Ramshutu

The notion that No Gods exist would only be unreasonable if there was no evidence to support that position. If there was reasonable and rational evidence to preclude the existence of God (which there Is), then its reasonable to hold the view that no God exists to the extent that the evidence shows.

Wait, wait. This is an unfair choice, no wonder the mods end up offering shitty  alternatives I vote C

i already try to do that. I’d be happy to

your specific abuse of the system, in the way you did it, that time - was fixed because you stopped being an a*****e and reporting every vote - not because they enacted limited

you could STILL report within the voting limits, or start up a proxy account’- and have the same effect. So no: the one major instance of disruption - from you - where an internet d*** decided to abuse reporting facilities is still more than possible, and is not solvable without anonymity being removed.

Im sorry that you appear to have reported every vote, disrupted this website, caused the mods to remove anonymity to find out who you are - and then make you stop - that’s EXACTLY what’s supposed to happen, and how this is supposed to work. 

You used the system abusively, and are now asking for a policy that would prevent you from being caught or dealt with again.

There are abusive ways of using your reporting power that can be used, have been used, and will be used, and have been abused repeatedly over the history of the internet. Nuisance reporting, mallicious singling out of peoeple, and time wasting - even with reporting limits - are all actual abuses that can, do and will occur if people know there is no comeback to a report and if the mods won’t know who you are.

This is, as opposed to the theoretical, and arbitrary “abuse”, of some theoretical moderator who somehow manages to use reporting information - howndoesnt seem to be immediately clear -  in an abusive way that I have never seen happen in all my use of being on internet discussion forums with reporting.

This should be a non argument. There is no legitimate reason I can think of why anonymity on a discussion forum like this, is necessary in order to make some claim about other people.

if mods wanted to commit abuse - that reports are not anonymous are the LEAST of your problems.

Yeah - but at least the mods will know who is doing the abusing.

I vote no. Can be used abusively if anonymous. Plus it’s not like it’s public

Liberals bad.

Media bad.

No, I’m deliberately mocking the obvious hypocracy of this type of nonsense, where individuals opine about the barbarians at the gates, and try and use this stuff to declare that if you have ever had the thought that free healthcare was a good thing, you may as well be carrying a pitchfork and be about to pillage wholesome right wing America, and yet when a right wing nutjob runs someone over with a car, or sends a pipe bomb to a political figure: those same people disappear like Homer through the bush.

Nah, the conservatives just shot, stabbed and sent pipe bombs to people.

These guys are idiots.

But let’s face it; most people including everyone posting so far probably only really cares when Nutjobs on the left do it.

orange man good.

Orange man good.

Dissent bad.

News that doesn’t hail supreme leader bad.

Dissent bad.

Mean reporters bad

So I was thinking about 5, after draftermans comments.

I think I have thought of a reasonable alternative. Though to be anonymous, it would need implementation on the site.

Anyone can report, but to report a vote, someone has to provide a reasonable rationale about which part of the vote was not valid, and why. IE: Justify which part of the votes you think do not fulfill voting criteria. Moderators must only moderate based on the criteria raised by the reporter, and can reject incomplete, or nonsense report reasons (and subject the reporter to penalties - if they aren’t anonymous).

I think that could prevent tactical and harassing nf reporting.

Contrary information bad.

Reality bad.

We need people to decide winners on debates. We need reporting in order to clear out obvious trolling and biased votes.

Right now, vote reporting in DDO and here has been used as both a tactic to game the debate system to win individual debates, and to harass either people voting, or people in debates.

To make more people want to vote, to increase the legitimacy of every debate win or loss, while we can loosen the standards or change particular rules - without a system that significantly dissuades you from reporting anything for reasons other than the vote is clearly a troll, vote bomb or biased - your going to have significant issues of abuse.

No system is without error, and I will readily admit that if two individuals create an unmoderated voting debate, but don’t specify it as such, or say so in public and one person abuses that agreement - that can happen. It can also happen now with the current system - but instead of a single person doing it, anyone can do it and you as a participant may never know who it is. And that’s a much bigger and more serious problem.



