The Flat Earth Society
The Flat Earth Society => Suggestions & Concerns => Topic started by: Tom Bishop on May 13, 2018, 09:51:01 PM
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There needs to be a fundamental change to how the discussion forums are perceived. It has reached a tipping point. Many threads consist of multiple RE'ers posting in a row attempting to challenge FET, and then questioning the lack of response.
The public perceives the forums as an invitation to come and debate against the Flat Earth Society, despite that there are few FE'rs who even post. Those few who do post are from the old guard. There have been very few new people attempting arguments in favor of FET or arguments against RET. Everyone who comes here believes that they need to debate against some kind of established organization. That is the current perception, and it needs to change.
When users visit the forum, I propose that they arrive under the impression that they are participating in a debate club of sorts, with instructions that may choose to debate in favor of FE, or in favor of RE. The discussions will contribute to the overall quality of the movement. Perhaps a header message can be implemented that clearly describes this.
If people are posting with the impression that this is a debate club, then the discussions will be more interesting. People will be more encouraged to take up discussions rather than waiting for "the Flat Earth Society" to respond.
The current path is a bad one. As we grow more popular it just gets increasingly boring by the day.
I would appreciate thoughts on the matter.
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I pretty much agree, but FE people will need to make a bit more effort.
Sure, you're outnumbered but this site isn't that busy right now. It wouldn't take that much effort for a few of you to be more active and answer more threads or start your own threads from a FE perspective.
And if you get the same questions being raised over and over then that tells me your Wiki and FAQ need improving (obviously some people still ask questions which are answered in the Wiki, you'll never stop that, but at least you can point them in the direction of the appropriate page quickly).
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I pretty much agree, but FE people will need to make a bit more effort.
This is a fantastic example of the misunderstanding we ought to deal with. This is not a personal support forum for RE'ers who are looking for a clash. It is extremely unlikely that you will ever see "more effort" on that front, simply because this has never been the purpose of this community. Largely, we need to focus on getting people like you to understand this, or getting people like you to go away.
In my opinion, this wave of entitled RE'ers will pass on its own eventually (it always does), but there are things we could do to hasten the chemo process:
- This one is a prerequisite for anything that follows: We should appoint more (active) moderators. There are so many threads that should have been closed before they turned into dumpster fires, but there simply is not enough recruited manpower to handle that at this stage. As I understand, this is something Junker has been asking for for a long time.
- The rules should be tightened to address some of the issues that drain any and all interest away from threads - RE'er responses to FE questions which invariably follow the format of "FE'ers believe <thing no one has ever believed> and they're also stupid and wrong. I mean, have they not seen the ISS?!" - the moment a response like that comes up (and it often ends up being the very first response to a thread), it turns into a hopeless circlejerk. A preventive measure of some sort would either encourage these posters to stay in AR where they belong (Yes, I still think Purgatory is a fundamentally workable idea), or encourage them to go back to Reddit.
- Finally, the three boards of FEG, FEQ&A and FED need to either be rethought or enforced more strongly.
- FEQ&A is for newcomers to ask relatively uncomplicated questions. The kind of stuff that could end up in the FAQ. But most threads in the board do not follow the structure. They're often indistinguishable from debate threads. As a result, maintaining an FAQ becomes increasingly difficult - it's by and large impossible to determine what questions are frequently asked (and can be reasonably answered at this stage), so the FAQ stagnates.
- FEG is not for the discussion of the Flat Earth Theory's core. It's for the occasional news article, the discussion of the community itself, or for people to try and convince me that despite successful international conferences and an avalanche of high-profile supporters, the FE movement is still not growing ;). Again, most threads do not follow their expected format.
- FED is just about the only board whose purpose appears to be widely understood, but it suffers from the problems described above.
We should try and reach an agreement about whether or not this format suits us (perhaps consider a "Flat Earth Debate Club" board, as a suggestion similar to Tom's?) and start enforcing rule 5 more rigorously.
