Comments

1. rq says

   28 July 2015 at 1:12 am

   What’s to argue? Thanks for your efforts, PZ. Be well.
2. echidna says

   28 July 2015 at 1:32 am

   What rq said.

   I’m sorry, but not surprised to see this change. I think I’ve been reading your blog for something like nine years now, so no complaints here. Thanks for all the squid.
3. MrFancyPants says

   28 July 2015 at 1:37 am

   What is surprising is that you’re the only one to say or do this, here at FtB, given all that has happened. Oh wait, no, it’s not surprising.
4. birgerjohansson says

   28 July 2015 at 1:42 am

   Even a white dwarf star is interesting.

   I for one has greatly enjoyed the social interaction. And your efforts to provide a safe space have certainly made a difference!
   I hope you will find the outlook less bleak in a year or two.
5. theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物) says

   28 July 2015 at 1:45 am

   Makes sense. I am happy just to lurk.
6. Menyambal - torched by an angel says

   28 July 2015 at 1:51 am

   Bravo, PZ. It is your blog, and it is a blog about stuff, not just a chat room. Thanks for all your thoughts and efforts and generosity. I look forward to the new style.

   Nice Firefly reference.
7. McC2lhu is rarer than fish with knees. says

   28 July 2015 at 1:52 am

   I have to congratulate you for lasting this long. I would have given up a long, long time ago. The internet has fostered an amazingly uncivil environment because of the anonymity and lack of immediate face to face consequences of that uncivil behavior. Trying to create the same mood as a group of friends tossing back a few ales or vinos is impossible. Trolls generally don’t crash the lounge or living room where that group is having interesting and friendly discussion to quickly turn it into the equivalent of a contest of monkeys flinging feces. Trying to re-create the friendly environment has to get less and less rewarding as time progresses with the increase of trolls, possibility of being hacked, having people expect you to be a full time blog mod and all the other nastiness that has crept into the system since its inception back in the ’90s.

   I hope you can take a quite a few moments of satisfaction that you kept things as interesting and pleasant and agreeable for as long as you did in the atmosphere of glaring jerkery that the internet has become.
8. Paul K says

   28 July 2015 at 2:00 am

   Thanks, PZ. You’ve helped me grow. Take care.

   I’ll continue to read what you write, and I’m sorry for the stress you’ve gone through for doing what’s right and strong.
9. Gar Lipow says

   28 July 2015 at 2:33 am

   In terms of policy (as opposed to motivation) this sounds much like the rules I suggested some weeks ago.

   “Don’t be an asshole. PZM decides who is an asshole.” IMO for sites of this sort, rules along those lines are the only ones that work, so I don’t there was really much choice.

   Most of the time, more specific procedures and community building and so on work only with a shared PROJECT, not jut some shared ideas. And such shared projects require enormous amounts of labor. The on-line sites I’ve seen be successful at community building have been devoted to common electoral goals, or focused issue groups, or certain types of fan sites, certain varieties of art and writing sites , certain types of cooking or gardening- and so on. Probably there are exceptions, but I suspect this rule of thumb covers about 90% of the cases.
10. Saganite, a haunter of demons says

    28 July 2015 at 2:52 am

    Personally, I haven’t been active long nor often enough to notice too many of the issues you mentioned. I also extremely rarely visit the other blogs on here. So in both regards, I’m not very deep inside the community to begin with, I suppose. I’ll just wait and see whether this decision of yours will result in any noticeable differences for me/from my POV or not. That said, I hope that your change in policy (problems being reported directly to you rather than to intermediaries) doesn’t lead to more work and trouble for you rather than less.
11. Dr Marcus Hill Ph.D. (arguing from his own authority) says

    28 July 2015 at 2:58 am

    How very dare you? I demand that you stop trying to stifle my Freeze Peach rights!
12. EigenSprocketUK says

    28 July 2015 at 2:58 am

    Post-porcupine, I enjoyed reading the things that people got a bit shouty about: stuff for which people had real fire in their veins, real life hurt in their souls. Things got heated because it was important stuff to folks about whom I had never before had the remotest clue. But when it turns into divisive shit-flinging, that’s awful, and it becomes impossible even to listen, let alone contribute. I’ll still lurk listen and learn, PZed.
13. notto says

    28 July 2015 at 3:34 am

    Long time lurker here (since Expelled). A shame to see the social threads going, but I can remember before TET so I’m sure there will still some sense of continuity between posts. TBH I stopped reading the Lounge a couple of years back as it felt too vicarious, but I enjoyed learning from arguments in the Thunderdome.