In all honesty, it’s a really good thing to know who is reporting votes on debates. If I’m voting for white flame and virtuoso, I’ll probably be a bit less verbose than if I’m voting for two people who report every vote: I’m also less likely to debate someone who I know reports every vote. That’s good information to have.


I think in reality the voting system in DDO which was copied here is terrible and needs to be completely changed top to bottom, but I think the issue here is not about crafting that perfect ivory tower solution, but to tweak the rules with a minimum amount of effort to make things better and fairer for debaters, voters and moderators.

I genuinely think you’re setting yourself up for failure if you let people without skin in the game, throw spanners into the works.

As I said in the other thread. Right now, vote reporting is rampant, and I suspect that even before your shenanigans, was mostly done by the people the vote was against. If both participant are happy with the vote, then why on earth should moderators waste their time, and people casting votes be dissuaded from voting in the future just because some third party wants to p*** people off?

having the participants being the first line of moderation will make the moderation more lax: and probably not a lot different from where it is now.

more importantly (and more difficultly), I was also suggesting a penalty to be imposed if someone reported a vote on their debate and that vote turned out to be fine. It’s a double edged sword - you want voting to be easy and genuine, so need reporting to remove bad or biased votes - but also you want to limit potential abuse by people tactically reporting.

It being Histrionic nonsense is what makes it Histrionic nonsense.  You’re not “advocating for a replacement mod”, your openly and publically attempting to undermine both the administration and moderation on d a website you give no financial or active time support to because you don’t like what one of the moderators did and think that the entire world not revolving around you and your opinion means the sky is falling.

Publically bombarding the forums like this is histrionic idiocy. If you want to deal with moderation issues, there are other more appropriate and better ways of getting your point across other than throwing public temper tantrums.

Websites like this need significant moderation to survive because it’s content driven - if they don’t have it - they degenerate quickly and drive out genuine discussion and replace it with people who are fine with swearing, asanine trolling and insults. That’s what 4chan is for.

Not a single other person had a contribution even close to as brazenly disruptive as bronto - and bronto went on for over a year of dozens of posts per day, with almost no actual content. He should have been banned after a week, but he wasn’t because of histrionic nobbers, and fear about “free speech” nonsense like this.

There are also at least 4 active Russian account posting occasional propaganda, that were never banned even though they were obvious propaganda accounts, I believe you’re confused with the spampocalypse - which was something else.

While you deviated off onto a wild tanget, let’s go back to the main crux of my argument, which you seem to have ignored. 

When confronted with a moderator action you don’t like, you can either deal with it like an adult, or you can launch into this sort of panty twisted histrionic nonsense, where a bunch of drama queens start multiple threads and arguments, and work themselves up into a mastabatory rage about how gosh-darn unfair and anti-free-speech those one or two decision was.

If you’re not capable of dealing with opposing view points like actual adults with reasoned discussion and dialog - I would suggest a debate website is probably the last place you should be frequenting.

Yeah. Unfortunately, this entire thread, and what is going on is exactly the same pattern that has repeated over a million different discussion forums and website since the beginning of the internet, and IRC platforms.

A moderator takes some action for which a small subset disagree. Instead of acting like adults and starting a genuine discussion, they spend the next few weeks throwing their toys out of their pram, making ridiculous posts like this, and others, trolling, rolling around in histrionic faux rage because you don’t have the capacity to realize that collaborative websites aren’t just about your feelings.

its almost some free speech nonsense, where people basically decide to bash a moderator as some sort of authoritarianism out of control Nazi for daring to take a stand against something you dont agree with.

its ridiculous sh*t like this, that makes moderators reluctant to do anything at all, which leads to deterioration of websites as “anything goes” invariably means a race to the bottom. It’s why it took years to get Bronto banned on DDO, and why a bunch of Russian bot accounts are still there.

