This is probably the right time to announce a small change to the
Forum Guidelines. Rule 10 has been modified. It originally read:
- Always treat other members with respect. Argue the position, not the person. Avoid abusive, harassing and invasive behavior. Avoid needling, hectoring and goading tactics.
It now reads:
- Keep discussion civil and avoid inflammatory behavior that might distract attention from the topic. Argue the position, not the person.
I don't believe there's any way to make the
Forum Guidelines perfect, and there's a tendency for modifications to address the problem of the moment, but the original formulation seemed to be encouraging too many complaints involving respect.
If over the years EvC Forum had produced a history telling us that serious examinations of ridiculous ideas produce positive results then it would be well to continue this approach, but history tells a different story. The vast majority of the time, those pushing ridiculous ideas do not in any substantive way address the counter-arguments and/or counter-evidence.
I think the challenge for the moderator team is to keep threads on a consistent plain. Those who show a willingness and ability to constructively respond to rebuttals should be defended from ridicule and abuse, no matter how ridiculous or indefensible their ideas might appear to be.
But those who for whatever reason fail to engage the debate constructively will probably never do so, and I would suggest that moderators waste little of their time attempting to coax such members along - it almost never proves successful. Maintaining order in such threads is always challenging, but since they often degenerate into various forms of the complaint "you're not addressing or even understanding the rebuttals" moderators might want to encourage participants to address their posts to the lurker audience, or even just close the thread.
This
Forum Guidelines change wasn't motivated by the Jar/Buz dust-up discussed in the exchange above, but it occurs during Thanksgiving vacation week where I have more time, and so it makes a convenient example of application of the modified guidelines.
Whether he's aware of it of not, I think that Jar far, far too often posts in order to maximize annoyance. This tends to distract attention from the topic and focus attention on him, as the many mentions of Jar's name in complaints from creationists make clear. As such, in my view it constitutes a violation of the
Forum Guidelines and should be discouraged.
Taken in isolation, the particular post from Jar that Buz complains about barely registers at all as offensive with its rhetorical "Have you read the Bible Buz?" question, but when placed in the context of the larger body of all Jar's posts it does form part of a pattern of behavior that should, I think, be discouraged. His reply also ignores Buz's clear statement that days were not 24-hours long before creation of the sun and moon. In other words, Buz was not denying that there was day and night before the sun and moon, but only that the length of the day was not established before the sun and moon. The interpretation itself can be argued, but clearly Buz has read his Bible.
But there's a flip side to this. Jar seems to save his attention for those posts of a certain type or style, and while generalizing in this instance isn't easy, I would say such posts are often illogical, inconsistent, poorly thought out, or spun from whole cloth (i.e., made up). Jar's responses are often cutting but rarely receive any moderator attention, and this is probably why Jar is perceived by many creationists as getting a free ride here. My response is to suggest that if you don't want to feel the barb of Jar's tongue, stop making assertions that are easy targets. I'm not going to put much time into encouraging the moderator team to defend promoters of bad thinking or ideas. While ideally all ideas would be treated with respect, I can't say it any better than Jefferson:
Thomas Jefferson writes:
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.
Nebulous expressions of questionable ideas are magnets for the ridicule that simple human nature always produces in response, and this site doesn't want to make too great a habit of going against human nature.
| -- | Percy |
| | EvC Forum Director |
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