I think with even the likes of the psuedoscientists, the psuedo sub-forum is now a tag for, come in and bully me a bit... It's not nice, do you agree?
I argued against establishing this group of subforums specifically for the purpose of hosting bullshit. But I was outvoted. The idea was to separate out the bullshit and put it all in one place, but it's not working. The genuine science subforums still gather the same amount of bullshit as ever, so now SciForums has twice as much bullshit content as before. This is not the way become a respectable site of science and scholarship.
I think there should be a revolt against such actions. I think that such actions bring this site down.
It's the antiscience trolling that brings this site down. How many people stumble into this site from a Google search, stick around long enough to see all the trolling about creation "science," about consciousness affecting the laws of nature, etc., and run away screaming, "How dare those people call themselves a science site?" We'll never be taken seriously until we start taking ourselves seriously. Bullshit belongs in church.
We have moderators whose opinions are unquestioned due to their own power in this place . . . .
No we don't. We all rag on each other.
. . . , under the protection most likely of their scientific knowledge which is often corrupted by their scientific bias . . . .
That phrase does not make any sense. What bias? The fact that they understand and practice the scientific method, which for five centuries has proven to be the best way to understand how the universe works despite, aggressive attempts to falsify it?
. . . . and let us not forget that scientists are not the be all and end all of the scientific justification . . . .
Another clause that makes no sense.
. . . . that they let by-pass the horrid contentions and behaviour of people here who target specific members in the act of blatent bullying.
We're all human and sometimes the trolls drive us
fucking nuts. At those times we might give in to our feelings and allow the trolls to be treated the way they deserve. I have always argued that there's nothing in the rules or in our charter as moderators that requires us to be scrupulously fair in the manner of a democratic national government. Our assigned mission is to make this a place of science and scholarship. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who interferes deliberately and consistently with that mission should be banned on the spot. Fortunately for the trolls, most of the other moderators think they serve a purpose here, one which I personally do not understand.
If this forum has the ability to hire mods . . . .
The moderators are not "hired." We are all unpaid volunteers.
. . . . (sometimes more than 1, or 2 and even 3 in the best of cases, but usually no more). . . .
We have trouble making sure each subforum has one moderator. To think that we could find twice or three times as many people who are qualified for the job (maturity, communication skill, subject matter expertise, extremely thick skin, for starters)
and willing to do it is ludicrous.
. . . . may I ask that there be a mod who will act over the behaviour of sciforums, to maintain bullying at it's minimal.
That's James R's job and he performs it magnificently. Something tells me you must be a troll-lover, otherwise you wouldn't find much to complain about. He occasionally screws up like we all do since we're human, but that's the extent of his weakness.
Because this post has now quickly became a government post, I will take this to the gov. but leave a trace here for my own decision to raise the point, but make it also known it is imperative that with the right support we quell this behaviour quickly so the place does not suffer a bad reputation, since, atleast in my opinion, this place is held in a usually high regard.
The only thing that's going to give this place a bad reputation is too much tolerance for woo-woo and just plain old incoherent posting.
Offended? I called him/her honest, truthful... .. maybe that is what is wrong with sciforums. Too many here mistake good behaviour as being an insultive behaviour, or that those who see a good behaviour would like to hide behind it's shadow, so that you can call that behaviour troll like to justify your own?
It's very difficult to express sarcasm in writing, especially in a place like this where many of the people are not native anglophones and many of us who are are rather young and/or poorly-socialized one-percenters. (I'm 68 so I guess I fall into the second category.) It's easy for sarcasm to be mistaken for straightforward speech, but it's almost as easy for it to happen the other way round. That's what happened in your case. They thought you complained were being sarcastic. So did I at first, frankly.
In light of that, I READILY welcome a banning or warning, or better yet, and more approproate, an infraction for obvious trolling!
It was an honest mistake. Chill out dude.
Yeah, we all got your report since all of us have moderation powers on this subforum. I'll be curious to see how many of the moderators also thought it was sarcastic and worthy of a warning. I'm a professional writer and editor and I had trouble with it.
As I said, sarcasm is such a dangerous weapon in written language that it can backfire and harm somebody who wasn't even using it! I think I'll suggest making a new rule banning sarcasm.
