As the replacement Moderation page has developed the old bug so that permalinks no longer navigate to the appropriate comment, so here is yet another page for continuing discussion on moderating issues. The Rules can be found there so anyone with an issue should check that they are familiar with them.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Elizabeth,
Or maybe the social sciences attract people who are bitter about not having the chops to succeed in STEM fields and concentrate those feelings of insecurity, anger, and failure until they spew forth in a near continuous stream of self-loathing venom.
Or not. I’m just spitballing here.
Gregory,
Ah, so you can tell the difference between addressing the post and addressing the poster! Well done! Please apply that discrimination to your own comments.
You’re being funny now, Lizzie. It’s not attacking a poster to make an observation about a thread, based on the people posting in it. People make posts, not robots, and what they say comes from them.
The irony of this is that it is stcordova who hotshoe & Patrick are now defending. Sal, who is undoubtedly (not even the skeptics here would likely disagree) one of the slimiest participants in the whole YECist/IDist circus. He’s posted an amazing amount of useless garbage on sites such as this one over the years.
And I know this better than most, Lizzie, because I’m one of the very few sociologists of the IDM. And no doubt I’m the only person here who’s seen the Discovery Institute from the inside, including people Sal colludes with. In Cordova, you have a crackpot person who actually promotes teaching YECism/IDism at universities, and actually *does it* in his classes and in the IDEA clubs which he has attended.
But he’s been kissing up to people here at TAMSZ recently, flattering the admins and preparing YECist/IDist threads.
When I say he is gaming people here, that is because he has said it here himself, not because I am imputing some kind of motive to him that is in question. Do you not see this?
Yes, I wrote this:
It is both an observation and a fact. It is not an attack on any poster to their person. Do you not see the difference? If not, Lizzie, you’ll never get a paper published in a social science journal where reflexivity is the name of the game.
And I wrote this:
Again, this is a fact of interpersonal communication, demonstrated time and time again. It’s not a personal attack. It’s an expression of what is happening communicatively. If you wish to try to bar reflexivity about what is going on in terms of communication, then the whole house of cards is meaningless.
Patrick,
What a self-righteous hypocrite, after attacking and violating the rules! Now he thinks he has the moral authority to give advice.
Gregory,
You want to be able to make claims about Sal’s motivation but take umbrage when people provide evidence that your buddy Erik isn’t posting in good faith. That’s hypocritical behavior.
Leave it to me to find and attempt to exploit loopholes in the rules. Also not against the rules. 🙂
But that didn’t stop it from getting sent to Guano, lol.
Well, Gregory and I were not collaborating, if that’s what you mean. I did it all by my lonesome.
Gregory, I don’t care what you think of Sal, but it is against the rules to post that stuff in the main-page threads.
So don’t do it.
I do think we should all at least give Patrick the credit he deserves for showing us how to repeatedly accuse a poster of not posting in good faith while still remaining within the boundaries of the rules.
How are demands of “support or retract” not directed at the poster? Who or what is supposed to support or recant if not the poster?
Elizabeth,
What stuff, Liz? Sociology stuff? Do you wish to ban sociology and psychology from your beloved atheists-skeptics dominant site? Be specific about the ‘stuff’, because you’ve got a rogue admin who is (’empirically’, as he would like to say, i.e. just look at the text on this site) a hypocrite and you’ve done nothing about it so far.
I don’t see that asking someone to “support or retract” is an accusation of bad faith. Plenty of people post unsupported assertions in good faith because they think they are “self-evident” in some way.
What I post is not what I ‘think’ about Sal, but the facts of his social participation in the IDM. I don’t follow his YECist pathways nor pay much notice of him because in the larger picture, Sal is insignificant in the IDM. But to think you can simply block out social facts, as if they are too personal, even when they are based on a person’s participation IN THIS VERY FORUM, is outrageous.
Mung,
They are directed at the participant’s posts and comments, not at the participant personally. There’s a difference between saying “Support your claim, you cowardly, deceitful creationist.” and “Demonstrate the integrity and honesty required by the site goals by supporting or retracting the claim you made.”
Elizabeth,
Are you actually unaware that Patrick multiple times, in that thread in question, in plain language, yes, that EXACT language, accused Erik of posting in ‘bad faith’?
Gregory,
The inability to discuss ideas instead of people is sad.
Oh nuts.
I’m not “defending Sal” — I’m defending his right to speak within the rules of this site and not be personally slimed for his speech.
To paraphrase the immortal Evelyn Beatrice Hall “I disapprove of what he says but I will defend to the death his right to say it”.
Well, not to the death, thank you very much …
But at least to the point of applauding when the clean up crew deals with Gregory’s slime about Sal.
And yes, Gregory, I would also disapprove of what you say, while defending your right to say it IF YOU KEEP WITHIN THE RULES here. As Sal does, so admirably.
