rationalskepticism.org

LIFE wrote:Brain man,

someone just told me about this thread and I've only read from page 7 on, so apologies if I should get the wrong picture.

I read your last few posts here as follows, in your view:

-This thread (and possibly others) is in the wrong category
-It should not be in the wrong category and there seems to be a hidden agenda for it being in this category
-In fact, there seems to be an overall underlying agenda to push atheist ideas but not scientific ideas
-The owner of this site just saw an opportunity to generate money
-You will participate in attempts to bad-mouth this place on various sites

I think those are your main points, please correct me if I missed any or misrepresented them.
Once you did that I would like to address those from my point of view.

I Didn’t expect this to occur here, but mostly these points are not correct.

-This thread (and possibly others) is in the wrong category

yes that is correct. Due to the high google rank for this site, you need a separate fringe category section and agreement with several moderators based on demarcation rules between fringe and pseudoscience with some kind of in depth statement on the thread for why that has occurred. Otherwise it comes across as an unconsidered tabloid review.

-It should not be in the wrong category and there seems to be a hidden agenda for it being in this category

I have no idea if there is an agenda or not. My experience and understanding is these things organize themselves for all kinds of reasons. Agendas kick in far later when enough people are interested in a particular self organized activity.

-The owner of this site just saw an opportunity to generate money

No idea at all on that one. Only the owner can say, or the opinions of a media expert has the tools to determine if this is true or if so, did it occur later. i.e. I was part of founding sports clubs founded from enthusiasm, which later became an economic concern when the activity grew. I still do not know. My opinion is It “looks” like it was founded from enthusiasm and an umbrella from the RDF fallout far as I can tell, but has gained value which the owner may or may not be aware off.

-In fact, there seems to be an overall underlying agenda to push atheist ideas but not scientific ideas

How would I measure that ? And again what is an agenda, self organized activity, consensually agreed intent, or some combination ?

All I can say is that i thought this was a science only site when I joined. Like a more wide scope topic form of physics forums. Later when I click on the active topics I can always find a lot of activity geared towards the atheist agenda. There is both going on at the same time. The point is these two aspects don’t work well together IRL science circles so there is no reason to expect that will happen here.

That theories are misclassified here in the manner they do shows what happen when science and politics mix.

-You will participate in attempts to bad-mouth this place on various sites

I don’t know what bad-mouth means in legal terms, but if you mean criticize and analyze the activity that would be correct but nowhere except one well designed site optimized to appear under this one in google. The idea is to take all the fringe theory out from the pseudoscience section, and re-appraises if they were classified correctly, with a method or not. Also laying out any attempts or appeals by their authors and what the result of that was. Opinion will be asked from the authors of those works on how they view all this. If they were to come here they will be barraged by ridicule and in joke discussions which do not address them directly. Depending on how this goes other sites will be looked at.

Also an introduction page summarizing what happened at RDF to give rise to these forums and how atheism and science have become mis-conflated for the worse set against example of higher level science activity where you rarely get this, and when it does trouble arises. However it can be done correctly. One prominent positive example where it was managed well was the "beyond belief" season on the science network.

Lastly, I have tried to attempt to discuss this matter here and it took 6 months to get a reply from moderator which was not a discussion but a thread cleanup.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/feedb ... 21288.html