Naturally, none of this will address the malcontent RE'ers who are only here to throw around insults or troll. Personally, I see that as a good thing.
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- This one is a prerequisite for anything that follows: We should appoint more (active) moderators. There are so many threads that should have been closed before they turned into dumpster fires, but there simply is not enough recruited manpower to handle that at this stage. As I understand, this is something Junker has been asking for for a long time.
I volunteer!
Also, creating "Flat Earth Debate Club" board seems like a pretty good idea.
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I pretty much agree, but FE people will need to make a bit more effort.
This is a fantastic example of the misunderstanding we ought to deal with. This is not a personal support forum for RE'ers who are looking for a clash. It is extremely unlikely that you will ever see "more effort" on that front, simply because this has never been the purpose of this community.
What do you see as the purpose of this community? What is the point of these boards?
You're the one who seeks publicity, you seek to gain attention.
Here's a newsflash: Almost everyone in the world is a "round earther".
So most people who hear about you guys and looks here is going to think "What the hell is this nonsense?"
Some of those people, like me, will sign up and start posting and because we think it's nonsense we'll say it's nonsense.
Now, some people will sign up and post things like "lol, earth is round, ur stupid". Those people should be banned immediately (not warned). If I was a mod here I wouldn't bother with people like that. There are ways of stopping that, making it so new users have to be manually approved if you get repeat offenders or making it so new users can only post on certain sections of the board and promote them to full membership once they've shown they're not idiots. (I'm assuming this is all possible, the boards I've moderated provide this sort of functionality).
Other people, like me, are interested in debating the issues, explaining why (in our opinion) the earth is round and showing why (in our opinion) the flat earth ideas don't stand up to scrutiny.
I guess the problem is if the balance between FE and RE posters is wrong then you're going to get too many of me and not enough of you.
From experience you can't force a board to be something it isn't. Boards are simply a reflection of the people who post. If you want more FE content then more FE people need to post. If you think that the sheer number of RE people is putting them off then fine, ban RE people from posting.
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I pretty much agree, but FE people will need to make a bit more effort.
This is a fantastic example of the misunderstanding we ought to deal with. This is not a personal support forum for RE'ers who are looking for a clash. It is extremely unlikely that you will ever see "more effort" on that front, simply because this has never been the purpose of this community.
What do you see as the purpose of this community? What is the point of these boards?
You're the one who seeks publicity, you seek to gain attention.
Here's a newsflash: Almost everyone in the world is a "round earther".
So most people who hear about you guys and looks here is going to think "What the hell is this nonsense?"
Some of those people, like me, will sign up and start posting and because we think it's nonsense we'll say it's nonsense.
Now, some people will sign up and post things like "lol, earth is round, ur stupid". Those people should be banned immediately (not warned). If I was a mod here I wouldn't bother with people like that. There are ways of stopping that, making it so new users have to be manually approved if you get repeat offenders or making it so new users can only post on certain sections of the board and promote them to full membership once they've shown they're not idiots. (I'm assuming this is all possible, the boards I've moderated provide this sort of functionality).
Other people, like me, are interested in debating the issues, explaining why (in our opinion) the earth is round and showing why (in our opinion) the flat earth ideas don't stand up to scrutiny.
I guess the problem is if the balance between FE and RE posters is wrong then you're going to get too many of me and not enough of you.
From experience you can't force a board to be something it isn't. Boards are simply a reflection of the people who post. If you want more FE content then more FE people need to post. If you think that the sheer number of RE people is putting them off then fine, ban RE people from posting.
It's a good start, but we need to tack on a little more.
Another effort that would straighten out some problems around here, is some sort of quick-access list of what indeed is accepted around here. What people actually collectively believe, what the current FE model is, the current explainations for common RE queries, all that. If we can get everyone on the same page, it'll stop the <thing no flat earther actually believes> nonsense. Maybe get a (some) dedicated moderator(s) to scrub through the wikis and clean it up. If everyone understands , it'll mitigate the misconceptions.
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I pretty much agree, but FE people will need to make a bit more effort.