Maybe you should take lessons from him, Gregory. 🙁
Perhaps, but what I recall is the claim that posting assertions of fact without evidence and without explanation would be in bad faith.
Gregory,
Please provide evidence to support this claim. I think you’ll find that I was noting that Erik’s behaviors indicated failure to engage in good faith. Outside of Noyau I have not discussed Erik’s personal character.
I support your freedom of speech, but I think all that is being asked of you is to post your hate speeches in Noyau not on Keiths’ thread on Religious languages, not on whoever’s thread where I’m not the subject of the OP.
I fully support you having your own “Why I think Sal is Slimy” thread a TSZ somewhere, but do you have to force others who could care less about your personal vendettas to read through them? Is it too much to ask to keep the discussions on topic?
Here’s a nice sociological study for you. Go into a social gathering and intrude on everyone’s conversation and say, “Sal is Slimy” and then go on and on. Report on the results. I predict such behavior won’t be especially welcome. So why do you behave like that at TSZ.
People don’t care about you personal vendettas. They want to converse about the topics they want to converse on. The admins gave you a place to say your peace. Why does it have to be on the main page? You can go to Noyau and say all you want about me. I won’t protest. Frankly it’s entertaining and I wouldn’t mind you going postal all day at Noyau.
So in deference to Keiths, can you knock it off on his thread. When Alan asked me to post outside of Tom English COI discussion, I honored it out of courtesy to him. You can extend similar courtesy to the readers at TSZ who could care less about your vendettas.
You have a place to spew your venom against me and others. It’s Noyau.
Why do you insist other people have to listen to your complaints about other commenters by not utilizing Noyau?
stcordova,
I don’t. He’ll never flame you the way that ERV did. What’s the point of being a distant second best?
Dig a little deeper, the source is Voltaire. Sal spreads enough slime of his own ‘sweetie pie.’ And he started (check the record) this unproductive interaction by mocking me to admins here. If he would have just shut his mouth and played with his little atheist toys without involving me, or using me to suck up to you, that would have been just fine. I’m not about to play flute music to a soft-player jaded by myopic protestism like Salvador T. Cordova. Especially not when he continues to insult his fellow theists with his YECist/IDist ugly USAmerican crusade of ignorance and insistence.
Which is the sole remit of backwards-high jumping superstar Gregory
I thinks Sal’s been quite good recently. (Please don’t disappoint! )
A little while ago, the case seemed clear to Elizabeth. Now it seems not at all clear to her. By the standard set by her just now, everybody is free to turn their coats as they please without any responsibility or explanation.
The bottom line: I have made myself clear. Anybody who says otherwise is a wilfully blind nutjob with severe memory shortage. (The previous sentence doesn’t refer to Patrick. His character flaws run much deeper than this.)
Can you explain what you mean, Erik?
Erik,
If we had a vote on you making ‘yourself clear’ and you were the only one who thought you had, who would be the ‘nut job’?
LOL! ERV (Abby Smith) did say something about cottage cheese dripping […censored…]
Well, if the posts and comments to which the demand is addressed fail to respond, I don’t see why that’s Erik’s fault.
In case you missed it, and since you didn’t respond, I’ll repeat it again:
I know. It makes me want to cry.
I did not say that it was an accusation of bad faith.
I said it violated the site rules requiring people to address the post not the poster. Such demands are clearly directed at the poster.
The bad faith accusation is no where near as blatant and is something different.
Yes, I’m unaware. Can you link to one of the posts in question?
As the intention behind that rule was apparently unclear, I have reworded it. Please take a look at the rewording. If it is still ambiguous I may remove it altogether.
I did not intend it to mean that people should not address each other directly.
LoL. Hate Speech. Next up, accusations of Nazi-loving and cross-burning.
Sal, if you had a quarter of the intelligence and integrity you seem to think you have (just like Dembski got a fat head and then self-imploded into his ‘retirement’ from IDism), you’d probably be a decent guy to have a conversation with on the topic of IDism, creationism, evolution, nature, society, etc. I don’t doubt you are a man of ‘faith’, whatever that may mean in your dungeon of doltishness. As it is, you’re sadly engulfed in an ideology that enslaves you to the most uneducated niches in protestant evangelicalism in which you hide yourself out of fear that otherwise you’ll have no mission or purpose in life.
What ‘personal vendetta’ are you talking about? You haven’t done anything significant to me that I can remember. I don’t hold anything personal against you for some kind of revenge (as many others quite obviously do have vendettas with you). This all seems to be a strange psychotic dream of yours based on some kind of IDist ‘Expelled Syndrome’ of deluded self-importance. After my early research on the IDM, I didn’t pay you any attention at all for years, even while you continued at UD and now here. I rate your ‘work’ for IDism/YECism as basically trivial or non-existent on the bigger picture. If you hadn’t barbed me here, attacking my posts, I’d have left you alone in your new private little ‘mission’ here.
