Richard Dawkins’ Foundation Forum Self Immolates
by Chris on 23/02/10 at 8:19 pm
The Richard Dawkins’ Foundation forum decided yesterday to self-immolate, burning many of their most loyal supporters in what can only be described as a ham-fisted response to mild criticism.
Creationists everywhere will rejoice.
According to members who have been using the forum for several years the entire content of something like 85,000 members’ posts, comments and articles have been locked in one fell swoop that the forum says is a step towards migrating towards a better platform. The data can be downloaded but of course loses much of its usability when taken out of the forum setting it was created for.
In one case a member had posted more than 1,000 articles. To retrieve such a vast storage of documents is a gargantuan task. The forum will be shut within 30 days, and these old posts can then be uploaded as “new posts” when the new forum is released. .....
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DannyFromTower
Feb 25th, 2010
The moderators did not undertake this. The employed site administrator informed the moderators (all volunteers) that they were no longer needed and should not cause trouble by dissenting or helping the rest to move. Any that did had their account closed and their entire posting history deleted.
Many of the moderators were the most positive and professional contributors to the data built up at the site. Remember this was not as trivial as a blog, where old articles and their comments dissappear into obscurity. Much of the posts on the site where kept as “stickies” because they were considered very valuable for science, reason and education purposes.
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