Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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Dear All,
Since this issue comes up again and again perhaps a thread to discuss it might amuse.
We have two current playmates, AFDave and Ghost of Paley who often claim that some of the anticreationist members of this make the anticreationism look bad because we can be so rude. I'll right away hold my hands up very high on the charge of being abusive. I won't at all hold my hands up to being abusive to people without any just cause.
Here's an example of the sort of dissonance and dishonesty we are dealing with:
Stevestory's announcement that the AFDave experience was going to die:
| Quote | And looking back at the 10,000 posts of AFDave threads, the science establishment looks fine.
For several thousand posts, AFDave threw out crazy claims and scientifically-literate people disposed of them in a mostly respectable way. For thousands of posts, AFDave cut and pasted arguments, or just made up his own impossible ones. The AFDave modus operandi never changed. Just imagine whatever he wants, believe his daydreams to be powerful science, don't bother to support it, misunderstand everything he cut and pastes and everything people tell him in response, and don't bother to stop and learn even the basics. There's only so long reasonable people can be respectful towards that kind of behavior.
Before I moved to Chapel Hill and added a new job and several extracurricular activities, I had lots of time to police the insults and interfere with people describing the situation in accurate but rude ways. People here know what they're doing, they know that AFDave refuses to learn, they are just arguing with him for the benefit of the lurkers. Well, I submit the lurkers can extract all they need to know from the existing corpus of the thread. It's no longer about them, and the thread is pointless. It's now just AFDave continuing his clueless behavior, and people calling him clueless in response. So my only decision, it being pointless to continue policing the thread, is do I let it continue or call it a day? Well, AFDave still wants to blabber, and several people want to insult him for it, so why should I get in the way? I spend my time checking out the other threads, ones which have some value, and mostly ignore this one. It'll go on til people get tired of it. That doesn't mean I'm totally hands off, it means that I'm mostly ignoring it excepting the occasions when people email me and say, "somebody's committing libel on the AFDave thread, and you might want to put a stop to it" and similar things. If, 10,000 posts along in the thread, it's nothing more than Dave saying stupid things and people commenting on how stupid those things are, so be it.
It's really not contributing anything to the board, however, so it would be nice if AFDave would shift this mess to his own blog. |
And the GoP version of events:
| Quote | | If that weren't enough (and of course it is), there's also the fact that Stevestory rewards your (and other people's) behaviour by banning/restricting the objects of your abuse. Don't want Dave around? No problem! Just hurl brickbats and rotten tomatoes and then whine about the level of incivility, and presto! Dave's World is closed. |
And:
| Quote | | It's certainly true that Dave had thousands of posts to make his point, an opportunity he proceeded to squander in an occasionally jaw-dropping fashion. It's also true that there were a lot of side issues involved. But Stevestory clearly stated that one of the reasons for removing Dave was he was tired of dealing with the sniping and possible defamation by PT contributors, and that he thought it made the anticreationist side look bad. He didn't punish the offenders, he PUNISHED DAVE. Now what kind of message does that send to the jackals? |
Sorry but I just don't see the same emphasis there at all. In fact I can barely see that GoP's comments even apply to the same situation being outlined by Steve.
So are we dealing with the standard differences of opinion and anger that rises from time to time? Or are we dealing with genuine imbalance, one side good, other side bad?
I'm happy to be wrong, but I'm going to state my case right out front:
I think that it IS possible to have a polite honest conversation (on or offline) about sensitive topics like religion or politics with someone who you profoundly disagree with. It's something I've done a million times (no exaggeration, I like a chat! ) and do very regularly. What I CANNOT and WILL NOT tolerate is dishonesty and silly oneupmanship. I have to be honest this is what really annoys me about GoP and AFDave. They seem to think they can act as dishonestly as they like and cry "foul" when called on it, even politely. Declarations of "victory" when the evidence is against them, like a debate or discussion is some playground game. Quote mines, misrepresenting people's arguments, outright lies, deliberately trolling, etc etc etc. The list is endless.
What is it about this sort of conduct that they think is acceptable? We are on a limited forum, a type and image only internet message board. Most people here work very hard, and those that don't undoubtedly have other interests and activities they could better be spending their time on. My point is that we all come here for discussion, debate, a little camaraderie perhaps, whatever. Hey perhaps we just come to laugh at the tards at UD. My point is this, in the format limited and time limited arena we have for our discussions a degree of honesty is essential for any discussion to be productive. If we can't rely that our words won't be twisted dishonestly, if we are going to have to repetitively deal with the SAME demonstrably false claims rom the same people, and so on, then any discussion is rendered useless. The entire purpose of these fora is rendered useless.
In the olden days, in the before time, Talk.Origins was created to take the kooks and creationists (such redundancy! ) away from the science discussion boards because the REAL scientists trying to have REAL discussions were being distracted by demonstrably erroneous and demonstrably dishonest bullshit from a wide variety of trolls, kooks, concern trolls etc. Basically people pissing in the water.
In my opinion AFDave and GoP and others have been treated immesely leniently considering their demonstrable conduct. I openly state that were I in charge I wouldn't have been so tolerant. At the first (ok maybe third) sign of intractable dishonesty I'd have removed them. Not out of some UDlike desire for censorship but out of a simple desire to have a productive conversation with someone.
Go to T.O. or Alt.Atheism nowadays and you can rarely have a conversation with an neophyte creationist or anti-atheist without having a hoard of disenchanted regulars immediately leaping down their throats. I'm overjoyed to note that this isn't the case at ATBC. I'm also honest enough to point out that I am at least as disenchanted as those regulars, I used to be one.
There is a happy medium here, one I am not wise enough to fully delineate myself. Surely it's possible to have the "lurker useful" chat with the AFDaves of this world and still be able to draw things to an adequate close when it becomes obvious that the AFDave-esque individual is incapable of learning anything.
Again I'll be blunt. I consider dishonesty infinitely more rude, more counter productive to discussion than calling someone eleven types of cunt for being dishonest. I consider the abuse heaped on Dave and GoP totally and 100% earnt by those individuals. Lest anyone forget, GoP has ADMITTED to deliberately trolling this board for a year. Let that sink in if it hasn't. He is STILL here, he is STILL posting, and he is STILL doing the same things he has always done. Dave has driven round and around in the same circles spouting the same well refuted lies.
That's not tolerance, that's weakness. A weakness to stand up for decent honest people and decent honest conversation. A weakness we liberals are so often accused of, and dammit rightly on some occasions. We want to let everyone have their go, and so we should. We truly want to believe that all people are equally wonderful and equally truthful and that if they were shown the evidence they'd slap their foreheads and say "oops", and so we should. But i we continue to do this without end, we are wrong. I think we need to continue to treat people openly and with some degree of hope, but that we also need to remove those individuals who demonstrate that they cannot play nicely at all.
If we were all women and we all had a massive argument with our partners, and our partners slapped us, not really hard, but nasty enough, we might think "Hey, heat of the moment, give the guy another chance, we've got a lot invested in the relationship". That would be tolerance. Perhaps foolish, perhaps not. How many times do we have to be slapped across the face before we realise that some guys aren't going to change. Perhaps an awful analogy, give me a better one. My point is how many times do we have to let Dave make the same well refuted claim? How many times do we have to let GoP try his revisionist history shit? I think it's a small number, a much smaller number than has been allowed. But hey, it's not my river, I'm just pissing here.
Can we really justify letting these things continue ad nauseum simply for the sake of the lurkers? Lurkers dumb enough not to learn from one or two iterations of the same old game are not going to learn from three, as Steve implies.
Discuss.
Louis
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Bye.
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