    Pharyngula has always been a spiky place, but as many have noted there seems to be more unpleasantness since the shift in emphasis about three years back. Perhaps ‘Social Justice’ is too broad an umbrella to unite a blog commentariat (or even a blog network)? After all if you are for SJ you are clearly a Good Person but if you argue with one point you can rapidly become a Bad Person. Recent events at B&W have highlighted the problems caused by such binary thinking.
14. rorschach says

    28 July 2015 at 3:39 am

    I would like to continue to read you in the future (time allowing), and I don’t completely share your glum analysis above. I have made more lasting friends here than in meatspace in 20 years, and you and many commenters inspired me use my brain and expand my horizon, which one can easily omit when on a fixed career path. So it wasn’t all bad.
    No argument about the changes.
15. McC2lhu is rarer than fish with knees. says

    28 July 2015 at 4:43 am

    With the social nutwork disappearing from this site I would like to advocate for Lynna to be given her own FTB-space to continue her amazing course of reporting the world’s ills that regular news finds too scary to print. Even if it isn’t a regular blog, just links and her intro to the stories she has reported over the last few years. No one on this blog has received more of my mouse clicks.

    With respect to the glum assessment I can’t think of how this site could have become more discouraging than to find out that your so-called secular/atheist/’logical’ allies included such a huge commenting contingent of scungy reptilian MRAs and rape-apologists (and rape-threateners). I considered myself a pessimist beforehand, but at least I thought genuine social change with regard to feminism could happen in decades. From the point I discovered the cockroaches under the cupboard I realized it was still centuries off because there really are that many reptilian brains still out there.
16. opposablethumbs says

    28 July 2015 at 4:45 am

    What’s to argue? Thanks for your efforts, PZ. Be well.

    What rq said, also too. The posts will continue to be just as interesting, informative and thought-provoking, and if this lightens the load on you even a little then, well, there it is. Many thanks for all the work!
17. LykeX says

    28 July 2015 at 5:16 am

    Regarding the new commenting rules, I’ll just point out that we’ll need some guidance on how to handle the off-topic side discussions that will inevitably pop up from time to time. We can’t exactly tell people to “take it to the ‘dome” when there isn’t one.
18. LykeX says

    28 July 2015 at 5:17 am

    By the way…

    All I’m doing is making what has turned into an unrewarding chore go away.

    This makes me sad. This shouldn’t be a chore, so I certainly get that you don’t want to keep it up.
19. lamaria says

    28 July 2015 at 6:05 am

    Tugging gently at each other’s masses can be very comforting, and something it´s the only thing that´s bearable. Take care.
20. Xanthë says

    28 July 2015 at 6:07 am

    You finished Lounge #502 by thanking us for our participation, so I feel it’s only fitting to thank you, PZ, for providing so many installments of The Lounge, Thunderdome, and their predecessors in the first place. I like to think all these commenting threads on balance had far more ups than they had downs, and no one could sensibly begrudge you for ending something that had become a joyless chore to maintain. Even if we are mere objects in space drifting alone I hope there will be the occasional meeting of minds anyway (along with the inevitable Firefly allusions). Again – thankyou.
21. Owen says

    28 July 2015 at 6:20 am

    Well damn. I only ever read the lounge, so I missed everything that happened in the ‘dome and I have no context for why everything just got shut down. I’ll miss it.
22. sbh says

    28 July 2015 at 6:41 am

    I haven’t looked at the endless thread for years, but I remember enjoying it, and I never thanked you for your efforts. So, thanks, PZ.
23. dancaban says

    28 July 2015 at 6:42 am

    For a minute I thought you were going to hang up your keyboard, thankfully you’re not so I’ll keep on reading as per usual. Thanks!
24. Lofty says

    28 July 2015 at 7:12 am

    Alas, poor old Mister Grumpy, I hope your leg gets better soon to allow you to feel more tolerant of humanity’s foibles.

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