Sure, you're outnumbered but this site isn't that busy right now. It wouldn't take that much effort for a few of you to be more active and answer more threads or start your own threads from a FE perspective.
And if you get the same questions being raised over and over then that tells me your Wiki and FAQ need improving (obviously some people still ask questions which are answered in the Wiki, you'll never stop that, but at least you can point them in the direction of the appropriate page quickly).
But how do you propose we force our Flat Earth extraordinaire Thork to sit online all day answering each of the the endless of questions and followup questions that get posted, and generally engage with every single curious person who comes along?
Thork may speak for himself on the matter, but I am going to assume that Thork is uninterested in doing that. Not many people want to do that. Does Pete want to do that?
It would be better if the debate forums were entirely self sustaining and it wasn't hung up on a few people to log on every day. Don't you agree?
If everyone participated to debate both sides, would that not make this place a far more interesting place to come to? We should seek to find a way to make that happen.
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But how do you propose we force our Flat Earth extraordinaire Thork to sit online all day answering each of the the endless of questions and followup questions that get posted, and generally engage with every single curious person who comes along?
Dude, come on! No-one has so sit here all day replying to posts. This is not that busy a board. It takes 10-15 minutes to look quickly through the threads which have new replies, maybe an hour top to respond. It's not a full time job for anyone, if a few people join in then between you it doesn't take long.
It would be better if the debate forums were entirely self sustaining and it wasn't hung up on a few people to log on every day. Don't you agree?
Yes, of course. But that does involve more flat earthers participating in the debate.
If everyone participated to debate both sides, wouldn't that be far more interesting?
How would that work? I mean, I think your version of perspective is balls. I can't sensibly argue that I think it is.
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I pretty much agree, but FE people will need to make a bit more effort.
Over my time at TFES if you add up all the accounts I have ever had, I've likely dropped more than 20,000 posts onto this forum. I had one account with over 13,000 on its own. How many responses do you think I should give? What's my quota?
The fact I've responded to every question you could possible ask before, had every debate and know what your response to my reply will be before I post it ... as Tom says, makes it very boring for me. I reply as a matter of community service because I realise if no one does ... TFES will die as there is no debate.
People don't come here to chat in AR or CN. They come here to chat to flat earthers and tell them that they are stupid. And that's fine. But what you'll find is that the 'old guard' as Tom puts it eventually gravitate to the other forums and enjoy debate there more.
In the sense Tom is talking about a debate society ... lets remove beliefs and look at that in cold hard terms.
You meet me, swords drawn for a debate in the upper forums for a debate on earth's shape. I have one hand tied behind my back. I have an 18th century text as a reference, a deliberately vague FAQ that provokes debate, a woolly wiki written by us, the odd youtube video made by Lord knows which lunatic, and interesting anomalies I can find online. You have the entire weight of the scientific world behind you. Pretty much anything you google will give you the answer to your side of the debate. Any scientific journal, any news report, any accredited organisation ... it isn't a debate you should lose. Its the sandbox.
Now after a while, you'd think you'd realise this and think, mmmm. Maybe I should take Baby Thork or Tom on in one of the other forums? Convince Parsifal that BSD is useless. Force Hollicron to admit star citizen scammed him. Where it is about an opinion and there is no right or wrong. Religion. Technology. Politics. we have these forums for a reason. I know the rules of engagement now. I know they are slippery buggers. I know they will try to win at all costs and bring in all kinds of obfuscation, trickery, word play and occasionally astound me with something I didn't know. And this is a fair fight.
Then once you ace that, have a go at fighting with one arm behind your back. Prove the improvable.
Level Forum
Sandbox Being a round earther
Normal Debate in any other forum.
God mode Win as a flat earther.
I have always thought ... The flat Earth Society. Come for the flat earth, stay for the society. You think I come here after 10 years because I want to tell people how flat earth is? That isn't the reason. I couldn't care less what some stranger on the internet thinks. I like keeping up with what all the other people on this site I have known for years are up to. Their new jobs, the new computer they bought, their marriage plans, their lives. It is a community ... a society.
