Of Snarks and Dogpiles

Percy has issued a warning to all participants in the macroevolution thread for snide remarks. It's something I'm occasionally guilty of - it's good fun afterall.But, for a bit of a change, I joined a YEC forum last weekend and tried to have a civilised debate. I was immediately dogpiled in 4 forums (my naivety, I will stick to a comment in one only next time.) I was fresh meat, an atheist thrown to the Christians.The next two days were rather hectic as I tried to give direct answers to increasingly aggressive questions. I had to fend off demands for evidence for every single, non-controversial (in the world of normal) assertion. They were almost uniformly anal about logical fallacies, calling them at every opportunity in pompous ways and wielding them like clever weapons.A good number of them had been practicising attack questions for some years and weren't totally ignorant of their enemy. Things got more interesting when 3 moderators joined the discussions - as participants, not moderators.Half way through a reply I suddenly found that I could no longer use the site. It appeared I had been banned without warning.It was a fairly unpleasant experience and my reason for bringing it up is that we seem to do something similar here quite often. I can now see from the other side of it that there's actually absolutely no chance of making any progress at all in that kind of feeding frenzy.There must be room for statements of opinion and comment and genuine questioning without the necessity to back every assertion with multiple references and there's no making progress in a discussion where both sides are not really debating honestly, just throwing hand grenades around and showing off to their own side.One big difference between here and there, is that this forum has some excellent moderation which is applied reasonably and objectively, some good tools and rules for moderators to use, a lot of tolerance and different kinds of fora using specific rules of evidence. This keeps control of most debates, doesn't let them get out of hand and moderators do not arbtrarily ban people.Anyhoo, just thought I'd share the experience.

No links?--Percy

I'd rather not.....too embarrassing ;-)I only mention it because I imagine a new creationist joining this forum must feel a lot like I did entering theirs.....(Of course many/most creationists are not genuinely looking for debate but I think they should have the benefit of the doubt for at least a few dozen posts before the attack dogs are released.)

Banning without a warning only happens to spammers.
EvC didn't even fully ban Markuse!

I'm given the message"You are not allowed to visit this community."Which is nice :-)

We rarely suspend someone on a permanent basis. Most of the people that have been indefinitely suspended have been offered back in. We may suspend someone for a few days without warning for egregious offenses.Of course, the 'piling on' and the 'logical fallacy declaration society' does happen to creationists at this evolutionist heavy board. The latter has eased off in recent years, with more people willing to say something a little more than 'Affirming the Consequent!', 'Sharpshooter!' and so on; it's becoming less fashionable. In a debate setting, the challenge is to show there is a logical fallacy, not simply tell that there is one and I think most people are becoming aware of that.The piling on is sometimes an artifact of several people composing a response at the same time. I know I try to avoid repeating points other people have already raised to avoid dogpiling where possible.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

I thought y'all were unneccessarily jerk-ish to the new guy.Its beginning to happen all too often with the newer members. ABE: I mean, the newer evolutionist members seem to be bigger jerks these daysPeople here were a lot kinder and more accommodating back in the day.That being said, I've been banned from multiple Christian forums for waaay less than the least of what goes on around here. Simply not towing the line can get you banned.But this is a better place... and pointing out that other places are worse shouldn't let us make this place any less better.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : see ABE: clarify ambiguity

And if you don't provide links to the threads in question, links to the fora in question might be nice. I've been banned from evolutionfairytale.com but I've yet to apply my notorious rudeness to other religiously-based venues since I grew to love EvC.

Its a fun experiment in how long can creationists stand to face reality.Results: not that long.

I think the moderation on this site is the best I've ever seen and I know you don't ban people - the 'time-out' tool is a really good feature.I'm not implying anything about the moderation here - I'm contrasting it with the YEC version and YEC loses.The purpose of my post is just to say that if we want people from the other side of the argument to come here and debate with us - which I assume we do - then we need to be reasonably gentle with the creationist newbie because it must a scary experience being aggressively challenged on every comment by a handful of rabid atheists.

For many creationists, a belief is as good as a theory, and belief counts as evidence with absence of proof. Some doggedly see the conflict as a war against their very faith. Whether that faith is based on reality or not is the point of contention.Some creationists feel that the "other side" has no right to write the initial ground-rules. Understanding that a faith-based person differs from a evidence-based person goes a long way to preparing for a fruitful discussion. Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is this:What is the objective of the conversation? Is it to convince? Teach? Communicate in order to convert someone or to merely foster an online acquaintance? If the goal is simply to win an argument, little progress will be made at growing a member base for discussion.

As the vast majority of creationists that have come here have been shown, they are not teachable. They want their bronze age voodoo taught in our schools It is not an issue to be overly polite about.

Well you're right, and I get it, but that's just the reasons why they can't face reality for very long. That they stifle it as a response is what's ridiculous. My goal is just to argue. Their response to losing is to shut you up via banning. That's really lame.

Hi, Tangle.I had a similar, one-off experience today.While browsing Google news, I came across this headline from catholic.org:

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'Et tu Brute?' The Blunt Amendment: Why did these 'Catholic' Senators betray us?

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I had an answer, of course, and scrolled down to the comment section. I read their rules, and included one section in my comment:

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catholic.org writes:

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"Though we invite robust discussion, we reserve the right to not publish any comment which denigrates the human person, undermines marriage and the family, or advocates for positions which openly oppose the teaching of the Catholic Church."

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Omni writes:

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That's how you came to feel betrayed. You won't allow laypersons to say anything other than "Amen" to your edicts.

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That's not robust discussion.

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Perhaps those senators listened to their Catholic constituents, the overwhelming majority of whom use contraceptives.

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Being a persistent sort, I checked back later and saw my comment was conspicuously (to me) absent. Having suspected it might be, I had copied it to the clipboard. I tried and failed to re-post it. Why?

quote:

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We also reserve the right to block any commenter for repeated violations.

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I guess "repeated" sometimes means once, and I suppose that policy protects the sanctity of their censors' sensibilities, since the offending heresies are never posted. In general, I think quick bans on evolutionists at ID/creationist and other religious websites are mostly motivated by a similar fear of contagion, grounded in the uneasy recognition that reason is not their friend.I don't think ID/creationist supporters are dogpiled or snarked in a reflexive manner here. When either occurs, one can almost always look back to a contemptuously thrown gauntlet and a subsequent refusal to engage in honest debate.I find dogpiling at such sites easy to deal with: general replies to multiple individuals, referencing earlier replies to repeated questions, etc. However, I also find that the cooler you keep your tone, the sooner you are banned--because a calm display of rationality is the greatest threat they face.

This is the sort of thing I felt happened to me (but obviously I was right and this chap talking in the macroevoltion thread is wrong :-) When I talk to the guys who work in my business answering the phones for customer support I tell them I'm not interested in winning an argument if it means losing a customer; that's a pyrrhic victory. What they need to do is solve the problem that the customer is having and ignore all the bullshit surrounding it. Only the really good ones get that, the others just want to win because it makes them feel clever and important, even though a win is an ultimate loss because the customer feels so hard done by that he says, fuck this I'm off and tells all his mates.