I hate to have to repeat this, but some of the exchanges in the comments have gotten pretty nasty over the past few weeks. So let me reiterate two rules:
1. Do not call other commentors names, or insult them personally. We are discussing ideas, not personalities or IQs. (Of course, humor is permitted.) If I catch you insulting other commenters, I will ask you to apologize. If you don’t, I’ll blacklist you.
2. I’m not really wild about seeing two individuals going at each other and thereby dominating a thread. That said, I do like some give and take as well as debate. But please try not to occupy more than, say, 15-20% of the comments on a thread. Do realize that I’ve never yet seen an individual change his/her mind in such exchanges, so they’re often more about venting and aggression than enlightenment.
I am trying to keep the tone respectable here and to avoid the fracases that characterize other sites. Please try to abide by the two rules above, as well as the others I’ve posted.
kthxbye
Well, aren’t you just some*&^%$#&%$# for trying to take away our contstitooshunle rat to free speech.
Seriously, when my kids were little the referee (me)would often have to remind them that speech is about conveying information. An insult contains no information so is not speech, it is an assault and you have no freedom of that.
[pedant] I get what you are saying but, insulting someone does convey information, in some cases quite a bit. But it certainly isn’t polite and tends to trigger a response in kind. Which, unless you have the wit and style of a Christopher Hitchens, quickly becomes boring and unproductive.[/pedant]
You are right of course. With the level of discourse we find on some threads it was easy for me to forget that a well turned insult can be an art form in itself.
Hitch, I miss you.
You forgot to add,
Hitch, I miss you, you drink-sodden former Trotskyite popinjay.
“We are discussing ideas, not personalities or IQs. (Of course, humor is permitted.)”
You are SOOOO lucky that I am super busy right now and don’t have time to post anything from my “Shrink’s Compendium of Stupid IQ Jokes”. L
Thanks, Jerry.
+1. It’s OK that there are places where people can yell and shout at each other and vent all their pent up acrimony. It’s nice, though, that there are other places where things can be more civil. I really appreciate the tone here and appreciate the effort to keep it that way.
Agreed, but I rarely see things become acrimonious here. Vigorous and heated, yes. But nasty, no.
Secondly, it is a rare pleasure to read an informed discussion between two people of opposing view points, each of whom brings some fire to their argument. Developing an argument may take several levels of density, and may mean that for a time, two or more people will dominate the thread. Closing these discussions off prematurely can be very disappointing.
But it is vital to remember that argument is not the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says! (Nor is it abuse.)
/@
Thank you indeed.
I think that the rules are good ones. This site has a lot more class than a lot of others. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.
This is why this place is so nice to visit regularly.
Very positive atmosphere around here.
I feel as if a 1,000 times more knowledge is shared here than at some other topically related websites.
Despite my distain for the place, I won’t bemoan a certain blog which starts with a P and ends with haryngula.
Why is that place so full of anger anyway?
“Why is that place so full of anger anyway?”
Tone from the top + a good dollop of third-wave feminism.
PZs strong focus on sexism attracts sexists who insists that one can only talk about sexism without mentioning it. But if you want to blame feminism, knock yourself out.
This is a controversial subject, and not in a good way. Might either of you be in the mood to take your discussion of Pharyngula and its doings to that website?
Agreed; this is off-topic and will create a nasty atmosphere.
Are you kidding? His post The Decent Human Being’s Guide to Getting Laid at an Atheist Conference is one of The best pieces on civility ever written. I rarely read the comments. But if he chooses to allow unfettered comments, that’s his choice. If people decide to abuse it, that’s nothing to do with feminism. You can’t censor people 24/7. Blame the asses, not women, pal.
That was a response to blitz 442. Sorry.
“Blame the asses, not women, pal.”
He didn’t blame the women.
So feminists are, what…..mostly men and hermaphrodites?
Gender bias, tsk, tsk. 🙂 Certainly men can be feminists, and, I presume, hermaphrodites can as well. PZ is a feminist and Ed Brayton, probably others, but I didn’t follow the fallout from Elevatorgate too closely. I would say that Thunderf00t probably isn’t a feminist. 🙂
Well, I was being moderately sarcastic but I guess it fell flat. Point is, blaming feminists is obviously indefensible.
Men can be feminists, but it’s a fine line to tread (see Ed yong’s blog if you haven’t already, it’s a pretty cool sci blog and has a link to a relevant essay). 🙂
The fallout from Egate definetly hurt some atheists, but PZ was not among those smelling less than rose-ish.
