First reaction by Richard Dawkins.

[95Theses]

Quote mined by Richard Dawkins, now there is a badge to wear with pride. Congratulations.

[Nora_Leonard]

And what's most insidious is that the thread is 'locked', none of us can comment.

Warm letters of support—who is he trying to kid? I would be astounded if there was a single member of the forum who would now be willing to write a warm letter of support.

[ficklefiend]

I'm hardly anonymous either. My deviantart site, which I have had in my sig since I signed up to RDF three years ago contains my real name and photo. I have posted my real name and where I live and photos on RDF.

I'm calming down now, but when I saw there was a response I did think "I wonder what will be quoted from the last dying minutes".

[Heresiarch]

So RD's whole pile of hostile quotes comes from here, from Rationalia.

Well, they couldn't very well have come from RDnet, because the critical posts there were killed.

The irony being that for the most part, the thread on RD.net consisted of considered posts, mostly saying that it sounded like a bad idea that would remove a lot of the community feel, but they were waiting to see how the new setup looked before making a final judgment. It wasn't until the reasonable responses went down the memory hole and the forum was locked that the bile started to flow. Of course, Richard never got to see the initial reactions of the people who visited his site day-in-day-out.

[virphen]

I don't think any of the nastiness quoted was from RDF...

Nope. All from here. I suspect that the Josh Timonen who signed up here yesterday actually was Josh.

Actually, it was me

If anyone can fill Josh's boots, I knew it would be you.

Fill them with piss, that is.

[natselrox]

I feel like I've been cheated.

When a person like Calilasseia searches through volumes of scientific literature to debunk a creationist argument or educate a lay-man like me, it's a special sight. You don't treat these people like trash. Sorry, Richard, you missed the point of being rational.

[95Theses]

I bet Josh had his sweaty little hard-on in his grubby paw as he posted that.

[BrettA]

And what's most insidious is that the thread is 'locked', none of us can comment.

Warm letters of support—who is he trying to kid? I would be astounded if there was a single member of the forum who would now be willing to write a warm letter of support.

Well, hold on a bit, now... Letters burn and of course fire's kind'a warm, right?

[Ilovelucy]

You will notice that the forum has in fact been closed to comments (not taken down) sooner than the 30 days alluded to in the letter. This is purely and simply because of the over-the-top hostility of the comments that were immediately sent in.

We originally posted a private message to the moderators only asking them not to use the information in the foundation's database to cause trouble, email Richard en masse, ask all of the users to go to a separate forum, or anything like that. We take the privacy of the users' data held by the foundation seriously—to that end the data shouldn't be used to solicit and promote other services. This is not what our users signed up for. This was only directed toward the small group of moderators, who had the access to the administration panel. Against the foundation's wishes, they turned around and posted this message publicly in the forum, and many people misinterpreted this to be directed at regular users. We were not telling the regular users what they could and couldn't do, they were all welcome to move to a separate forum. This public posting of personal communication, along with several inappropriate posts made by our very own moderators, convinced the foundation to close the forum down and make it read-only.

From that, it looks like all those OTT insults directed at Josh were made by the moderators, which isn't true. You all know that but the thousands of people reading the announcements won't.

So Flora, how do you feel that Richard has joined the party shitting on his moderating team? Great isn't it? None of us did this expecting a reward, but we didn't want to be turned into villains, scapegoats and all that. I' so glad that there's so many people who cans see through the bullshit. Fucking pathetic. I bet Scientologists treat their underlings better than this.

[Ironclad]

I think Josh is a sodding creationist mole.

[Surendra Darathy]

Bottom Line: Corporate Atheism has a bottom line.

One of the first things to establish on one's bottom (line) is incoming defamation.

[Coito ergo sum]

I have to say, I don't know what everyone is pissed off about, other than the fact that all this happened suddenly. I think that that's what set some people off - the fact that this sort of was sprung on the forum without a real clear statement of what's going to happen and when. Then a bunch of people flew into a rage, probably boiling over from being upset at Timonen for not showing them what they thought was due respect. And, then some members of RDF.net forum seem to have really gone over the line with the vitriol, as quoted by Dawkins. I mean, really folks...was that necessary? If you were paying for a website forum and suddenly a bunch a people started railing at you and threatening you, and cursing at you, would you tolerate it?

Worst case scenario: Dawkins decides the forum is not a good use of resources and ends it altogether. If he did that, so what? Is that a "betrayal?" Was anyone promised an eternal forum? Did anyone pay a subscriber fee?

Best case scenario: A better forum comes up which allows much the same functionality, as Dawkins implies in his post. In that case, great! It might be fun.

Somewhere between those two might lie some other options, like a more limited thread, more controlled, or whatever.

Whatever arises may not be to a particular person's liking, but I mean - come on - it's the end of a forum, not the end of the world.

Whoever wrote those nasty messages Dawkins referred to should be ashamed.

[Flora]

Quote mined by Richard Dawkins, now there is a badge to wear with pride. Congratulations.

Not just quote-mined but misattributed to a completely different source as justification for making the forum "read-only".

Richard has been completely misled about this in order to gain his support for a crass decision.

By the way, all this anger directed at Josh is somewhat misplaced. Most of the insensitive, knee-jerk actions were implemented by Andrew Chalkley (Chalkers) who I now wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him. How can people tell so many lies and expect to get away with it?

[Surendra Darathy]

Too bad he couldn't see behind the heat of it and acknowledge the real hurt and betrayal many feel.

Don't get emotionally-involved. Righteous indignation (expressed sincerely) never bought anyone anything. Always do your righteous indignation cynically. Revenge is best served cold.

[Mysturji]

Some venting after something like this is natural. But to dissect the millions of words on the subject here and draw out only those obviously angry ones is illustrative of mining for vitriol which will support a predetermined entrenchment.

I love it when you talk Cali to me.