So pull those training pants up, and act like a grown up. 

As as I said: people like you are literally the reason we can’t gave nice things.

This is all - literally - about finding a fair way to pick who won the debate. Public votes are poor because either they require too much effort and so no one votes - or it’s a popularity contest. Neither of which are good ways of picking a winner.

As long as people trust the voters, it doesn’t matter what the voting method is - and if they don’t trust the voters - no way will be accepted. Having an appointed panel that can explain the winners, justify the decision, and can obviously be kicked off if they’re being arses, eliminates the popularity contest side of things.

If someone isn’t online to report, they don’t report and they lose the debate. If they aren’t online during a debate, they forfeit, and run the risk of losing the debate. As long as this is made clear to people they can either lengthen the period, or they deal with it.

The main issue, is that vote reporting is currently used as a tactic to try and win debates. That and people like RM who seem to believe that if you vote against them, that vote shouldn’t count.

And this eloquent and well thought out response is why a debate website is probably not the right place for you.

Bsh is doing fine, stop with the hystrionics, pull your knickers out of your arse crack, get a bloody grip and stop with this lord of the f***ing flies nonsense. 

You are the reason we can’t have nice things.

Basically the whole issue is trying to work out a fair system to determine who won a debate that isn’t subject to bias, personal preference, and anything other than which made the better argument.

An important aspect in addition to that, is actually constructive feedback, what people could have or should have done better: but that’s not a moderation issue.

the problem with da and ddo voting systems is that to try and remove bias from votes, they instituted such a officious set of criteria it takes you hours upon hours to do it. 

In my view it’s better to have a pool of trusted voters, to render a verdict. I don’t think anyone would conclude that there is bias if there were 10 whiteflames weighing in on a debate and picking a winner.

Educating participants is not a moderation issue.

Calm your knickers.

The mods can see the users who are reporting I am more amazed that the didn’t already. They’re not revealing your social security details. If you want your bullsh*t to be tagged against your username, go to 4chan.

I could always make my votes longer and make bsh read them all.

could we take some time considering vote reporting?

It seems that reporting votes you don’t like is almost a strategy. It’s goingto dissuade people from casting votes as the process is far too onerous and patchy. Removing a vote an hour before the end of a debate is also really bad form when the voter won’t have time to go back and correct things.

I understand the need, but with no system to prevent someone reporting anything, people will report everything.

Is it possible to make it so that only the debaters can challenge votes? And every time the moderator takes no action, the reporter is penalized with a point penalty on the debate?

Wait, so there is a freakout from a bunch of people about some moderator decision, and they are now raging out over multiple threads about how Grupenfuhrer moderator is being unfair and trampling over free speech.

I’ve totally never ever seen that in any other discussion forum or website...

Yeesh, I guess it’s impossible to say ANYTHING without offending right wing snowflakes.

Okay awesome: so you’re specifically rejecting all facts that disagree with you. Good to know.

Mountains have been repeatedly shown to deflect pendulums, and the plum line. You appear to be confusing them accounting for the earth’s curvature when trying to work out where stars are (which is part of the basis of the experiment), with some systematic error. Of course, you don’t state what that error is, how t works, or why anything they did was wrong, incorrect or unscientific.

As I said, you’re just rejecting it out of hand without any real reason.

1.) The moon is being pulled into the earth. That’s why we see it moving around us and not fly off into space.

2.) Mountains pull objects towards them. It’s the 3rd most famous gravitational experiment.

3.) google “orbit”, if you have any specific questions on the maths, what it means or how it works: I will be happy to answer. As of now, I suspect you’re acting deliberately ignorant as a rhetorical ploy - a common technique amongst woo peddlers and buffoons. Act ignorant, ignore what people say, and just ask meaningless question after meaningless question.

so I read this whole thing, and I still don’t fully understand what you mean by objective.

You use two different definitions of the word in the same sentence.

Do you mean that objective - meaning unbiased, or objective meaning a real thing rather than a concept like beauty?

