Change in Moderation?

Hey enforce the guidelines stricter all you want, and equally. I can do without Mammuthus talking about my ass all the time. The amounts of parody is also not really appropiate, when someone wants to have a serious argument. Neither is referencing huge amounts of papers without actually saying how exactly it supports their position in line with the guidelines.Mammuthus simply wanted to play the streetfighter, and have the authority of a credentialled scientist as well. Not very smart. I considered writing to the Admin coz he was talking about my ass all the time, really sickening. But it's such a staightforward violation so why write to the Admins about what they could well see already. And I thought no, I am on the streets so to speak, Mammuthus doesn't know anything about the streets. He acts as though the streets are for fighting, how uncivilized. I can handle this guy, and wow!, there he went down and out with a bunch of evolutionists, amazing.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Is there a way to register a protest?DNAUnion has seen fit to target me for a perceived infraction to his worldview. Fine, I have no problem with people expressing their opinions. I have decided that it is pointless to get in a pissing match with him as he fails to recognize his mistake in the matter and just appears to be petty, pedantic and petulant.However on http://EvC Forum: Abiogenesis -->EvC Forum: Abiogenesis
he posts two quotes from my posts that appear to be contradictions. One is taken early on in the discussion and the second is later -- after his basic error has been pointed out several times. As such they are not contradictions, but a progression in the course of a discussion.This is blatant misrepresentation on the level of some creatortionista websites and is intellectually dishonest and hardly becoming of anyone on these boards (I have decided that there is no point in even reading anymore of his posts given this history in this manner).I am new here and do not know what protocols there are in such matters, so I am asking for guidance. On other boards there are filters that allow one to block the view of posts from certain people, something I very rarely do but would consider in this case if I knew the mechanism (those boards are not monitored so that is the only way to deal with trolls, which is the type of behavior exhibited by DNAUnion on the given thread).Thank you
AL.

I hope Creationist members and lurkers who suspect Creationists are not being given a fair shake here will take note of V-Bird's experience . He began participation here by promoting, let us call them, unorthodox views within physics. Questions were met with more cryptic scientific-sounding explanations, but also with criticism for being obtuse or ignorant, and later with refusals to explain further. Requests for references were put off or ignored. In less than a week he has been restricted from participation in the main topic forums, leaving him primarily with Free For All for his contributions.Note that it wasn't his views that caused the restrictions, but the way he dealt with discussion. The Forum Guidelines try to encourage constructive debate, and obscurantist or obfuscative approaches are discouraged. The actual precipitating event behind the restrictions was the "I'll do things my way, thank you" response to board administration, but it was his actions in debate that raised concerns.I call this to Creationists attention because V-Bird, who is definitely not a Creationist, has exhibited behavior identical to many Creationists who find themselves tangling with board administration. The Forum Guidelines are not suitable for framing just so we can admire them from afar. They are there for a reason, and they're there for everyone. Just remember that if you're permitted to respond, for example, "I think I've explained this just about enough to you pig-headed individuals who refuse to understand," then others can respond the same way to you. We try to discourage anyone from taking that approach here.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Administrator

Adminnemooseus:I can understand the desire to keep everyone posting. (I'm confused and kind of annoyed by iron-fisted administration that results in the opposite. But I can understand the impulse.) I gotta say, though, offering a creationist handicap seems silly to me.If there are tons of people with tons of arguments that can be lobbed at the creationist posters, I personally think that says more about the creationist arguments than it does about the evolutionist posters. Call me crazy, but to me, posting easily refuted arguments doesn't seem like a valid reason to treat a poster with kid gloves.

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"Perhaps you should take your furs and your literal interpretations to the other side of the river."
-Anya

Personally, I find the writings of DNAunion to be akin to those of Brad McFall, only with better structure.My impression is that DNAunion is one who is obsessed with "information theory". I could phase this as being a "techno-lawyer". With the exception of Admin/Percy, I don't think any of the moderating staff have any interest in, or feel for dealing with "information theory" type discussion.My thoughts are, if you wish to do discussions with the likes of Syamsu, Brad McFall, DNAunion, a certain others, you're pretty much on your own. If you have serious problems with doing such, then don't do it.Overall conclusion - I certainly don't think I have the insight or powers to fix all, or even most of the various perceived problems at this forum. If anyone thinks I do, they have massively overestimated my abilities.Adminnemooseusps to all - Responses to other moderation issues are also in the works, but with my feeble intellect, it takes me a fair amount of time.

