Please help: original sources needed, and knowledge

[Gurdur]

Hiya,
asking you all a big favour. I need to do another couple of blog posts, and I like to try to be as very accurate as possible. I need original sources with links for certain quotations, and I would also like to ask a couple of questions.

The Articles on the front site and the comments belonging to them on http://richarddawkins.net/articles/ are obviously not part of the forum on http://forum.richarddawkins.net/.

Who prior to 20 February was responsible for modding comments on the articles?

Especially: Ophelia Benson is repeatedly complaining of a great deal of insulting flames directed at her in comments on article pieces. When I look through all those, it seems mild. Is there more? Have a great many flames against Ophelia Benson been deleted in the past?

Then, the following quotes:

Topsy (former RDF Volunteer) wrote:Re: The Times article

I was feeling pretty sick when I read Richard's "Outrage" announcement because those insults he quoted were not at all representative of the vast majority of forum members, they were made AFTER the forum was locked and they were NOT sent to Josh or even posted on RD.net forum. They were harvested quotes from a very small minority of people posting elsewhere.
Richard has been informed of this and I was desperately hoping that he'd edit his announcement accordingly.
It's too late now because it's on the Times website and the thousands of loyal, intelligent, rational forum members have been misrepresented as a bunch of foul-mouthed, vitriolic thugs by the man who so inspired them.
To any moderate Christians reading this who have been labelled as disgusting due to the evil, homophobic rantings of the Westborough Baptist Church, I know how you feel.

Original source and link please? And is Topsy active here on this site?

Richard Dawkins, 2008:
“It is a community, and that is a valuable part of it. Many of our forum threads have an atmosphere of friends going out for a drink and chatting. I think that is valuable, and I don’t think we should insist on sticking to serious topics. That would be a good way to stifle the sense of community, and that would be a real shame.”

Original source and link please?

A huge many thanks in advance, I was unable to find the original sources myself.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

I (very) vaugely recall the Ophelia Benson front-page saga. My impression was that she ran into a couple of jerks there, and decided (after their comments were not instantaneously deleted) that the whole Dawkins website was a total cesspool.

Ironically, I seem to recall Richard standing up for the majority of decent posters, and urging Ophelia to stay, and give the place a chance (she didn't).



Funny-old-world isn't it?

[klr]

Gurdur,

Topsy is Flora on this forum. This is her profile page: http://rationalia.com/forum/memberlist. ... file&u=616

She is also an active user at the new forum http://www.rationalskepticism.org/index.php, where she is registered as Topsy.

EDIT: Topsy/Flora herself should be able to point you to where she made that statement.

[klr]

Re the comment from Richard Dawkins in Oct. 2008: It is kosher - I certainly remember it. But it's hard to track down, because the search facilities there are so degraded. Google will find references to the quote being quoted, but not the original, as it was in part of the forum that require users to logged in to read. I'm still searching ...

EDIT: And I'll have to resume later. It's unbelievably difficult trying to find that needle in haystack.

[Heresiarch]

Especially: Ophelia Benson is repeatedly complaining of a great deal of insulting flames directed at her in comments on article pieces. When I look through all those, it seems mild. Is there more? Have a great many flames against Ophelia Benson been deleted in the past?

I've only ever seen Ophelia Benson complain about comments on articles on the front page of the site, never about posts to the forums. The front page comments were moderated by people employed by the foundation and not by the volunteers who moderated the forums.

[Gurdur]

... The front page comments were moderated by people employed by the foundation and not by the volunteers who moderated the forums.

Whom? linkys to lists showing mods for the comments? official?

Many thanks, all!

[klr]

Gurdur,

Is this the front page article that you are referring to:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4955

Or was there an earlier one? Ophelia Benson has four pages of comments to front page articles, going back a few years:

http://richarddawkins.net/userComments,page1,3648

Explaining how the front page has been "moderated" (I use the term advisedly) over the years is rather difficult. The forum and the front page area are pretty much chalk and cheese, even though anyone who posts on the front page must register on the forum first (a suggestion of mine some years ago to prevent impersonation). Most of the the front page regulars rarely if ever posted on the forum proper, and there existed a sort of mutual and ill-concealed disdain between the two.

More later, but some people reading will guess where I'm going with this tack. Patience ...

[Thinking Aloud]

Richard Dawkins, 2008:
“It is a community, and that is a valuable part of it. Many of our forum threads have an atmosphere of friends going out for a drink and chatting. I think that is valuable, and I don’t think we should insist on sticking to serious topics. That would be a good way to stifle the sense of community, and that would be a real shame.”