We've always had a 'graduation' problem. Weaning round earthers off the flat earth forums after they made 2000+ posts about how round earth is. Yes, we get it, you think earth is round. Now, come prove to me Islam is not as good as Judaism. Debate the merits of sanctions on N Korea with me. Tell me why I bought the wrong computer. Teach me something for a change. There isn't anything you can tell me about earth science ... really 10 years, someone mentioned your point to me before. But they don't. They don't want to be a part of the community. They instead think they are performing a public service by shouting "the earth is round, don't listen to them" on the forums. Our attempts at humour are lost on them. They don't see when they get their chains yanked. They blindly go on trying to prove a moon near Jupiter somehow proves earth to be round.
For years I tried to get Markjo to just settle down and stop shouting the answers to everything in the upper forums. But he just wasn't smart enough to understand why if he makes the response to me, it deters others from doing the same. Let them use their brains, let them cut their teeth.
Lord Dave was another example. For years and years and years he was in the upper forums championing globularism. Why? He finally got it. He moved up a level. You'll not see him in the upper forum much now ... he's debating and conversing with everyone else.
But getting people to back the FE side ... its a hard sell. They seem to think it dishonest. A compromise of morals. I don't think they realise the public service the flat earth society provides. It brings young people interested in science to a place where they can EXPLAIN why something works the way it does. Under the most rigorous testing. It does the thing schools don't ... it teaches thorough understanding, not parrot fashion learning. It teaches problem solving, encourages you to research answers for yourself and get to the point where you can articulate the science to someone else. Its the standard "describe to an alien" format. Describe to a flat earther why earth is round. It encompasses all kinds of topics. Geology, physics, maths, history, art, politics ... and you do it in the safety that if you make a mistake, you are both anonymous AND you aren't the idiot claiming earth to be flat. I've shown so many aspects of science and nature to people over the years and debated it with them, and I haven't convinced a single person the earth is flat no matter how hard I tried. But they do leave knowing the difference between a full moon and a lunar eclipse, or the difference between centripetal or centrifugal force, or how far the sun is or how hot, or the composition of the atmosphere or whatever they had to learn thoroughly so they could explain it to the alien. And it is why I have so much time for Tom Bishop. He's reached more kids and adults that want to broaden their knowledge and taught more science than any teacher you could think of. He has a huge reach, engages everyone who ventures here, gives people individual one on one lessons ... the guy is a bloody saint. There is nothing ignoble about being a flat earther. Its 21st century digital education that reaches kids that might otherwise show no interest at school. It engages the unengageable. Provokes learning from those who may sit quiet in class. And apart from which, if I'm to gain real conversations in the normal forums, we know we have to run through the sandbox with you first.
But I'm not as prolific as once I was. I'm tired. I like to see more FErs in the upper forums carrying on where some of the old guard left off. I just can't face the Bedford Level experiment one more time.
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Dude, come on! No-one has so sit here all day replying to posts. This is not that busy a board. It takes 10-15 minutes to look quickly through the threads which have new replies, maybe an hour top to respond. It's not a full time job for anyone, if a few people join in then between you it doesn't take long.
Between us? Don't you use this forum? Don't you want to be a member of the community? Why don't you make say 2 posts a day up there for our side? Why do the same people have to provide all the entertainment? No one gets paid. The society is what its members make of it.
If you make 3 posts a day, that's 3 posts Tom doesn't have to make. 3 posts he can invest into a debate he really wants to have about one of his passions.
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Thork is right. I do have certain FE topics that I would prefer to talk about and focus on.
Why should I be forced to talk about gravity theories when someone wants to talk about gravity? This is not equal. That takes away from subjects that I really want to talk about.
You are relying too much on the few of us to provide your entertainment, when you guys should make your own entertainment yourselves.
It would be better if the debate forums were entirely self sustaining and it wasn't hung up on a few people to log on every day. Don't you agree?
Yes, of course. But that does involve more flat earthers participating in the debate.
