First reaction by Richard Dawkins.

[ficklefiend]

I think it does have a bit to do with maturity. There is change and then there is change. On the scale of things to bitch about, taking down or modifying the RDF chat forum is pretty far down on the list.

Then commenting on that change is equally far down the list and not the vitriolic, immature, rotten response. Of course hyperbole was used, that is how people talk, especially on forums.

I've been sitting here these past couple of days editing my thesis paper and checking back and forth on the comments building. It hasn't affected my life. I'm not spitting feathers. I fully intended to return to RDF as soon as it opened, at least to try it out. Now I've been quoted and held up as the very worst sort of response to an internet drama.

I'm going to go and continue with my stats...

[95Theses]

In the interest of fairness perhaps Richard or PZ should go and have a look at the actual thread on RDF when the announcement was made, it was no where near as vitriolic as what happened on here, AFTER Josh had :

a) Removed PM Functionality
b) Deleted tens of thousands of science posts
c) removed signatures that attempted to give people another place to meet
d) Locked the forums and turned off search completely to make it nigh impossible to archive any content.
e) specifically forbade mods from helping people to arrange to go to a new forum
f) redirected archival programs to a Rick-roll

Oh wait, you can't, it's been conveniently perma-deleted in it's entirety.

yes vitriol was thrown here, but hard working staff members were treated like utter shit.

[Surendra Darathy]

Take a deep breath everyone - the sky is still above us. The ground is at our feet. The world still turns. And, there are still plenty of forums to post in.

Ain't that the truth.

[Coito ergo sum]

What RD doesn’t address, and doesn’t even acknowledge, is the way in which the whole thing was miss-managed. It’s about recognising that people are uncomfortable with change and having a plan in place to manage the process in the right way. Explaining why, listening, reassuring, responding to comments and all that standard text-book stuff. This fiasco would make a great business school case study in precisely what not to do.

A humble admission of “I got it wrong” would be a good start but no, everyone else is at fault. Does he not understand that “splenetic hysteria” is exactly what happens when you seriously screw-up change management?

If I had to hazard a guess, I would suggest the following:

1. Dawkins hasn't recognized that there has been any "mismanagement" and reads the reaction as immaturity;
2. Dawkins doesn't consider it a worthwhile endeavor to waste his time figuring out whether Josh injured the feelings of some grown men and women who for some reason became emotionally invested in what amounted to an online chat room.
3. Nobody ever accused Dawkins of being the "touchy feely" type. "Explaining why, listening, reassuring..." - please - nobody was getting fired from paying jobs. It was a web forum. My guess is that he figures that a new forum will be up in a while and he seems to think, according to his comment on the subject, that people will still be able to post what they want.

I think if this was something we paid for it might make sense to be really irate about it. As for me, thanks for the 18 months, give or take, of fun discussions, debate and all that. Hopefully the new thing will be really good too.

I appreciate your POV, but regardless of whether Richard Dawkins (or you) take discussion forums seriously, other people do. Discussion forums are the new town hall, and RD.net's was the biggest atheist themed town hall in the world.

I acknowledge that, which is why I applauded your point in another post. I can see your point.

My suggestion would be that there are ways to deal with these things that do not amount to ranting and raving and cursing the name of Dawkins. There's a button on RDF that allows one to email the administrator from one's personal website and I would think a nice, well thought out email discussing the things that we would like to see preserved in an itemized and understandable fashion would go a long way if a good number of people made reasonable suggestions.

What I can't figure out is what someone cursing out Dawkins and calling him names here or anywhere else would expect to achieve. It's not like all the screaming and crying is going to make anyone say, "oh, shit, I was wrong. My bad, folks. The forum will be back up and running with no changes tomorrow." Of course that's not going to happen.

Yes, people value the forum. I, for one, valued it very much. I went there all the time. It was my favorite place to post. You and I had many discussions, usually on opposite sides, and I always thought it was great (I was under a different name). But, even though I value it, that doesn't mean I give it an importance that it doesn't deserve. Even if they decided to end it - say, because of cost issues and they wanted to take the site in a different direction - I would be disappointed and I would oppose such a move, but in the grand scheme of things, there would be far greater things to go off half-cocked about.

[pzmyers]

I'm a "celebrity" now? Heh. I'm a guy with a blog, with absolutely zero influence over Josh, and no obligations in return.

Although I am a little miffed. I've seen the traffic numbers on RD.net from Google Analytics, and it gets about 1/2 to 2/3 of the traffic of Pharyngula (and sorry to inform you of the diminution of your status further still, but the forums only got about 1/4 of the traffic of the whole site). And you guys keep talking about how RD.net is the biggest.

And yeah, I know how important these kinds of sites can be to people -- they often represent the only outlet for atheists in a sea of superstitious fools to reach out and express themselves. When I say that they are not that important, I mean that the particular instantiation of a mode of communication, whether it's RD.net or Rationalia or Pharyngula or RaptureReady, isn't the big deal. The fact that you're communicating is what matters. And that hasn't changed.

[natselrox]

I speak from past experience with forum drama. Take some time and cool off. It's not that important.

Well, 'importance' is a relative term. Some people think that your blog is not really important. Some think that RationalityTM and AtheismTM are not important. All of us don't have the same idea of 'importance'.

Oops! I get your point now...:UP:

[Crazyfrog]

I think it does have a bit to do with maturity. There is change and then there is change. On the scale of things to bitch about, taking down or modifying the RDF chat forum is pretty far down on the list.

No. Absolutely nothing to do with maturity, it's to do with psychology. What happened here really is a classic change management screw-up, go look it up.

[Ilovelucy]

The negative comments started en masse AFTER Josh decided to not only ban, but to DELETE the accounts of long time, well written, caring people who each had at least 5000 quality posts on the forums. When Josh let the power go to his head, peeople reacted. There MAY have been a small amount of discontent about any forum changes, but we did not get ANGRY or start NAME CALLING until Josh took upon himself to delete tens of thousands of high quality posts for his own selfish, nefarious reasons. He thought that by deleting accounts he could quench the people saying they didn't want change. Instead all he did is make all the good contributors to the site leave.

Indeed. When some members of RDF lost control, and went on uncharacteristic rampages, we had a bunch of measures. Sometimes we PMd them and asked them to stop or edit their posts, sometimes we binned (moved out of sight, not deleted) the posts, sometimes we warned them or put them on a 24 hour posting holiday. These measures often helped things to calm down. Let's compare that to how Josh, or Chalkers, treated hard working moderators and members in their moment of rage?

[Coito ergo sum]

Oh and Excommunicate - your and my reaction is just about the same on this one. You are expressing your disagreement, but I don't see you raving or throwing a tantrum. Your suggestions are balls-on right - it was a gigantic forum, with many many atheists congregating in one giant movement. That's very important. Even if there are, as PZMeyers posted above, people who we don't want to encourage being on the site because of their vitriol, your point is important - we can't have 85,000 atheists, agnostics and freethinkers in one place on the web without a few bad apples. They may want to consider that.

[cowiz]

I'm a "celebrity" now? Heh.

Yeah you are, you were in that rather excellent movie "Expelled"

[living easy]

I think that Dawkins believes that if he has hurt the feelings of many hundreds of people that he would consider that worth more than 20 minutes of his time, especially when a group of those people have contributed in money and effort to his cause.

No he wouldn't. All he desires to say is thanks for the money suckers, and fuck you. I'd wager his cold treatment of disgruntled RDF forum members will continue.

Get over it, he doesn't give a shit about anonymous forum atheist, he cares only about his brand name in respectable circles, and hence the purge designed to appease them.

[klr]

I think most of you are wrong. I think Richard Dawkins did not read this website, and did not read the comments made here. I think Josh quoted comments from this website made about him, and send them to Richard Dawkins in a very selective and tendentious manner. I think that Richard Dawkins, led by this limited information, made false assumptions about what has been going on.

I do not believe that Richard Dawkins himself quote-mined or misrepresented the case. I think that it is important that someone presents a time-line, and sources those comments, and places them within a context. I think it is important that Dawkins realises that (1) the comments at the change were not so much ones of conservatism, but at shock that all the old posts would be removed (10 GB's, equal to wikipedia in size), (2) the criticism was largely one of disappointment, not hostility, (3) people were outraged not at the change, but at the way moderators were handled, (4) accounts and posts of highly contributing members were deleted and (5) then and only then were these comments made towards Josh.

I think that at the heart of this is a misunderstanding, and I believe that Richard Dawkins, when facing this information will reconsider his perspective.

Someone in his line of work probably figures this whole uproar is worth about 20 minutes of his time, if that.

I think that Dawkins believes that if he has hurt the feelings of many hundreds of people that he would consider that worth more than 20 minutes of his time, especially when a group of those people have contributed in money and effort to his cause.

