when did this forum get overrun by radical right trolls?

[happyjack27]

i mean, really. wrong forum.

[ladajo]

Dude, how long have you been around here?
Granted, just like me it is hard to tell how long lurking goes on before an account is created.
I think you may have missed some of the better right verses left verses I do not exist in your paradigm blast sessions.

[choff]

http://despair.com/freedom.html

[happyjack27]

i don't really mind except for having to mark threads as read so much. it'd be nice if i could just put a thread on ignore. that and it's just a bit surprising. i wouldn't expect such disproportion in a forum about science, of all things.

[Diogenes]

i don't really mind except for having to mark threads as read so much. it'd be nice if i could just put a thread on ignore. that and it's just a bit surprising. i wouldn't expect such disproportion in a forum about science, of all things.

The Forum is identified as "General." The Description for it reads:

Discuss life, the universe, and everything with other members of this site. Get to know your fellow polywell enthusiasts.

No really, take a look.


Since you haven't been around long enough to remember, at one time this forum was completely free of politics. One day, since there was no news for a long time, this poster called "RobtheBob" opened up this can of worms. I mentioned at the time that I thought it was a very bad idea to bring up politics, and that everyone would rue the day that we didn't refrain.

If you want to see where everything went to h3ll, here's the link to the very first thread that started the political arguing.


As for the right wing trolls, the last numbers i've seen indicate that Liberals make up about 20% of the population, while Conservatives make up about 40% of the population. The rest is the mushy middle and ignorant people. This is probably why that most of the opinions seem to be Conservative\Libertarian. (and lets face it, It's mostly males on this forum and males lean Libertarian\Conservative anyway.)


The only reason Liberals have so much influence in public matters is because they control the schools\universities, the legal system, and the News and Entertainment Media. In other words, all the places where they can make their opinion heard. They have disproportionate influence to their numbers.


I will point out that our host Joe Strout, is most likely Liberal inclined, (member of the Sierra Club) and dislikes the fact that so many right wingers want to express their political opinion on this website, but he graciously tolerates us, probably because he really believes in freedom of speech.

Kudos to him.

[MSimon]

when did this forum get overrun by radical right trolls?

When I became moderator. About two weeks or so after the start of the forum. Joe is more a left kind of guy. But we both believe in minimal moderation.

BTW engineers tend to be libertarian. There are a LOT of engineers here. So naturally the comments are going to be in that vein in General.

[mdeminico]

when did this forum get overrun by radical right trolls?

When I became moderator. About two weeks or so after the start of the forum. Joe is more a left kind of guy. But we both believe in minimal moderation.

BTW engineers tend to be libertarian. There are a LOT of engineers here. So naturally the comments are going to be in that vein in General.

That's true. There's very few engineers where I work who aren't libertarian-leaning at a minimum.

Though it's funny, with the internet, people can choose their association, so when they hit the "real world", they see people who don't agree with them and they're like "wtf? I thought everyone thought like me" when in reality, they just always hang out with folks who think just like them.

[ladajo]

RobtheBob! Hah! I remember that!
I don't think I was posting yet then though.
We haven't seen ravingdave either for a bit have we? Must be waiting on EMC2 news.

Edit: I just went for a memory lane spin down the members lists. Lots of names that have been quiet a while.

[Diogenes]

RobtheBob! Hah! I remember that!
I don't think I was posting yet then though.
We haven't seen ravingdave either for a bit have we? Must be waiting on EMC2 news.

Edit: I just went for a memory lane spin down the members lists. Lots of names that have been quiet a while.

Haven't seen DrMike lately either.

[ravingdave]

RobtheBob! Hah! I remember that!
I don't think I was posting yet then though.
We haven't seen ravingdave either for a bit have we? Must be waiting on EMC2 news.

Edit: I just went for a memory lane spin down the members lists. Lots of names that have been quiet a while.

Somebody speak my name? I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[ladajo]

That is spooky.

(or a timely PM...)

Nice to see you are still alive not tall dave...speaking of ghosts

[Jccarlton]

i mean, really. wrong forum.