Gender bias my butt. It’s pretty well established that most feminists are women.
Not sure if you realize how much information is actually shared in Pharyngula comment threads.
Hint: It’s a ton.
But the signal-to-noise ratio is much higher here.
Agreed!
I used to be a Science Blogs regular when PZ was in the habit of posting excellent articles about science, but over time his blog transmuted into an extended atheist rant and I could no longer find anything to interest me there (I can make up my own atheist rants!).
It wasn’t just his blog, either. The science quality at Science Blogs seemed to head downhill after that big blow-up about sponsored blogging and I got to wondering why people would blog at a site specifically titled “Science Blogs” when they were blogging almost nothing about actual science.
There’s still some quality over there (only ERV leaps to mind, unfortunately), but these days I go there rarely, and spend the bulk of my online science reading time hopping from WEIT to Discover Magazine blogs and back again.
The web needs quality science blogging and it’s a comfort to know that there remain places we can readily find it.
Me too. I used to hang out at PZ’s a lot and I’m still a huge fan of ole poopyhead but I find things more congenial round here. The posts are fascinating and the commenters often just as good. Science, cats, boots and food, what’s not to like?
No offense to Dr. Conye, but this probably has less blogging on actual science than Pharyngula, especially if you factor in how much depth Dr. Conye actually goes into for the blog (website?) posts related to a study/studies.
I also find it hilarious how WEIT has a vast more amount of posts about food, music, cats, and atheism than science (photos of animals and posts going “Ooo look at this cool thing” hardly qualify), and seems to be excluded from your list of complaints.
“Probably has”? Well it clearly hasn’t improved your manners any.
“No offense”.
Yeah, probably has. It’s hard to tell as I didn’t perform a search of all science posts in the past year at both sites; had I done that, I would be able to make a factual statement. PZ seems to squeeze them in at about the same rate as Conye (just recently he has had two great posts, one criticizing a bad model looking at skeletal development and the other at turtle shell evolution). However, PZ often seems to go into a bit more depth, while Conye keeps it for the lay-est of the layman.
Not sure what your issue with “probably has” is. Care to elaborate? And the no offense is meant to stress saying one blog has less hard science posts than another doesn’t somehow determine the value of the blog. I’m not claiming PZ’s blog is better because it has more/equal/whatever amount of science posts, nor am I saying that Dr. Conye should have more science posts than he does now.
You jut seem annoyed without having a real reason to be.
To be fair, I think the anger is the product of just a few extremely prolific and relentless commenters. The comments aren’t all like that. In fact, I see many of the regular commenters here over there, too.
PZ’s posts are almost always great: astute takes on worthwhile topics, and well-written.
It’s unfortunate that just a few folks, combined with no regulation, can ruin the impression one gets of the entire blog.
The people who get these impressions are the assholes who freely use sexist, racist, ableist language, get called out on it, continue to use it while acting proud, get completely chewed out, and then leave crying about bullying.
Then ignorant passerbys who hear of these assholes crying about how they were bullied and group-thunk-ed upon, somehow think the vitriol and anger is somehow unwarranted.
You may need to host some kind of virtual competitive team sport like volleyball to work off the edginess that any community develops. 🙂
lol. is there gonna be a WEIT+ ?
Did you just say that cats rule, dogz drool? I already knew that.
5. “Why is that place so full of anger anyway?”
I don’t have the link but maximum vitriol was positively encouraged by the author a year or two ago.
And just in time to prove me wrong: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/08/28/lounge-362/
“And just in time to prove me wrong”
No, that only applies to a small number of threads.
IMO, this forum is most interesting when there are disagreements. To be trite, we can disagree without being disagreeable. I wish more faithists would join in. I’d like to know why and how they can believe in such hogwash.
PS This forum is great. The best on the internet. Keep up the good work, JAC.
Much agreed.
I don’t want to sound like I’m blowing sunshine and rainbows up the host’s arse, but this is my most frequented site on the internet. And that’s not because I’m some kind of biology guru (only know as much as I’ve read from Coyne, Dawkins, etc.).
Jerry’s blend of topic matter, his take on issues and interests, and the general tone of the site bring me regularly looking for new posts, discussion, analysis, and commentary. Not to mention the knowledgeable and welcoming commenters/community.
In my view, here are the pros of the site (I don’t have any cons):
• Posts on music/entertainment (from rock n’ roll, to classical, to dancing, etc.)