Turning this into a debate club does get more people participating on the Flat Earth side. It makes it clear that they are expected to maintain the debates.
Right now the general perception is that we are inviting them to debate against us, but there are only a few of us who regularly post. That is not really sustainable.
If everyone participated to debate both sides, wouldn't that be far more interesting?
How would that work? I mean, I think your version of perspective is balls. I can't sensibly argue that I think it is.
In a debate club setting I wouldn't expect you to promote Rowbotham's ideas, my ideas, or the bendy light ideas if you feel that any are untenable.
In such a debate, the Flat Earth debater can simply challenge the fundamental assumptions of the Ancient Greek's perspective theory that assumes infinitely receding perspective lines. That is the claim that proves the sun will never set, after all. Challenge it. Easy enough. It moves the discussion forward.
I am not proposing that we force people to argue on the Flat Earth side. They can still argue Round if that is what they would like to argue. We just need to make it very clear to the people who come here that they need to entertain themselves. The forum debates can't be hung up on the involvement of a few.
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You're the one who seeks publicity, you seek to gain attention.
Incorrect.
Now, some people will sign up and post things like "lol, earth is round, ur stupid". Those people should be banned immediately (not warned). If I was a mod here I wouldn't bother with people like that.
I agree.
There are ways of stopping that
Please don't patronise us. There is absolutely no need to manually approve people on a forum of this size. We already have fairly good technical solutions which rarely fail. The problem isn't that bans are ineffective, but rather that we try to maintain a good balance between free speech and efficient moderation.
Other people, like me, are interested in debating the issues, explaining why (in our opinion) the earth is round and showing why (in our opinion) the flat earth ideas don't stand up to scrutiny.
I fundamentally disagree that this is what you're doing. You'd be one of the first people I'd be working on if I still had any moderation powers here. Not an outright ban, probably, but a good vacation in Purgatory would help.
From experience you can't force a board to be something it isn't.
Indeed - which is why your suggestions are unlikely to happen.
No-one has so sit here all day replying to posts. This is not that busy a board. It takes 10-15 minutes to look quickly through the threads which have new replies, maybe an hour top to respond. It's not a full time job for anyone, if a few people join in then between you it doesn't take long.
I already spend several hours a day working on FET, and I suspect others are in a similar situation. You massively underestimate the amount of work that goes into this, which is unsurprising given your own postings.
Another effort that would straighten out some problems around here, is some sort of quick-access list of what indeed is accepted around here. What people actually collectively believe, what the current FE model is, the current explainations for common RE queries, all that. If we can get everyone on the same page, it'll stop the <thing no flat earther actually believes> nonsense. Maybe get a (some) dedicated moderator(s) to scrub through the wikis and clean it up. If everyone understands , it'll mitigate the misconceptions.
Yes, the Wiki needs work. That's in progress. Saying it over and over again won't speed it up. But our RE peanut gallery are keen on directly contradicting the Wiki, quoting forum users out of context to make them look bad, and so on. It is this pattern that we have to address. Personally, I would suggest a temporary ban on RE'ers trying to "help" by answering questions about FET.
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Thork is right. I do have certain FE topics that I would prefer to talk about and focus on.
Why should I be forced to talk about gravity theories when someone wants to talk about gravity? This is not equal. That takes away from subjects that I really want to talk about.
Well. Start threads about them the things you want to talk about then. Then people will talk about those things.
I'm not relying on anyone to provide entertainment. I'm just responding to the threads on here, I've created a few of my own.
If you started threads I'd probably reply to those and talk about those things.
People will generally argue on the side that they believe. The fundamental problem is the vast majority of people don't believe in a flat earth so they won't argue from that viewpoint.
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Thork is right. I do have certain FE topics that I would prefer to talk about and focus on.
Why should I be forced to talk about gravity theories when someone wants to talk about gravity? This is not equal. That takes away from subjects that I really want to talk about.
Well. Start threads about them the things you want to talk about then. Then people will talk about those things.
