That's why you should all come and comment on this site, because I am a good-hearted and benevolent dictator who would never do such a thing. ;)

It's not so much in the cause where I find similarity, but the effect. The idea that dissentient mods should be deleted, along with their posts, simply because they raised a hue and cry, is disheartening.

Additionally, shutting down the site for the final thirty days to commentary bespeaks a wariness of public opinion that is unseemly for a freethought site.

I completely understand Dr Dawkins's concern that posts put under his banner meet up to his standard, and I also understand that he is most likely tangential to the day-to-day operations of the site, at best.

But Dawkins needs to remember that what is done in his name reflects upon him even more that what is on the screen under his name. My ire is reserved for the admins who handled this so ham-handedly. RD needs to see this for the blow that it is, and put his weight behind a better solution than the hushing of people who've moderated his fora for him for years.

It looks like Dawkins is simply trying to institute some standards for what's going to be on his website. He also gave people time to archive anything they want, because we all know that the internet is Serious Business. I think what Dawkins is trying to do - boost the signal-to-noise ratio - is a fine thing. He may succeed or fail, there are better and worse ways to do this than to start the Hell-ass over, but I do think that the utter outrage is unjustified and rather childish. On the other side of the coin, of course, deleting people's entire whatever when it's all going down in a few more days anyway seems like a completely unnecessary and provocative response.

But this is a far cry from firing a lady for stepping on someone's toes rather than, I dunno, trying to do some conflict resolution and work something out. It's good that Janice ended up with another community that appreciates her hard work and talents, but it's still got to hurt that something she put so much time and love into is going down in flames over a clash of egos. But then, that's what happens when people insist on getting their way at the expense of getting along.

But Hell, I dunno, maybe I'm missing something.

I personally finding his reasoning wanting, but that's just me.

(Sorry about the hi-jack, Adam; I'll leave off now).

Mazille said, on February 23, 2010 at 9:17 am:

Not to play the martyr here, but I feel like I should inform you people:

Until yesterday I was a moderator at RDF going by the name of Mazille. Since I voiced my discontent in a very clear manner (Along with all the other mods and users, but especially CJ, who received the same treatment I did) my account was completely deleted from the forum, along with all my posts and everything I have ever done in the almost two years I spent there. There is no trace left of me (or CJ, I hear, but for obvious reasons I can’t take a look myself). A sad day for me…

From RDF member Jerome's blog here: http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/the-end-of-an-era-richard-dawkins-forum-to-close/#comment-888

Shades of Orwell's memory-holes.

I realize this is an extremely late comment, but I wanted to share my experience with 'Emanuel Goldstein'. He was one of several trolls (troll names) showing up on the KCFS website during the Kansas battle with ID in 2005. He is very hateful of atheists in general and I'm not the least surprised by his comment here.

If you look through Pharyngula's dungeon list, PZ does have one as follows:

The Kansas Troll(s)
AKA too many pseudonyms to list

'Emanuel Goldstein' is one of those pseudonyms.

http://www.talkrational.org

Virtually all of the admins who resigned from II are admins here. The board was set up by ex-II staff who had left II following the meltdown. There are currently 400+ active members, many of whom will be familiar to those who follow II.

Anybody is welcome to join. Please come take a look.

Pendaric

I for one think I'm going to be spending more time at Rants 'n Raves now. =)