missing forums...

Alex

Administrator
some of you have been asking about the shut down of some of the sub-forums...
1. I think most of it is still there, but it might be a pain to go back and try to restore. If someone has a really, really compelling reason I might try.
2. as to why... well, since I have don't have much personal interest in those threads, and since I'm not trying to create/maintain some huge wide-ranging community, I decided to bring the focus back to the stuff I care about. It's a big, big internet... lots of places to discuss stuff... doesn't have to be here.
 
There were an awful lot of proponent resources on the CD forum. Like it or not Alex that is where the bulk of the traffic was, and discussions often gravitated there.
I had the most interest in that subforum by far. It's also where the most discussions were located that centered on debates about the actual existence of these phenomena we discuss, with points of view from different sides/all sides of the topics... you know, what most people here seem to be most interested in. This is really difficult for me to understand.
 
I deeply appreciate that this is the house that you built. But a heads up would have bein worth a pound of cure, in my opinion.
 
Anyone remember playing with this kid - "It's my ball and I'm taking it home"?

Probably the easiest way to end with an echo chamber... We are a few weeks removed from a debate on how the forum moderation had become too reactionary (especially against skeptics) and instead of trying to solve that, we now find ourselves in the ultimate extrapolation of the issue.
 
Hey all. It's Chuck.

I'd like to take a crack at hosting an open, honest, "user ruled" forum. I don't have a podcast, but we can still discuss the same issues we discuss here. I'd like to have a forum were we all have a voice in how the forum is run and what moderation looks like.

Check it out. If we can get enough users I think we can still have some interesting discussions. New install so there will be bumps in the road.

http://www.liberaparolado.com/phpBB3/
 
maybe I could find a way to turn it on for a day so anyone can grab what they want. I'll look into it.
I think that would be a good way to resolve this. Though since a lot of content has been built up during the almost 4 years this forum has existed, I suspect that we would need more than a day to find everything that we want to preserve. It would be ideal if the forums were brought back in a locked down readonly mode for a limited "transition period" of a couple of weeks, to give everybody sufficient time.
 
Alex, I'm not sure you realise what you've done. Many, many people invested many, many hours into the forums which you so casually deleted. Speaking personally, aside from the time I invested in debates etc in CD, I spent countless hours categorising CD threads for the Skeptiko Thread Index.

If you think people are going to just shrug and say, "Fine, let Dear Leader do as he sees fit", you need to do a major rethink. You are disrespecting the forum community in a major way with these autocratic acts - and this on top of the recent debates on moderation where you effectively dismissed the concerns of the community with contempt, handing out peremptory bannings like a tinpot dictator.

If you restore the deleted forums, you might maintain enough goodwill that enough of the community will stick around to keep this place viable. Otherwise, you're going to bleed goodwill until folks decide that Chuck's or somebody else's user-focussed alternative is the ship to jump to.
 
Alex, I'm not sure you realise what you've done. Many, many people invested many, many hours into the forums which you so casually deleted. Speaking personally, aside from the time I invested in debates etc in CD, I spent countless hours categorising CD threads for the Skeptiko Thread Index.

If you think people are going to just shrug and say, "Fine, let Dear Leader do as he sees fit", you need to do a major rethink. You are disrespecting the forum community in a major way with these autocratic acts - and this on top of the recent debates on moderation where you effectively dismissed the concerns of the community with contempt, handing out peremptory bannings like a tinpot dictator.

If you restore the deleted forums, you might maintain enough goodwill that enough of the community will stick around to keep this place viable. Otherwise, you're going to bleed goodwill until folks decide that Chuck's or somebody else's user-focussed alternative is the ship to jump to.
I don't really see it as an either or. I don't see why folks can't participate in both forums. I'm just offering a place where members of the community should have a real say in how the site is run and where moderation is at a minimum, if that is what is desired.
 
The CD forum was, for the most part, the only part of the forum I visited regularly and made contributions to. For anyone interested in debates and discussions around psychical research - supposedly a main focus of this whole enterprise - it was the best place to find valuable or interesting information. And I would note that you rarely participated in any conversations in that subforum. That may be due to your lack of interest, but those conversations were still relevant to the topics you discuss on your show and care about - or used to discuss, anyway.

You may not want a wide-ranging community, but if you want to maintain a community beyond yourself and an ever-shrinking echo chamber, removing the most popular section of your message board (that still fit within the nominal range of this site) seems a poor way to do it.
 
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Don't NDEs usually say it's the little things in the end that count, like the way you treat people, and not whatever else you think is So Important? I can't connect that to the gross disregard here to the many people who have massively committed themselves to those forums, for some it's become part of their lives, and now suddenly, without warning - wham! it's gone. Just like: Get another life, dude.
 