Unfortunately, none of this is made up, this is all reflected in our previous posts. Also unfortunately, it appears to be necessary to bring up a the arguments and points you have utterly capitulated and dropped - which is odd as this is a debate website where the whole intent is to bring up issues and arguments. 

If you’re not willing to address any issues with the nonsense you blurt out, may I suggest that the comment section in YouTube videos about evolution, or disused doorways where you angrily shout at passers by would be a better and appropriate venue where you can do what you’re doing here without wasting everyone else’s time.

As your spending all this time having a very scientific conversation calling people names, can I point out that you appear to have ignored the following issues I have pointed out with your arguments.

As you are so smart and so honest, you must have just missed the three times I’ve reminded you, and totally are not ignoring every flaw pointed out as you have no valid argument:

You’re projecting so hard iMax wants to charge royalties for that post.

Apologies for the delay, and the circus. Please bear in mind the plagiarism analogy - it’s a very good description of what’s going on.

So let’s start this post with some of the scientific systematics: what you can and can’t use, and what the problems with actually making measurement are.

This is an interesting problem that science is very interested in, but overlooked by many people, like EthanG, in terms of what is and is not valid to check. 

Often, you find creationists and creationist websites make incorrect claims about you should or shouldn’t see: only to find that when you use evolution to predict what a measurement should be - you see no such thing.

For example, contrary to what some people demand: Comparisons at individual gene levels are actually difficult, if not impossible. If a gene is the target of selective pressure - if a gene is changing as a species evolves - it may change rapidly, or lots. Between two closely related species. If evolution were true, it is no surprise that you would see random results if you picked any protein. So picking a random gene, getting a random result and then shouting ‘Ah-hah!’ Is largely meaningless. 

The amount of change evolution could produce on a gene over 10my, is likely pretty substantial, which is why we often limit ourselves to conserved proteins like CytC.

With the advent of genome sequencing, we can use genomes as a whole. We have sequenced thousands of species, and can compare these genomes.

We see exactly what is expected - whole genome analysis shows closely related species are very close genetically, whereas disparate species are not. Due to the nature of differences, once you get far away from two species, the number of changes between two organisms as a whole can become too large to meaningfully compare the whole organisms genome - there are so many differences, a percentage difference becomes much less accurate.

The reason is actually fairly simple, from looking at our own genes from one generation to another, we know DNA is both added and deleted by mutations. If two species of organisms diverged so long ago that large regions may have been added and removed over that time, it becomes harder to compare what remains.

But saying that, at the top level, comparing whole genomes in this way is still broadly accurate - but not accurate enough to trace exact lineages (and by exact lineages - I mean being able to accurately place multiple branches that diverged close to each other, especially when you understand how the percentage numbers are generated. There are some curious exceptions where we find some species have undergone massive amount of gene deletion and have much less DNA than others, and vice versa: but never the type of pattern that would outright invalidate evolution (for example two disparate species - works and humans - having substantial regions of identical DNA)

 

So, Cytochrome C shows the pattern, when you take into consideration the type of errors that can occur and apply them to whole genomes - that shows the same patterns too.

So from here, we now have three independent ways of determining how related species are - and they all give the same answer.

Following on from that: there are two specific additional predictions that have come from modern genetics I can talk about.

1.) we know that chimp and humans have a different number of chromosomes (humans have 1 pair fewer). If evolution is true, then we should be able to find one of the human genes being a fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes. Which we do.

2.) Retroviruses add their DNA in to the host cell DNA to make that host cell copy it. It doesn’t always work, so your cells have deactivated virus DNA in them (note this is how many cancers end up forming), such sequences can end up being passed onto your children - and eventually into the genome of the species. We can track those sequences in humans and other animals too - and find the same correlations of hereditary there too. 

You’re already ignoring me, and everyone else. This is the point of my reply.

You’re being repeatedly dishonest through multiple quote mined and deliberately misrepresenting peoples positions, you’re getting basic science wrong at a fundamental level, and when this is all pointed out, you drop every point you’ve made only to throw out another point you won’t defend.