If you mean me, well looking at the stats, I'm user #10 and I signed up two days after the forum was founded in July 2007. In all that time I have never called anybody any names and never characterized any poster here as anything, letting alone calling people I happened to disagree with, "trolls". I'm sure that there are forums like the daily Kooks and Dummy Underground where your kind of intolerance is the bee knees but I don't think that attempting to censor things because you disagree with them is de rigueur here. At least it hasn't been so far. if what I post offends you, guess what, I don't care. You have no right to censor me and no authority in any way.
It's been tried already:
viewtopic.php?t=2204&highlight=jcarlton+post
If my posts bother you that much, nothing is preventing you from going someplace else. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I think I 'm going to have to post all the right wing stuff I haven't been posting because I tried to keep it more or less pertinent, but since I'm being accused by a mindless twit as being a "troll" I have no reason to filter the stuff I'm sure you will just love.

[ravingdave]

That is spooky.

(or a timely PM...)

Nice to see you are still alive not tall dave...speaking of ghosts

That is touching! Nice to see I am missed!

Tall Dave strikes me as a more serious person. His mind is pretty much made up about a lot of subjects, and he simply doesn't care what people who think otherwise have to say, unless it's in an area that is near and dear to his heart, like the theoretical underpinnings of the Polywell reactor idea.

In other words, he don't put up with bullSh*t.

By the way, I think if you go down the list of members, i'm like number 4 or something. I've been here since before the beginning when Joe Strout was proffering the idea of a more structured debate forum over on the Yahoo IEC group.

In the Early days (and I only came in nearly a year after Bussard made his pitch to Google. (the worthless b@sterds) ) everyone thought it was in the movements best interest to keep politics out of it. We saw it as a boon for humanity, regardless of your political persuasion. We had a sort of truce with ideologues on the other side (Roger Fox, etc.) and no one thought to bring up politics until "RobtheBob" opened that can of worms.

It probably still wouldn't have amounted to anything until Josh Cryer got on and started getting a bit nasty. (If I recall, they had to delete some of his posts because he was seriously flaming!) After that, it became a free for all. I think if we hadn't gotten bored, it all probably wouldn't have happened. We had discussed confinement, and edge annealing, well depth, and oscillating electrons in the cusp, etc. and the subject was pretty much beat to death in my opinion.

Till some new data comes forth, I don't have much interest in getting back into the Theoretical debates.

Anyway, you probably remember all that as well as I do.

[ravingdave]

i mean, really. wrong forum.

If you mean me, well looking at the stats, I'm user #10 and I signed up two days after the forum was founded in July 2007. In all that time I have never called anybody any names and never characterized any poster here as anything, letting alone calling people I happened to disagree with, "trolls". I'm sure that there are forums like the daily Kooks and Dummy Underground where your kind of intolerance is the bee knees but I don't think that attempting to censor things because you disagree with them is de rigueur here. At least it hasn't been so far. if what I post offends you, guess what, I don't care. You have no right to censor me and no authority in any way.
It's been tried already:
viewtopic.php?t=2204&highlight=jcarlton+post
If my posts bother you that much, nothing is preventing you from going someplace else. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I think I 'm going to have to post all the right wing stuff I haven't been posting because I tried to keep it more or less pertinent, but since I'm being accused by a mindless twit as being a "troll" I have no reason to filter the stuff I'm sure you will just love.

Hey number 10! I'm Number 3! I never realized you'd been here for so long. You didn't post much (that I remember) in the first year or so. It seems like you didn't comment much till just this last year.

Now if only we could hear from Shubedobedubopbopbedo, oldbaldeagle, Zixinus, doug l, Jan, Grant Castillou, Magico, and Joe Strout, we'd have the old gang back together again!

[ladajo]

Man - o - man,
Shubedu and Josh, not in my forebrain these days, but surely not forgotten.
Wow.
We surely did jump down the political rabbit hole fast.

In retrospect not related to the politics, I think I should have stopped lurking long before I did. I am trying to remeber when and how I did track into the forum, and for the life of me can't remember now. I think it had to do with Bussard's video, and then maybe finding something from Simon. I do still remember RobtheBob and the can opening.
Beh, I guess it matters not so much these days.

In any event, nice to get some of the band back together again. Now if only Rick would pick up his musical spoons and play a ditty with us again...