Abby, I *did* take a close look at that thread a few days ago attempting to make sense of the discussion. There was kind of too much to make any deterministic assessment. It looked like you were claiming that while you had no countervailing evidence at this point in time, that didn't mean DU could be considered correct since all the evidence isn't in. I agree with DU that yours is a weak stance, but disagree that it means he has "won".As to DU "targetting" you, and as to the specific misrepresentation by cut-n-pasting from posts referring to different things, this is nothing to worry about. DU is well understood by most here to be unable to deal with agreement. He goes to much trouble to express his views in ways that look wrong in order to trap people into challenging something they actually agree with. That's why so many at first thought he was a Creationist. When cornered he usually ceases equivocating and makes a clear statement, but this is rare event.I agree with Moose. Ignore him.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Administrator

Is that really the best we've got?I've never seen DU react to a potentially dissenting opinion with anything but an immediate declaration of victory after ridiculing the poster. If he's not going to play nice with the big kids, can't we bust him to Free for All?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 03-29-2004]

Thanks for the info. One of my ?problems? is not knowing the characteristics of the players here, and realize that there are many that are more interested in playing games than in having a discussion. Posting truckloads of information on why viruses are not alive is irrelevant to a discussion that does not claim that viruses are alive, regardless oh how fascinating the information is. One could just as well post entire volumes of medical texts or books on how to play chess.Thank you for looking into the matter and trying to sort it out. "DU" does tend to cover the ground with lots of quotes and comments that make it hard to get back to the original points. A weak stance it may be, but that also does not mean invalid.To me the attempt to bridge the knowledge from non-living minerals to living cell involves (among other things) looking at all aspects of how the cell operates to see where that comes from, including those things that affect how it operates and the differing environments where it can occur. Personally I don't believe that the first living matter used DNA, but that is an opinion. I do know that whatever it was would now be classified as an extremophile because of the different environment that existed at that time, and that may very well mean the modern life is not a good model for that first living matter. We also know that DNA could not be the source for the first strand of DNA, and that to look for that you have to look beyond DNA. I have. I will.Thanks for letting me vent.
AL.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist

thanks.it is a bit of a tarbaby syndrome eh?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist

Crash, you worry about it too much. It's not life or death. Most of us have a pretty high opinion of you no matter what DU declares.The only really important thing that any one can do here is give someone enough information to make up their own mind. We might, once in awhile, be able to counter the falsehoods propagated by the likes of ICR. Very few of our visitors here are likely to "get it" but one or two, here and there, might.As for all the others. Ignore 'em.

just some observations re:
http://EvC Forum: Yes, teach all THREE ideas...if honesty is the policy. -->EvC Forum: Yes, teach all THREE ideas...if honesty is the policy.the title bears no relation to the content that I can see (what 3?)and perhaps {geology...} would be a closer match as it (purports) to discuss geological ages (or sub-ages mixed with ages to make the numbers work out)

I certainly think that the title needs improving.At the time I moved the topic, the "geologic ages" consideration caused me to put it into the "Dates and Dating" forum. Indeed, perhaps the "Geology..." forum would be the better place. I'm not yet going to re-move the topic. Let's see where it goes first.Thanks,
Adminnemooseus

quote:

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Protection of creationists, particularly where their behaviour verges on trolling, provides no benefit to the board and only generates frustration for those who make the effort of providing thoughtful messages which are ignored.

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As far as I could tell, Kendemyer was allowed to be mostly unresponsive and belligerant, although AdminAsgara did try to get him to follow forum rules a couple of times.I became very frustrated and stopped responding to him altogether because of his non-responsiveness.Why he wasn't hounded by the moderators to follow the forum guidelines when he so clearly was ignoring them was rather baffling to me.I am not unsympathetic to the idea that we may drive away less seasoned debaters if we pile on every single one. However, I am also not very interested in promoting the "warm body syndrome" in which we give special dispensation to posters (almost always creationists)who repeatedly violate the rules just because if we try to improve their behavior, they might go away.It makes those of us who do follow the rules pretty pissed off, and rightly so.I'd rather have a bit of a dry spell in which we speak among ourselves for a little while rather than letting the debate decline in quality.

Greetings all,I am all for open-ness and free speech etc.
I applaud the patience of many posters here,
I commend the moderators here as fair and polite.But,
the tone of this site is dropping with all these fundie rants - from Pyramid numerology to time-travellers to prophesy to miracles - lately we've had almost every crackpot theory known to man.What next ?
A detailed discussion of a perpetual motion machine which can square the circle AND count the number of angels on it ?Frankly,
I think its time these loony rants were stopped at post 1, instead of having the board haemorrhage for 600+ posts about whether Santa Claus exists or some-such cods-wallop.Iasion

The thing is sometimes you have to give the creationists some room to rant. Since the creationist side is faced with the burden of proof (that God exists at all) and there is no new creationist argument since the 50's, we will run out of things to talk about if crackpot theories are not permitted.There are some people who have the patience to deal with crackpot ideas, people like Ned (I love you, Ned!).The creationist population on these boards are diminishing at an alarming rate. Since the majority of them are crackpots, wiping them out will likely result in nothing but biologists talking to biologists in the near future. In other words, a very very boring world.Sure, it'd be nice if there were be more creationists that are capable of coherent thoughts. However, that has never been the case (no offense to anyone) and I just don't see it happening in the near future.After all, crackpot theories are amusing to read... and the crackpots themselves as well.

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The Laminator
For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!