Now, not only is it clear you either can’t or won’t bother to defend anything you’ve said so far, you ask seem to be intent in dragging the whole discussion into petulant name calling and childish insults.

So please, feel free to keep ignoring everything: it reflects much more poorly on you than it does anyone else.

Ahh yes, you’re dropping the “I’m rubber, your glue” defense.

Let’s take a moment to mourn the arguments you have made that are no longer with us:

1.) You have dishonestly quote mined at least two examples of scientists in the media.

2.) you have dishonestly misquoted me: by omitting a line that put my statement into context. Using that omission to - twice- claim I was saying something I obviously was not saying.

3.) You and your blog post - made a claim about what should be seen in conserved proteins that relies on evolution stopping on one branch but not the other. And a claim that completely misunderstands the intent of CytC comparrisons.

4.) You’ve claimed earthworms and lizards and birds do not match Cytochrom C patterns - Deapite me linking you the ensembl genome browser, and giving you specific examples of what I’m doing, you haven’t bothered to provide any further details.

5.) Youve made claims about chronology that misrepresent what I’ve said: specifically that I’m claiming about relative times of divergence - and using this to claim I’m talking about absolute times.

6.) You dishonestly portrayed a list of dissenters to darwinism as significant and compelling; yet was dwarfed by qualified supporters of Evolution called Steve.

7.) Your discovery institute link ignore that we know virus insert the genes into our DNA - that’s how virus work. Both your links seem to object to the idea that viruses can inject genes into the genome, and if they do insert genes into the genome - they must not evolve - because the discovery institute said so.

8.) Your link on birds I’m sure was an accident on your part, as it is not talking about genes for the purposes of phylogeny, but to predict changes based on single gene changes. Genes work together - so individual changes are rarely down to single gene changes (though sometimes they are). This is not exactly controversial. So this appears to you simply throwing a link out without understanding what it even meant.

9.) You’ve claimed that a recessive gene copy has a 25% chance of being passed to a child - it has been shown by multiple people that this is wrong.

So you have repeatedly misrepresented scientists and me, have quote mined, and stated incorrect science which I have corrected. You now seem to have dropped everything you have claimed thus far, and moved on to the next manufactured controversy.

What an excellent argument - the level of evidence and justification you just provided is unparalled.

i will be sure to put your name forward if they ever award a Nobel Prize in “telling people how wrong they are.

It doesn’t really matter whether your blog post was quoting a programmer who was quoting a discovery institute page that was quoting Wikipedia, which was quoting a news article that quoted a biologist.

The claims were wrong, and that was shown in a portion of a post a few pages ago that you decided to not respond to.

I thought I would just add, he is correct. Not that Stronn needs me to defend him, just that you seem to be ignoring his argument repeatedly.

If You have two copies of a particular gene, your offspring will get one of them, and which one they get is random. Meaning there is a 50% chance one particular copy will be chosen.

As there is nearly a 100% chance your offspring will get 1 copy of a gene: - it means If you have a recessive gene if some kind, there is a 50% chance the one your child has will be recessive.

I suspect you are confused by terminology - if two parents have a recessive gene - the child has a 50% chance of having two recessive genes - and then having whatever genetic disorder comes with it - sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, red hair, etc.

That is not the “only direct evidence”. 

Even the whole “direct” definition and usage is largely arbitrary - that’s mostly what I covered in my first reply.

Yes: you’ve already dismissed me.

You haven’t, however, said anything that holds up to any scientific or logical scrutiny: nor have you presented any compelling argument that anything I’ve said is wrong or invalid.

But, yes: you’ve dismissed me as I suspect you don’t have the emotional ability to accept the science in question. Which is not a good place to be.

As  I mentioned: you’re simply being unreasonable and largely dishonest.

Also - as of today there are 1400+ scientists whose first name of Steve who have signed a petition supporting evolution: