lam‧ent‧a‧ble formal
very unsatisfactory or disappointing [= terrible]: a lamentable state of affairs
a lamentable lack of support for the idea
It is lamentable that the officer failed to deal with the situation.

Well, well, well. I have been off-line for a couple weeks and if you guys can mentally rewind the last 8 days or so, you can understand why it has taken me 2 hours of reading various blogs, visiting other sites and generally trawling around to find out what the fuck has happened since the 22nd of February.

LAMENTABLE is the best word I can find to describe what I think. It is VERY unsatisfactrory and VERY disappointing.

I was not a prolific poster (100+) posts but more an avid reader of discussions and occassional contributor and 'OPer'. I would imagine I averaged 5-10 hours a week on the RDF site - exclusively in the discussion fora.

I'll hang here for a while and see what happens at RDF as and when the new site is launched. My biggest concern is that the community has been scattered by this - and although many will reappear here and at a few other sites - I truly doubt that there will be a single place that will contain the same number and variety of atheists. We have been diluted and therefore somewhat weakened by what has happened.

Worse - the magnet that RD's name and forum was for theists and creationists was part of the attraction in that it was a natural place to come to debate (yes and to troll, sock puppet and POE) - now I fear we have lost our concentrated approach to addressing so many of the points made by non-atheists.

I would just like to add my thanks to the many volunteer moderators and non-paid staffers that made the RD Forum such a great experience - you will be truly missed.

LAMENTABLE!!

Mr Ashbo

Hiya! Welcome to the forum!

Btw, RD has posted an apology over at richarddawkins.net.

Yeah saw it - but not wholly sufficient IMHO.

Welcome to the lifeboat!

Yip that apology wasn't the best, but I doubt we'll get much more

Thanks for the welcome - I am sure I will enjoy my time here. Can this site handle the potential large volumes of traffic - say if it gets to 25% of RDF?

Mr Ashbo wrote:Thanks for the welcome - I am sure I will enjoy my time here. Can this site handle the potential large volumes of traffic - say if it gets to 25% of RDF?

Life (who has set this site up for us) does this web development for a living so I'm confident that he'll be able to sort all of that stuff out.

Glad you found us here Mr Ashbo

Hello from Brisbane, Australia, and welcome!

Lamentable indeed, but some of the intellectual heavyweights have climbed aboard, so I have high hopes of a good forum here.

As a house warming present, here's a few laughs for your entertainment.