An intro postcard from the left coast.

Hello (hellooo helloooo) Been quite a few years since I was totally alone on a message board. I generally like to read, not post, and this will be the first time I have ever done an intro. I was inspired to do so as the previous one was last year and I'd like to see this site succeed.

I'm a privileged old white guy who is but months away from 70 and live in a 10' long camping trailer on a large ranch in the foothills of Mt. Palomar in southern California. People with GPS and detailed instructions still get lost trying to find me after several visits. Marvelous solitude, with views of the sea to the west and snow capped mountains to the east. Despite a rather Spartan lifestyle I'm basically a p. contented camper. The internet is a splendid social network for me, being a rather extreme introvert. But even in cyberspace I mostly listen. I can't provide much content. But I can try and direct much more chatty posters like Testy to this site. I'm friends with one amazing thread rainmaker who is on hiatus at the moment, but if I can get him to log in his followers could give SSJ quite a boost. His last appearance generated roughly 125 replies daily at TR. Not sure though. He may well be spent. It happens. Really bright stars burn out quickly.

I've been an atheist since about age 12, but never really experienced many overt hassles about it and during my twenties especially I was p. in your face with my atheism.

I spent a lot of time at JREF and RDF solely in the evo forums, then got into physics/aerodynamics debates. Looking back I consider RDF as the best moderated site in my experience, though I often took them to task at the time. For a while I thought Talk Rational had the best plan with a hands-off, democratic approach. Problem is this soon draws in banned rogues who repeatedly harass any who disagree with their positions. For years I thought JREF was the worst moderated site I'd seen, until I started lurking at Atheist+. I think that site is in the process of implosion, and I have to admit it's a fascinating train wreck to observe. One question I have about it is how they generated so many hits on the Urban Dictionary brouhaha. They average about 10 members logged in and another dozen guests. This doesn't even qualify as an estuary in the cyberflow. So where did those thousands of hits on UD come from? I'm new to this and need some help connecting the dots. tia

Hello, welcome. It might take a while to get things rolling. Atheist Dude and Nullnvoid are facing a big challenge... Utter hostility from the A+ forum members and skepticism from others already burnt by the social justice warriors.

arpie wrote: One question I have about it is how they generated so many hits on the Urban Dictionary brouhaha. They average about 10 members logged in and another dozen guests. This doesn't even qualify as an estuary in the cyberflow. So where did those thousands of hits on UD come from? I'm new to this and need some help connecting the dots. tia

I think these might have something to do with the urban dictionary thing:

http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1872

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/feministatheists/forum/topics/urban-dictionary-battle-over-atheism

If you search "atheism plus urban dictionary" you'll get many more hits along this line.

It happened right at the peak of their popularity.


Welcome to *looks at top of the page* SSJ, arpie !

Wow...I just spent a week living on top of a hill in a rain-forest in Eastern Australia. No internet or phone...absolutely fantastic for a break. But I think I would go insane in your position. I'm a technophile and would miss too many of my gadgets in that type of setup.

But hey - welcome. Don't be afraid to put your feet up on the couch.

Cheers,
Null

ps - to be fair, there are urban dictionary users who upvote and downvote on whether they think the term is defined appropriately, and the A+ forum has declined in size recently. Early October last year the forum was bustling. I don't have usage stats, but they do have over 2300 users registered. The pro-A+ vote tally is only 1700 upvotes. I agree that it's unlikely to be all A+ members that voted, and from that perspective it seems a little inflated. That being said, it's not exactly overinflated, so if some kind of script was used to create upvotes, then they are being very subtle about it and haven't really achieved anything.

Thanks for the answers guys. However, I'm pretty familiar with UD and believe me it's very unusual for an entry to get that many votes even after a couple years. What I'm really curious about is who organized the campaign to vote against them? Some site must have done so, or was it all disaffected former members?

In reply to your PM null, after reading that entire thread nothing the mods do there would surprise me. Many seem to truly enjoy suspending and banning ever more users as their numbers dwindle. Did you read the replies by Sheldon that got him banned? Or Testy Calibrate? Then there's the unprecedented audacity of banning members for voicing any criticism, which they are forbidden to post there, on other sites. That's a new one for me.

