Report discussion problems here: No.2

I am peturbed by the style of debate going on in the the principles of world view thread. It seems to me that the Evo side have been overly hostile to John 10:10, and frequently approached the debate in a manner not conducive to productive debate, lines such as these:

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How long is the half-life of Uranium-238, genius?

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As my old Philosophy of Science tutor would say, "...epic fail..."

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Expecting an Answer Likely in Vain (as a post title)

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encourage a tone of debate that is highly adversarial and unlikely to proceed in a manner conducive to productive discussion.I would suggest that we will be more effective if we assume, or at least adopt the pretence of assuming, that John 10:10 (and other creationists) are intelligent, open minded, capable of understanding the arguments and evidence and here in good faith. And, further, attempt to avoid snideness, snarkiness and other tactics likely to drag the debate downwards.In particular, we should attempt to maintain these standards when debating with members who are relatively new to the site.

I agree, the moderation of the Living Fossils thread went from casually ignoring it turning into a sloppy cesspit of Gish Gallop (Calypsis4 I'm looking at you) and continual personal attacks (Dr. Adequate) to suddenly suspending everyone who didn't tread an impossibly narrow path. The first round of suspensions was justified, I think, but I'm not sure why the discussion of punctuated equilibrium - which, it seems to me, did relate to the original topic - merited a handful.While I like the tightly controlled topic model we adopt here in many ways, it does seem extremely difficult to get new Creationist members to understand and embrace it. It seems that Calypsis thought that his array of "living fossils" showed there were no transitionals or something along those lines. It also seems that Calypsis is both unwilling to start a new thread on this, and unwilling to engage with the excellent new topic on tetrapods started by Caffeine so I'm not sure how we could produce a productive discussion with this.I'm also not clear why Lithodid-Man copped a suspension but I did not but, hey, I'm not complaining

Yes, I did read them. As I presume did the other posters, the problem is in how narrowly it is interpretted, for example, in message 370, you said: I feel that the discussion thread begun in message 363 was directed towards this very question so I'm really not clear why you felt that that message and its replies deserved suspensions. Yes, it wondered into Punc. Eq. territory but that was brought up only because it specifically addresses the question of stasis in the fossil record and, as such, I regarded it as on-topic.

Okay, I understand your reasoning better now.

Will responding to Calypsis's analogy using cars be considered off topic and cop a suspension?

To be honest, I'm beginning to think he's a deliberate troll rather than a real Creationist. The trouble is, with Creationists, it's so hard to tell.

Regarding this: Why not simply instruct these posters not to post again in the salient topic, and only use mechanical bans if they persist? Onifire and hooah are quite capable of doing so, I'm sure.

The message rating system here is an embarassment. Our beloved admins have previously said it will be replaced with a better system real soon now. I can only hope it happens soon, or - at least - the current system gets disabled in the meantime.

From message 28 here.

In this message Catholic Scientist, speaking to dcarraher, our newest member with just 13 posts, said Can we please not have that kind of behaviour?Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Link was to a topic page number - Made it message specific.

As he ever shown the slightest sign of either remorse or changing his behaviour from his many suspensions? I can't see any sign of it. This being so, what's the point?

Dr. A writes brilliantly when he wents to, and can be funny when he's being obnoxious to our Creo friends but, in my view, he's excessively rude and his confrontationally obnoxious manner actively inhibits the kind of discussion that this site is supposed to foster.