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Alex, I'm not sure you realise what you've done. Many, many people invested many, many hours into the forums which you so casually deleted. Speaking personally, aside from the time I invested in debates etc in CD, I spent countless hours categorising CD threads for the Skeptiko Thread Index.

If you think people are going to just shrug and say, "Fine, let Dear Leader do as he sees fit", you need to do a major rethink. You are disrespecting the forum community in a major way with these autocratic acts - and this on top of the recent debates on moderation where you effectively dismissed the concerns of the community with contempt, handing out peremptory bannings like a tinpot dictator.

If you restore the deleted forums, you might maintain enough goodwill that enough of the community will stick around to keep this place viable. Otherwise, you're going to bleed goodwill until folks decide that Chuck's or somebody else's user-focussed alternative is the ship to jump to.
I mean, this is a joke, for genuine lack of a better way to say it. I cannot believe how utterly unreasonable, irrational, and rash this decision was.

Just... there's so, so much valuable information in those subforums and threads. Like a couple others have said, at least leaving them "locked" but readable would allow people who are at an earlier point in their journey/learning to read in depth and glean some significant information that can influence them. I know I originally only listened to the podcasts, waaaaaaaaay back when they were actually about paranormal phenomena/NDEs/psychical research, etc. (which at this point seems like years ago), but what drew me to the forum was reading not only through the current debates in the CD subforum and Consciousness and Science subforum, but digging back months or years to lengthy and detailed discussions between both proponents and skeptics. Those threads contain just loads of intelligent (and sometimes unintelligent, but nonetheless meaningful) discussions that helped me along in my personal journey.

Now, Alex, it may not be your desire to foster a site where people learning about the paranormal, NDEs, or other like research and phenomena, can go to really learn and see arguments from both sides of the story, but if I were in your shoes, I would have certainly felt accomplished and taken great pride in having created a site such as what Skeptiko has historically been. With this decision, you've pretty much completely destroyed that and all evidence of it ever having existed. You've also completely slapped in the face the members who spent dozens and dozens, likely hundreds, of hours in discussion, researching, reading, and thinking to produce the content that you deleted. Frankly, "slapped in the face" doesn't begin to do it justice. And all this just weeks after people voiced their displeasure over the deletion of a thread that was for the most part, in my opinion, not very valuable and contained immature and reckless back and forth between one of our former members and some of his Twitter battle buddies. Here we are, about 2 weeks later, and two entire subforums are gone, including, as Flowers, Will, and Laird have said, the most valuable subforum to the majority of forum members by far.

maybe I could find a way to turn it on for a day so anyone can grab what they want. I'll look into it.

That you somehow think this would come within millions of light years of rectifying this ridiculous decision makes it all the more pitiful. Nothing short of bringing the threads back in their entirety and locking them so that no one can further post in them (wherein I guarantee you STILL lose a huge chunk of membership) is sufficient. At least in that scenario people can still come learn, read, and research from the past contributions of the members here, skeptics and proponents alike, regardless of how poor Skeptiko becomes in the future. At least then it would still have significant value, though I would bet a fairly inactive forum that is limited to a small group of people.

...but it might be a pain to go back and try to restore

To this, I'm nearly speechless. You have created this issue, and if you care remotely about having forum members to post, or as I said earlier information that is incalculably valuable to the people who read and seriously consider it, it is your job to fix it. Perhaps prior to making this decision you might have considered the ramifications a bit more deeply, including how easy or not it would be to undo the action in the event that you didn't like the result.
 
Don't NDEs usually say it's the little things in the end that count, like the way you treat people, and not whatever else you think is So Important? I can't connect that to the gross disregard here to the many people who have massively committed themselves to those forums, for some it's become part of their lives, and now suddenly, without warning - wham! it's gone. Get another life, dude.
We had a pretty neat community here. A little dysfunctional maybe, but a decent core of genuine posters. Alex very rarely visited the forum's vibrant underbelly so can't understand what he's done; it was a unique space, a lot of us are very disappointed.
 
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Hey all. It's Chuck.

I'd like to take a crack at hosting an open, honest, "user ruled" forum. I don't have a podcast, but we can still discuss the same issues we discuss here. I'd like to have a forum were we all have a voice in how the forum is run and what moderation looks like.

Check it out. If we can get enough users I think we can still have some interesting discussions. New install so there will be bumps in the road.

http://www.liberaparolado.com/phpBB3/

I registered but I didn't get a verification e-mail. I don't see a way to check my profile to see if I mistyped my e-mail address. What should I do? I used Jim_Smith as my user name.
 
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