be searched for via Google.

Knigel writes: Hey there, Facebook sucks The only search terms will typically be those in the name, so if you want EVC, you might want to add it in the title like (EVC). Facebook is also a mostly closed system, so very little will come up in Google.

Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Okay, we had a little conversation to try and find possible solutions to the search function. It appears that there is a lot of limiting factors. I'll just post the whole conversation and perhaps someone with more computer know how can work a viable solution.

Knigel writes: For sure, we're pushing FB to its limits with the SF project, and this platform really isn't ideal. So many restrictions and silliness. I'd suggest setting something else up to assist. For example, a Wiki or something like we do in SF. Organise specific debates and then add those discussions elsewhere.

Matt writes: Yeah, Percy already has a well constructed forum using dboard v. 4.0, which is the primary location where debates occur. If we were to add links to the Facebook to the forum, those should then be searchable via Google, correct? Albeit, this may not easily serve to direct traffic into the debates...

Knigel writes: Well, the links might come up, but I wouldn't depend on that providing too much traffic. Perhaps continuously link back and forth between the two so that there's a lot of intermixing between the official forum and Facebook.

Sadly, I have never been the moderator of a Facebook group, so I have not had experience with linking from that side of the aisle. My guess is he is saying to include several links on Facebook to specific pages within here, such as creating pinned threads that can link people to each individual forum, i.e.-Big Bang and Cosmology, Comparative Religions, or Intelligent Design as examples. Then, from the forum side, we would create links, I'm guessing listed under Essential Links to specific threads on Facebook. Knigel is saying this connection between the two sites could allow enough information to exist that Google searches would turn up the site, but even he said this may not work. I'm noticing that when I search for Skepti-forum on Google, I tend to only get the results that apply to the Skepti-forum wiki that he created.

ABE - I did find Skepti-forum's Facebook page as well through Google now, so perhaps I just missed it the first time I searched.

I will say, I was just able to find us on Facebook through Google by searching for "EVC Forum Facebook" so it looks like there are some connections between the two (I think it is based on the similarity of the website link listed on Facebook and the normal search responses for EVC Forum on Google.

Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Well, it appears that you can pin certain posts to the top of the page. What they do in GMO Skepti-Forum that shows an example of a link can be seen in their pinned post. It is literally just typing the link into a pinned post. We could possibly use this to direct people to the rules pages and some specific sections, I do not think there is a limit on the number of links that you can include in a pinned post, so we could make a sort of directory post with all these different links. An example (although they only put one link in it) can be seen in the pinned post at the top of the GMO Skepti-forum, found here:

GMO Skepti-forum

ABE - I just expanded the post I was talking about and actually it contains a few links within the pinned post. That is the sort of idea I was thinking about when I said a directory.

As for how they set things up on their wiki to link back to the Facebook page, this is the set-up I can find that shows all the network that Knigel has created. This is from the Skepti-forum wiki:

Skepti-forum network

Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.