Original source and link please?

A huge many thanks in advance, I was unable to find the original sources myself.

Here we go!

http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... &start=320

The post is this one:

http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 0#p1429959

[Thinking Aloud]

Here's an interesting post from RD shortly afterwards:

http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 0#p1430000

I feel like I'm trapped. A part of me understands where Richard is comming from. But another part of me thinks this is rather extreme. Not everything in the OT was "horrible" and I liked being to go to other adults, on this forum, about my problems. It formed a sense of family, that I do not actually get from my real family. I like being able to recieve advice on many things, that includes sexuality, that I might not other wise be able to get on another forum.

This sucks. I don't know what to do

OK, so we need to have a constructive discussion about what to do. OF COURSE not everything in the OT was horrible, and that is why we need to preserve it without running the risk of playing into the (all too eager) hands of our enemies. If you don't like the guidlines Josh drew up, I'm sure he'd be open to suggestions. Would you like to try drafting some guidelines yourself? It might be really helpful.

Richard

Richard Dawkins
Forum Member

Posts: 436
Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:37 am

[DMac]

Original source and link please? And is Topsy active here on this site?

Are you looking for that quote by Topsy or the quotes that were quote-mined? The latter were referenced by 95Theses in this post here:

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 05#p355577

[lordpasternack]

Richard Dawkins, 2008:
“It is a community, and that is a valuable part of it. Many of our forum threads have an atmosphere of friends going out for a drink and chatting. I think that is valuable, and I don’t think we should insist on sticking to serious topics. That would be a good way to stifle the sense of community, and that would be a real shame.”

Original source and link please?

A huge many thanks in advance, I was unable to find the original sources myself.

The Dawkins quote can be found here: http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 0#p1429959

[klr]

Richard Dawkins, 2008:
“It is a community, and that is a valuable part of it. Many of our forum threads have an atmosphere of friends going out for a drink and chatting. I think that is valuable, and I don’t think we should insist on sticking to serious topics. That would be a good way to stifle the sense of community, and that would be a real shame.”

Original source and link please?

A huge many thanks in advance, I was unable to find the original sources myself.

The Dawkins quote can be found here: http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtop ... 0#p1429959

It was in his very first post on the matter. I read it, but didn't see.

[Gurdur]

Hiya folks,
I now have the very original sources for all quotations I asked about, so many thanks indeed!

Now this:

.... Explaining how the front page has been "moderated" (I use the term advisedly) over the years is rather difficult. The forum and the front page area are pretty much chalk and cheese, even though anyone who posts on the front page must register on the forum first (a suggestion of mine some years ago to prevent impersonation). Most of the the front page regulars rarely if ever posted on the forum proper, and there existed a sort of mutual and ill-concealed disdain between the two.
More later, but some people reading will guess where I'm going with this tack. Patience ...

Many thanks, and this is very important, leastaways to the drift of my planned blog entries and public presentation, so I would be extremely grateful if you can complete your line of information here.

[klr]

Hiya folks,
I now have the very original sources for all quotations I asked about, so many thanks indeed!

Now this:

.... Explaining how the front page has been "moderated" (I use the term advisedly) over the years is rather difficult. The forum and the front page area are pretty much chalk and cheese, even though anyone who posts on the front page must register on the forum first (a suggestion of mine some years ago to prevent impersonation). Most of the the front page regulars rarely if ever posted on the forum proper, and there existed a sort of mutual and ill-concealed disdain between the two.
More later, but some people reading will guess where I'm going with this tack. Patience ...

Many thanks, and this is very important, leastaways to the drift of my planned blog entries and public presentation, so I would be extremely grateful if you can complete your line of information here.

I just saw your post over at rationalskepticism on this. I'll get back to it later this evening, when I finally have some free time.

[lordpasternack]

I'd like to say that I personally never paid much attention to the "two separate worlds" notion of RD.net. I was far more active on the forum, and mainly just read the odd article on the front page - and stalked Dawkins of course. But I would make the odd comment here or there on the front page, sometimes getting into a discussion, and I didn't feel 'foreign' or anything.

One thing I would comment on is that the rules were always far more lax on the front page - and as such users are correspondingly on average more petulant, volatile and sometimes abusive than those who ever graced the forum, and threads could descend into far more disarray than on the forum. It almost makes my irony meter go "bong!" when Richard suggests that the forum contains some rather inelegant material that needs to be purged/discontinued. I also happen to think he's talking bollocks about that, too, but that's another matter.