First reaction by Richard Dawkins.

[anna09]

Just PM'd Richard using a bit of what I've posted here (*gulp* first time ever, and no doubt the last! )

You should have recommended that he added his letter to the forum to his power point presentation the next time he does his talk on quote mining.

[Crazyfrog]

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?

[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.

ALL of those quotes come from this forum - AFTER the RD.net forum had been closed.

They are most certainly NOT a response to the letter from Josh that Dawkins quotes - they are a response to Josh's criminal vandalism and Stalinesque behaviour.

Ah, well, o.k., I stand corrected. Who cares, though?

Criminal vandalism? Stalinesque behavior? It's a private foundation's website and they decided to do something different with the forum.

The great thing is, this forum is about the same as RDF's forum, and seems a bit less persnickety in terms of what stuff people can post. That RDF forum and all of the convoluted moderation rules was getting a bit tough to navigate anyway. It was o.k. to make sexist comments and call women bitches and whores, but call a homosexual a queen and they virtually threw you in the stocks and broke out the thumb screws. The constant quibbling about whether someone criticized "Islam" or "Muslims" and whether it made a difference, and the way that the site was pretty much run with a severe slant to the Left were also difficult to deal with sometimes.

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.

[Heresiarch]

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.

ALL of those quotes come from this forum - AFTER the RD.net forum had been closed.

They are most certainly NOT a response to the letter from Josh that Dawkins quotes - they are a response to Josh's criminal vandalism and Stalinesque behaviour.

Exactly. There were around 300 pretty reasonable posts in one thread, maybe four or five posts in that thread that should have been deleted. There were three other threads that should have been deleted and the creators of them banned. Those other threads were not attacking Josh or Richard, they were users attacking other users who they had argued with over the years on the forum.

I didn't see any vitriol directed at Josh until after the forum was closed.

[Gawd]

Damn, Dawkins has become senile. Guess he has some defective genes.

[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.

[klr]

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?

We wouldn't have known this at time though. Josh Timonen would have been the prime suspect.

You know, there's a certain irony in this: I was the focus of some absolutely villainous abuse last year on the front page, and neither Richard Dawkins nor Josh Timonen raised a finger to help, object or commiserate in any way. Yet it was all played out right in front of them. I wouldn't mind, but I was only acting on an expressed wish from Richard Dawkins that the front page be moderated in the same manner as the forum, but had to do so in a near-vacuum, since Josh Timonen did not seem too focused on what this might mean.

:pissed: :pissed: :pissed: :pissed: :pissed:

[Coito ergo sum]

I wrote in an RDF thread about two weeks ago: "Is it me or has the quality of this forum just gone down hill?....Everyday this forum begins to mimic more and more the behavior of the most revolting fundie theist." It seems that Dawkins realized this as well, and decided to clean house, and fuck some of his devotees in the ass while at it.

This is nonsense. Which forums did you participate in? I participated chiefly in the Politics forum and had a blast and learned a LOT from the people I debated with. An open forum is not a closed moderated debate between academics. Perhaps that's what Dawkins wants from now on --that's fine with me. But his and his web team's reaction to all of this is callousness, to put it kindly. I can't tell you how many other new atheists I referred to Dawkins' site precisely because of the great discussion to be had on his forum and the great community feel. His forum had grown to 85,000 members, with 2000-3000 new posts per day, but decides to throw it all away, taking draconian step after draconian step after getting butthurt by a few nasty commenters out of the thousands of regular users that used the forum every day. Then, this "Message from Richard..." is like a slap in the face, quote mining the worst comments he can find and ignoring very real arguments and questions regarding the changes and how they have been handled in order to justify the actions of his webmaster.

Despite my previous comments on the subject, by which I still stand, I also see your point. I think that if anything, the issue here is the suddenness of the decision and the perceived callousness. I can certainly see someone saying "that was bullshit and I'm not going back." To me, though, the reaction here and the sudden about-face, turning Dawkins into some sort of evil enemy is a bit much. Someone in his line of work probably figures this whole uproar is worth about 20 minutes of his time, if that.

[eXcommunicate]

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.

[Flora]

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.

I feel very annoyed that he is being misled with false information from (probably) Andrew Chalkley in order to cover up his incompetence. Until Richard has the full picture of what has happened and why, he'll just respond to the lies he's being fed.

[Comte de Saint-Germain]

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.

[pzmyers]

People seem to be operating under a weird misapprehension that Richard Dawkins is an absentee landlord who only hears about what is going on in the forums when he gets reports from his brutal overseer, Black Josh. It's not true -- he is pretty savvy about this internet stuff, and can actually follow what you wild and crazy forum denizens say. And what he has been seeing is not pretty. Just look at this thread and the kinds of abuse people are heaping on Josh Timonen! I guarantee you that he is not browsing the forum here, or was browsing the RDF forums, and thinking, "Gee, these are exactly the kinds of people and comments I aim to encourage". I'd guess he's feeling glad to be rid of some of the riff-raff.

And at the same time, the RDF has lost some good people whose input has been and would be valuable. If those people weren't all baying at Josh in the current witchhunt, that is.

I speak from past experience with forum drama. Take some time and cool off. It's not that important. The people you're blaming really aren't out to hurt you (honestly, Josh is a good guy, his job is simply much larger than shepherding a forum, and those who hate him have really lost perspective), and if you show a little patience and tolerance, you might even be able to get them to help you out with some of your reasonable requests. I'm sure they actually like and respect many of the contributors and the general importance of the social aspect of the forums, but are reasonably concerned about the rather more vicious minority. What I see here doesn't help. There are some people here they would rather not see coming back to the RD forums. Can you guess why?

It's not because they're nasty vengeful control freaks, either. It might have more to do with the fact that they're human beings.

[Crazyfrog]

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.

Nothing to do with immaturity, you should read-up a bit on change management.

OK, it's his website and he can do what he likes. In which case he should quit bitching about the results of his transfer plan (or lack of it).

[Coito ergo sum]

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?

Well, that's the real fucking question, isn't it? Is saying something anonymous and chickenshit on-line the same thing as saying it with a byline? No, I don't fucking think so.

They weren't railing at him in his own forum, were they? The whole point of not being anonymous is that you have to watch your mouth, since libel and slander still apply to those who are not anonymous. After all, it's still permitted to defame someone in graffiti on an anonymous wall, as long as you don't get caught for defacing public property.

Apparently, there is some reference to moderators and users posting and/or PM'ing stuff before the site was shut down that were not appropriate. I don't know what those things were. I thought Dawkins was mentioning some examples in his post, but if I'm wrong on that then I stand corrected.

Sure - it's still permitted by law - but, Dawkins doesn't have to tolerate it on his website. I.e. - if I own a wall and someone graffiti's it, then I can certainly clean it off.

[cowiz]

Hi PZ, good to see you here. Welcome.

Good job in not getting involved