New convert.. from RD forums

[leo-rcc]

Hi there and welcome. Glad you found us here.

Awesome to have new blood here We will thrive through Josh's idiocy.

I was never a posting member on the RDForums but I used to read a fair amount of it.

As a member there did they tell you why they want to close the forum outright?

Oh thats right I never posted that did I?

One day we were greeted with this message:

Dear forum members,

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We wanted you all to know at the earliest opportunity about our new website currently in development. RichardDawkins.net will have a new look and feel, improved security, and much more. Visits to the site have really grown over the past 3 1/2 years, and this update gives us an opportunity to address several issues. Over the years we've become one of the world's leading resources for breaking rational and scientific news and original content. We are focusing on quality content distribution, and will be bringing more original articles, video and other content as we grow.

The new RichardDawkins.net will have a fully-integrated discussion section. This will be a new feature for the site, similar to the current forum, but not identical. We feel the new system will be much cleaner and easier to use, and hopefully this will encourage participation from a wider variety of users.

We will leave the current forum up for 30 days, giving regular users an opportunity to locally archive any content they value. When the new website goes live, you are welcome to submit these posts as new discussions. The forum will then be taken down from the web. You will not loose your username on the new system.

The new discussion area will not be a new forum. It will be different. We will be using a system of tags to categorize items, instead of sub-forums. Discussions can have multiple tags, such as "Education", "Children", and "Critical Thinking". Starting a new discussion will require approval, so we ask that you only submit new discussions that are truly relevant to reason and science. Subsequent responses on the thread will not need approval—however anything off topic or violating the new terms of service will be removed. The approval process will be there to ensure the quality of posts on the site. This is purely an editorial exercise to help new visitors find quality content quickly. We hope this discussion area will reflect the foundation's goals and values.

We know that this is a big decision. We know some of you will be against this change. We ask that you respect our decision and help make this transition as smooth as possible.

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We're confident that these changes will improve the site experience and we look forward to seeing what you do with the new system.

Many thanks again.

Josh Timonen,
Andrew Chalkley
The Richard Dawkins Foundation

I've hidden a bit for readability.

Basically what they were saying is the community that has taken years to build up will be destroyed in 30 days and you just have to take it on the chin. Salvage what you can but the forum is no more.

This pissed a lot of prominent posters, moderators, and forum admins, as that is years of work down the drain, and all new content to be submitted on the new system would need approval first prior to being published. This stifles all free speech and kills of any spontaneity in its tracks.

When the admin, mods and members became a bit too vocal in their discontent, Josh and Andrew just closed the forum all together, and have now re-opened it as read only.

Update: 2010-02-22 We had intended to leave the forum fully-funtioning for 30 days, but due to the inappropriate posts by some users and moderators, we have decided to leave the forum in a read-only state. You can still download and archive your posts and private messages, but the ability to enter new posts has been disabled. It's unfortunate that it had to come to this. We know that change can be difficult and sometimes frightening, but we are all very excited about the direction of the website and the future.

We would be Josh and Andrew then, because all the others I've read and heard over at Ratz are far from happy about it.

Now in their latest effort the blame for the premature close is now shifted upon the moderators that tried to get as many of their fellow community members over to Rationalia by PM'ing them about that site. All former moderators and admins are now demoted.

so that is it in a nutshell.