I'm not relying on anyone to provide entertainment. I'm just responding to the threads on here, I've created a few of my own.
If you started threads I'd probably reply to those and talk about those things.
People will generally argue on the side that they believe. The fundamental problem is the vast majority of people don't believe in a flat earth so they won't argue from that viewpoint.
Again, you are resting the responsibility of answering all questions and all debates on the shoulders of a few people. You know very well that there are only a few people here engaging in this. Public interest in Flat Earth is growing by the day. Nearly all people who visit this website believe that we are inviting them to come here and debate against the Flat Earth Society. But the responsibility of maintaining the debate needs to be on all people, not just a few. Changing the current "come debate against us" perception to the perception that the discussion forums are a debate club is the way to do this.
The forum format of a few vs the many have worked when we were smaller, but now that the movement is more popular, it is increasingly apparent that change is in order.
In fact, the forum debates being unable to maintain themselves has been one of the main things holding us back from doing anything else except debating in the forums. I would much prefer to spend my time on projects with someone like Thork to promote the society. That would be great. Many good ideas have been discussed. We could reach out to teachers and offer to let their students write to us. Participate in interviews with the news. A "this time in history" Flat Earth website feature. Challenge Bill Nye the Science Guy to debate us online, who has expressed interest in that possibility. Special investigative projects.
But how can we find time to do any of that when there are many rude people demanding answers on the forums? All of whom who expect answers from The Flat Earth Society. Are we to leave obvious questions unanswered on our own website? If the debates on this website were self sustaining, we could find the time to do other more interesting things. The debates would also be far more interesting if there was more manpower behind it.
Why are you arguing against this anyway? Don't you want more foil to have discussions with? How boring it must be to ask questions over and over again without anyone attempting a response. And when there is a response, how boring it must be to see the discussion you have created quickly die out.
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The key to creating a successful, interesting, and self maintained forum and movement is to entirely re-frame our approach and pit our users who come here against nature, not against the few of us.
Imagine if there were a group of Astrologers who insisted that Astrology was true. They are called The Astrological Society. From what I perceive from their website they are inviting me to come and debate against them. So I go and post that I don't perfectly match my Sun sign and wait for my response from the experts. I'm not "stubborn," as my astrological Sun sign states. What gives? No response is given, or otherwise I get a one liner and no followup to my further questions. Very few proponents are debating on the forums, most people are saying astrology is untrue, and I get bored and leave. The website implied that I was going to be debating against this group of experts, even if not directly stated. I feel ripped off.
Now imagine if that group of Astrologers took a different approach and asked me to participate in a debate club on the possibility of Astrology. This is a fundamentally different request of me. It is no longer about me vs. them. It is now about me vs. the possibilities of nature. Who joins debate clubs to argue something uninteresting? While engaging in discussions I might be more inclined to interject something like that there are more murders on a Full Moon. Maybe astronomy does have something to do with the human condition. I might then be encouraged to try and look up other behaviors associated with astronomical events to trounce naysayers who maintain that such things are explicitly impossible.
One of these paragraph portrays an uninteresting society, and the other portrays a society that is far more interesting.
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I think .... I think I agree with Bishop! Amazing! :D
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Tom is right (for once ;)), but there is a fundamental problem here.
I think astroloogy is bollocks, but a lot of people don't. A lot of people do believe in it - maybe not strongly but you get horoscopes in most national papers in the UK, a lot of people think there's something in it. And it's very subjective, you'll always get people who will say "well, an astrologer told me I'd meet a tall, dark stranger and I did! Explain that!".
So yes, a forum about that would probably have a good balance of people and could generate some interesting debate.
But almost no-one believes in a flat earth. Sorry, but they just don't. You guys have done a good job in publicising yourselves, but almost everyone who hears about you and sees this place takes one look and thinks "what the hell?! how is this still a thing?". So you're not going to get a balanced debate. People aren't generally going to debate from a position they don't hold.