I think this as well. Not just because he likely wouldn't have the time to keep track of all the reaction here, but because he would also be aware that these comments were made after RD.net was locked, in reaction to that, and were obviously not made there. And if he did know all of this, then he'd be guilty of lying. He has implied that the comments which immediately followed the initial announcement were of the same tenor as those that he quoted, and that would be wrong. Of course, he's never seen what was actually posted at RD.net, has he?

[num1cubfn]

What RD doesn’t address, and doesn’t even acknowledge, is the way in which the whole thing was miss-managed. It’s about recognising that people are uncomfortable with change and having a plan in place to manage the process in the right way. Explaining why, listening, reassuring, responding to comments and all that standard text-book stuff. This fiasco would make a great business school case study in precisely what not to do.

A humble admission of “I got it wrong” would be a good start but no, everyone else is at fault. Does he not understand that “splenetic hysteria” is exactly what happens when you seriously screw-up change management?

If I had to hazard a guess, I would suggest the following:

1. Dawkins hasn't recognized that there has been any "mismanagement" and reads the reaction as immaturity;
2. Dawkins doesn't consider it a worthwhile endeavor to waste his time figuring out whether Josh injured the feelings of some grown men and women who for some reason became emotionally invested in what amounted to an online chat room.
3. Nobody ever accused Dawkins of being the "touchy feely" type. "Explaining why, listening, reassuring..." - please - nobody was getting fired from paying jobs. It was a web forum. My guess is that he figures that a new forum will be up in a while and he seems to think, according to his comment on the subject, that people will still be able to post what they want.

I think if this was something we paid for it might make sense to be really irate about it. As for me, thanks for the 18 months, give or take, of fun discussions, debate and all that. Hopefully the new thing will be really good too.

I appreciate your POV, but regardless of whether Richard Dawkins (or you) take discussion forums seriously, other people do. Discussion forums are the new town hall, and RD.net's was the biggest atheist themed town hall in the world.

I acknowledge that, which is why I applauded your point in another post. I can see your point.

My suggestion would be that there are ways to deal with these things that do not amount to ranting and raving and cursing the name of Dawkins. There's a button on RDF that allows one to email the administrator from one's personal website and I would think a nice, well thought out email discussing the things that we would like to see preserved in an itemized and understandable fashion would go a long way if a good number of people made reasonable suggestions.

What I can't figure out is what someone cursing out Dawkins and calling him names here or anywhere else would expect to achieve. It's not like all the screaming and crying is going to make anyone say, "oh, shit, I was wrong. My bad, folks. The forum will be back up and running with no changes tomorrow." Of course that's not going to happen.

Yes, people value the forum. I, for one, valued it very much. I went there all the time. It was my favorite place to post. You and I had many discussions, usually on opposite sides, and I always thought it was great (I was under a different name). But, even though I value it, that doesn't mean I give it an importance that it doesn't deserve. Even if they decided to end it - say, because of cost issues and they wanted to take the site in a different direction - I would be disappointed and I would oppose such a move, but in the grand scheme of things, there would be far greater things to go off half-cocked about.

People are angrily objecting to what Josh has done (see thesis95 above), NOT at Dawkins. Your misunderstanding of what is going on explains why you are not upset with what happened.

[M]

I'm a "celebrity" now? Heh. I'm a guy with a blog, with absolutely zero influence over Josh, and no obligations in return.

Although I am a little miffed. I've seen the traffic numbers on RD.net from Google Analytics, and it gets about 1/2 to 2/3 of the traffic of Pharyngula (and sorry to inform you of the diminution of your status further still, but the forums only got about 1/4 of the traffic of the whole site). And you guys keep talking about how RD.net is the biggest.

And yeah, I know how important these kinds of sites can be to people -- they often represent the only outlet for atheists in a sea of superstitious fools to reach out and express themselves. When I say that they are not that important, I mean that the particular instantiation of a mode of communication, whether it's RD.net or Rationalia or Pharyngula or RaptureReady, isn't the big deal. The fact that you're communicating is what matters. And that hasn't changed.

Oddly, they are far more important thatn you think if you move in circles where the majority are vocally theist (working class, low education, rural communities throughout all countries, I reckon). You may have bigger comfort zones in your real world than many forum members. It's all about trying to see things from a different perspective and I don't think RD is able to see far beyond the hallowed halls.

[virphen]

I really think people need to drop the 85,000 users stat. Once you remove trolls, drive-bys, socks, and people who lasted 2 minutes before meeting TimONeill , the number will be much, much, much lower.

(P.S. just kidding Tim, love your work)