Oh, and one final thing I should mention fyi is that while I see the 'notify when a reply is posted' is still checked here on the new site, I didn't get any notice of the two replies above.

arpie wrote:Thanks for the answers guys. However, I'm pretty familiar with UD and believe me it's very unusual for an entry to get that many votes even after a couple years. What I'm really curious about is who organized the campaign to vote against them? Some site must have done so, or was it all disaffected former members?

Oh, against them is easy. That was around the time that the MRA groups were attacking atheism+ en masse. Thunderf00t's banning from free through blogs spurred a LOT of anti atheism+ sentiment. That was in August last year from memory. So I expect it was organised through one of the youtube atheists' communities. Pure speculation of course and I don't think thunderf00t would have been personally involved.

arpie wrote:In reply to your PM null, after reading that entire thread nothing the mods do there would surprise me. Many seem to truly enjoy suspending and banning ever more users as their numbers dwindle. Did you read the replies by Sheldon that got him banned? Or Testy Calibrate? Then there's the unprecedented audacity of banning members for voicing any criticism, which they are forbidden to post there, on other sites. That's a new one for me.

Yeah, I follow that thread and I'm constantly amazed at how many people they catch with the old "come here and complain and then ban the complainy people" trick (it's clearly a good cop/bad cop style tactic). I'm stunned at the recent treatment of kbonn. It's reminiscent of heresy trials. It's impossible to defend yourself against heresy without stating what it is that you are accused of saying. At that point you've repeated the offense. I feel like I'm watching a very slow moving train wreck.

And yeah...users can be banned for not posting in good faith. Posting on multiple sites is a violation of good faith. Amazing. I have no words. This is self parody at it's finest.

arpie wrote:Oh, and one final thing I should mention fyi is that while I see the 'notify when a reply is posted' is still checked here on the new site, I didn't get any notice of the two replies above.

Thanks - I'll look into that. My main account got the notification immediately that you had posted so it works for me. I'll try creating a dummy account to test how it works for regular users. Later tonight most likely.

Just so you know, it looks like it MAY be fixed. I got a notice of my post above, but not yet for your reply or my post on the other thread. Will let you know if I get the others. It may just take a while.

arpie wrote:Just so you know, it looks like it MAY be fixed. I got a notice of my post above, but not yet for your reply or my post on the other thread. Will let you know if I get the others. It may just take a while.

Thanks!

Lost in cyberspace perhaps. Slow free shared email server? Not sure. Thanks for the update though.

@null: If you check forum matters you'll see I'm still having that problem apparently.

I thought you were just on holiday in Australia, null. Didn't realize you were an Aussie until I read your post today on A+. That's the country I always wished I had emigrated to years ago.

I find it really strange given you folks only have about 30m denizens how over represented-assuming my experience is indicative-you are in cyberspace. At least 10 of the regulars just in my beloved wind cart thread are Aussies, including the star of the show and my all time favorite poster, humber. Is it something in the water or are the rabbits posting with a Yerkish terminal?

arpie wrote:@null: If you check forum matters you'll see I'm still having that problem apparently.

I thought you were just on holiday in Australia, null. Didn't realize you were an Aussie until I read your post today on A+. That's the country I always wished I had emigrated to years ago.

I find it really strange given you folks only have about 30m denizens how over represented-assuming my experience is indicative-you are in cyberspace. At least 10 of the regulars just in my beloved wind cart thread are Aussies, including the star of the show and my all time favorite poster, humber. Is it something in the water or are the rabbits posting with a Yerkish terminal?

I put an answer to your problem in the other forum - with a few things for you to check.

As to representation of Aussies online? It's probably some kind of Napoleon syndrome thing...we tend to think of ourselves as pretty insignificant on the world stage so we over compensate!

I think an English speaking country that is physically so distant from USA and England is exactly what the internet was built for. Suddenly Australians can participate in a way they never could before the advent of the WWW.

If you look into early hackers in the pre-WWW times you will see that Australian hackers were responsible for hacks on the US dept of defense, NASA and other major US companies. Australian police were among the first in the world to develop tracking systems to locate where hackers are operating. There are some decent documentaries on them, and at least one book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Suelette_Dreyfus_book)