There are a reasonable number of people on here who do believe in a flat earth. They're just massively outnumbered and as Thork says they're probably fed up of answering the same questions and having the same debates over and over.
The other board I run is for fans of my favourite football (soccer, for you Yanks) team. So most of the people on there support that team. We do have some people on there who don't though, they support other teams. And having them around is a good thing, so long as they behave. They add a different perspective. But if suddenly almost everyone who signed up was a fan of a different team and they started taking over the forum and saying how much my team sucks then that would be a bad thing and I'd have to deal with it. That is what was happening here.
The only solution I see is to limit the number of round earthers so there is more balance and more FE people feel less swamped and are more willing to debate stuff.
If that means people like me sod off then so be it. It's your place, it's up to you what you want it to be.
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The other board I run is for fans of my favourite football (soccer, for you Yanks) team. So most of the people on there support that team. We do have some people on there who don't though, they support other teams. And having them around is a good thing, so long as they behave. They add a different perspective. But if suddenly almost everyone who signed up was a fan of a different team and they started taking over the forum and saying how much my team sucks then that would be a bad thing and I'd have to deal with it. That is what was happening here.
Shockingly, your Brownian motions are slowly pushing you towards understanding the issue. A key element of what you said is "so long as they behave". We don't have to get rid of RE'ers, and personally I don't want to; but we do need to make them behave. If that means that some, like yourself, prove to be beyond reform, that's an unfortunate side effect, but perhaps a necessary one.
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None of my posts have been deleted or moved, I had a few warnings when I started but nothing for ages.
I have never been banned, so by your own rules, I am "behaving" so stop being an obnoxious prick - I know that's your thing, but it's pretty tiresome.
It's a good thing you're not a mod on here, you'd be awful. Just because my posts annoy you personally, that doesn't mean I'm not "behaving".
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I think one of the problems of TFES is that we don't really know what we want it to be. Its growing ... we all have different ideas of what it does or what it should be used for.
- It could be used for making money (T-shirts, mugs, adsense etc), but we are pretty much all of a mind that it isn't for that. It never has been ... but if it was, at least we'd all know the purpose.
- I see the education value in it ... but I don't think I'm in a majority here.
- Tom wants to add to FET and develop theories. Over the years we have discovered a lot on these forums via debate ... Rowbotham's coca cola ventures being a very interesting one. His time at Edinburgh university doing brain research on human brains at exactly the same time Burke and Hare were stealing bodies. Aristotle and his prime movers, the use of orphanim in flat earth symbology ... we do dig up genuinely interesting information ... but then it lives in our heads and gets brought out when needed in a debate. I feel Tom would like to cement these into a permanent public resource such as the wiki or even a book.
- Many users see it as a social society and just come here to chat to their mates. It does tend to attract a certain demographic. High IQ belligerent males.
- Some of the staff see TFES as a technical exercise to run the best website that has ever existed.
Not knowing ourselves what we want the society to be ... its purpose I think has always been a handicap, because it is hard to get people to buy into helping anyone achieve their aims in a concerted effort. If I think we should be making education packs as a resource, and everyone else thinks they should be chatting with their friends in the lower fora ... I'm not going to get much help. If Pete thinks we should be reaching out to the media and no one else is writing press articles, that's a lot of work for him. If Tom thinks we should be fleshing out the wiki and I'm more about making downloadable packs for schools ... Tom isn't going to get much help from me.
We all only have a finite amount of time to put into the society.
I think what we can all agree is answering the same questions over and over isn't a productive use of time. There are solutions to that, but they do have unintended consequences that may destroy other people's vision of the society.
Example ... I think the FAQ is perfect. It is deliberately vague and provocative. People read the FAQ, understand the topics and then because it doesn't answer all their objections, they create an account and have their say. I think that's important. Its one of the reasons I'm not so big on a full and comprehensive wiki. If we pour everything into a wiki ... what will people ask? Why do they create an account ... how do we get them to interact with us and give our society a fresh set of new blood as older members drift away? ... which many do.