And do you want to know the saddest part of all this? I refused for many years to use the term ‘slimy Sal,’ because I wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Yet here at TAMSZ, while ‘making up’ with atheists and anti-theists, there comes Sal attacking me to get on THEIR good side with his sick and twisted YECist/IDist ideology. That, my friends, is too much to take.
So, now I’m o.k. with calling him ‘slimy Sal’ since that appears to be exactly what he is, Christian or not. He has lost to the last ounce of respect there was left.
You mean I didn’t two weeks ago?
Should I start patricking you with something like: Who are you? What’s your role here? Act accordingly or vanish.
By now, you are directly asking for this.
I think you can find a better way to spend your Saturday night. 🙂
Boys will be boys, after all.
Erik,
No, you have explicitly refused to make yourself clear and you have refused to retract the claim you refuse to clarify, despite asserting that “playing by the rules” is the moral thing to do.
Gregory,
You’ve used the concept of one not being as bright as one thinks one is. Have you ever turned that mighty lens inwards, or do you lack the necessary HPSS skills?
I think he’s just confused the two of us. I’m supposed to be the one with the vendetta against him. And All the rest of UD too I supposed. He still refuses to say whether his departure from UD was voluntary.
Erik,
No, she is not. Elizabeth is always, in my experience, willing to clarify her claims and support or retract them. You are not.
@Elizabeth
Here is, again, the post that was linked to you two weeks ago but that you missed – deliberately, because you were active on that page http://theskepticalzone.fr/the-varieties-of-religious-language/comment-page-28/#comment-89368
I linked it to you here http://theskepticalzone.fr/wine-cellar/comment-page-14/#comment-95047
And we all know that the matter is not as easy as guanoing a post, or even guanoing pages of them. Torpedoing a main thread for months is a character issue. You took a stance against Patrick’s behaviour, but he is ignoring it, because you failed to address him by name when you described his behaviour. Clearly a character issue – your character and his.
ETA: The link does not take to that post anymore. Maybe you already guanoed it. But as should be clear, the matter is not as simple as guanoing a post. His behaviour that you discouraged has been continuing.
ETA2: Found it. The page count has changed meanwhile http://theskepticalzone.fr/the-varieties-of-religious-language/comment-page-26/#comment-89368
Mung,
Yeah, it’s pretty much crazy the notion that ‘everybody is out to get you!’
Talk about a person who has no sense of self-moderation. He wants to laugh it off to Noyau, but really should go visit BioLogos and try his angry-ignorant YECism/IDism there. They’ll be gentler than anyone else he’s faced in his stubborn ‘coat of armour’ for the ‘good guys’ = YECists/IDists so far. 😉
I said I was banned, so you are not stating the truth Mung.
Barry banned me. The explanation he gave was that my participation at TSZ was like me being a Nazi Collaborator.
You can ask him yourself if he sent this harassing letter to me:
He can expect future harassing communications from him will be made public. He’s behaving like a bully rather than someone who is confident he can win debates in the public sphere.
No, it’s not.
It was indeed written by the woman who is rarely given the correct credit. In 1906 in her anecdotal biography The Friends of Voltaire she uses those words to illustrate Voltaire’s attitude towards a bookburning (of Helvetius) as something he believed, but never said in those exact words. Voltaire probably would have approved of her and her statement; he did write some very similar things in his time:
and especially
Oh well, Gregory, you can’t win ’em all.
The link Erik provided does not go to the comment I believe he intends to reference (there seems to be a problem linking to specific comments still). Here is what I wrote in that comment:
I stand by that. I am writing solely about Erik’s observed behavior in that thread, not about his personal details (of which I know little and care less).
I guess we shouldn’t expect a visit from Barry any time soon. 🙂
What an abomination he is.
I’d take a dozen Gregorys over one Barry any day — I mean, if I had to choose one or the other. Of course, I’ll choose neither when I’m god emperor of the world. 🙂
I’d like to say “thank you for sharing that” except I can’t thank you now that I’ve got disgusting Barry putrescence stuck in my mind. Well, I’m glad for your sake that you’re out of UD.
And what the hell is the matter with everyone? This site, like the wider world, is not perfect. A little more effort from some of our members at the art of civil discourse would be appreciated.
Thank you so much for sharing that. As if my estimations of Barry could not get lower…
Let’s do the voting, if it isn’t clear enough to you. It’s clear enough even to Patrick. I have asked him many times: What is unclear in my position? He never answers this question. So, my position is clear. All he wants is answers to his questions that are irrelevant to my position. Even though the questions are irrelevant, I have given the answers, but he just keeps patricking.