• Posts on biology. Particularly Jerry’s ability to make the posts engaging to the interested nonscientist, and I assume also interesting to the more biologically in tuned.
• Posts on “sophisticated” theology. What a great approach! Enough said.
• Oddly, posts on cats. I must admit that I’ve never been a cat person. In fact I’ve spent most of my life hating cats. But after spending so much time at this site I’ve become a lot more tolerant and almost fond of cats. In particular I like the cat humor and lolcat stuff.
• The overall tone of the site, discussion, commentary, etc.
• The straight up demolishing of religion topics/posts. They are so comprehensive, well structured and worded. Constantly infused with intelligible content and reference ranging from morality, to history, philosophy, science, etc. I can’t find another place on the internet that does an equal job destroying religious arguments so thoroughly on all lengths of the spectrum.
• Length of posts relative to the detail and content of the topic.
• Free will posts (as if you could resist :))
• Etc.
So, as a nonscientist businessman, infrequent poster, and clear fan of the site, I just thought I’d show my appreciation for the website. Frankly, I’m greatly saddened by the thought of this site not existing some day. (Sorry for the morose ending, but it does sadden me. Who else will stand up to accommodationism and religious nuttery while humoring and educating us at the same time?!)
+10
Great work Jerry,
let them have their lead, and just a little tweak from time to time, its what makes this one of the best.
Venting and vitriol are sign of frustration and expectations not met. If you are arguing with the religious and expecting them to suddenly “see the error of their ways” you are asking for frustration and disappointment. I had to learn this lesson the hard way.
No, you can make them see the error of their ways, if you’re persistent, detailed and polite. I’ve converted at least 3 that I know about on the net. But that was back in the days when I was a polite “troll” on Xian sites, back before sites began relentlessly policing against people with a different message than the one the site was about. If every unbeliever convinced 2-3, we’d make some progress. Especially if the new converts then …
Funny, all the people I converted/helped convert were subjugated to relentless and detailed vitriol.
“you can make them see the error of their ways, if you’re persistent, detailed and polite”
Correct.
Depends on the individual. The gawdly are not so due their abnormal openness to new ideas. It takes a lot of obstinance (guess what – that’s not a word) to be religious, don’t you think.
Venting and vitriol are not a sign of expectations not met, but merely exasperation of the status quo.
Hey, speak for your own venting and vitriol.
Thank you agina, sir. This is one of the main reasons I frequent your site instead of some others (or one in particular.)
After a couple “discussions” elsewhere, being told to F— off!!!!!! and then reiterating to the interlocutor that being told to F— off didn’t amount to an argument and didn’t convince me, I decided it was a waste of time.
agina = again …
I can just guess who you were attacked by!!
I can just guess what he said that warranted for him to be told off.
Not so long ago, I was contacted by a believer via a comment thread on Amazon (which I no longer bother much with.) Anyhow, this person pinged me in Amazon’s system because I seemed like the most reasonable person who disagreeed with them.
Then followed a rather lengthy exchange of emails, in which I ended up writing up a (long, probably tedious) essay on why I am an atheist. I don’t think I convinced them; but they at least could admit that I had a point. Maybe when I sent the opus, they decided not to wade through it and just terminated the exchange!
In the end, for every beleiver I’ve engaged, it has come down to, they “just feel it”, and that’s that.
Well said Mr. Coyne. The number of blogs I visit has started dwindling rapidly as I am finding the vitriol exhausting. Thankfully this is an oasis of calm.
I’d like to join those thanking you for making this site a place where ideas, rather than insults, can be freely exchanged. Please, reiterate “da roolz” as often as you need to in order to maintain the tone you’ve set here.
As a bio-curious layman, I came here to learn about evolution, but discovered much more than that. The biology posts are still the main attraction, but the posts on sophisticated
theology and free will (and the comments/discussions thereupon) have really expanded my horizons and given me much to think about. It’s like being a fly on the wall at the best salon in town!
Like elsburymk14 above, I’ve even been converted from a cat hater to a cat liker due to this site. Try as I might, though, I don’t think I’ll ever *get* that lolcat stuff, though. Oh well, can’t win ’em all! (Now, this, THIS is the original LOL cat, and the best cat EVER, in my unbiased opinion … http://tinyurl.com/krazy-ignatz) … but I digress…
Anyway, keep up the good work, and thank you for maintaining high standards. I hope others will follow your lead!
Philosopher Daniel Fincke has a thoughtful post on this topic: http://freethoughtblogs.com/camelswithhammers/2012/08/24/no-hate/