And the thing is, I don't know what the flat earth society is for. And I've been coming to this and before that the other forum for the better part of a decade. And I don't know. I only have my own opinions as to what I get out of it.
There are solutions ... but they need a buy in from lots of people. Example ... we could create a chatbot that answers the most inane and obvious questions in real time. You want to talk about gravity in its most facile sense. Create an account and talk to the flat earth chat bot. We'll load up the most common answers to the most common questions. Then you get 24/hr a day coverage on the stuff we don't want to talk about. But its a huge amount of work and how much would people use it? I know they aren't going to read the wiki. They don't. So fleshing that out seems a bit of a waste to me.
We could make a flat earth youtube course ... but there are lots of flat earth youtube videos out there right now and to be honest the production value of some is probably beyond what we could achieve. We could host other people's videos in a video library (which gives the creators their views, subscriptions and ad revenue) but then we have to vet them, and again, does that get people interacting with us?
Tell me, what is the flat earth society for ... and convince me that is the direction we should go. And if we continue to never agree ... we can continue to never get anything concrete done. I think this was the purpose of the Zetetic council back in the day, but we had the exact same problems where we didn't know what the society was for. Tausumi wanted to push on with a wiki. I've never been in love with that idea. I wanted to do more education stuff. No one else did. And it just means you are on your own.
There have however been some successes. When we put our minds to it, we achieve great things here. We do have an amazing site. Everyone is on board with that. Parsifal and Pete keep the site running well. Blanko designed an awesome theme. I wrote some of the content. Junker helps out. We all add suggestions to S&C and there are a number of people who can do those things to make changes. This site is nothing like the site we all left. The thing we all agreed on when we came here is we wanted to provide a good user experience. But what we haven't ever agreed is what people do when they find us.
None of my posts have been deleted or moved, I had a few warnings when I started but nothing for ages.
I have never been banned, so by your own rules, I am "behaving" so stop being an obnoxious prick - I know that's your thing, but it's pretty tiresome.
It's a good thing you're not a mod on here, you'd be awful. Just because my posts annoy you personally, that doesn't mean I'm not "behaving".
We've always had an robust and combative culture here. This isn't a place for snowflakes and feelings. The easily offended leave and you are left with people who will say what they want and to whomever they want, and they wont care about your whinging. It doesn't mean they are bad people, but they don't suffer fools gladly. If you contribute, are either fun to engage, interesting or helpful, you'll find people warm to you. If you play the victim card and complain about how you are treated, no one is going to care. Not the mods, not other users ... no one is going to invest energy into stroking your ego or nurture your desires. You'll get out what you put in.
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None of my posts have been deleted or moved, I had a few warnings when I started but nothing for ages.
I have never been banned, so by your own rules, I am "behaving" so stop being an obnoxious prick - I know that's your thing, but it's pretty tiresome.
It's a good thing you're not a mod on here, you'd be awful. Just because my posts annoy you personally, that doesn't mean I'm not "behaving".
We've always had an robust and combative culture here. This isn't a place for snowflakes and feelings. The easily offended leave and you are left with people who will say what they want and to whomever they want, and they wont care about your whinging. It doesn't mean they are bad people, but they don't suffer fools gladly. If you contribute, are either fun to engage, interesting or helpful, you'll find people warm to you. If you play the victim card and complain about how you are treated, no one is going to care. Not the mods, not other users ... no one is going to invest energy into stroking your ego or nurture your desires. You'll get out what you put in.
I'm anything but a snowflake, the other board I'm on is much more "laddish" and combative, being a sport forum, than this one. I'm not whinging, nor am I reporting any posts and "telling on" people. I'm just calling Pete an obnoxious prick because he's being one. Most other people on here seem to manage not to be. He's the one whinging "waah! you're posting within our rules but now how I want you to". Well change your rules then, or shut up and get on with it.
Your comments on the FAQ are interesting. You like that it's vague and will cause people to have questions but then lament that it's the same questions being asked over and over. Seems to me you can't have it both ways.
As for the purpose of the place. Isn't it to spread the message that us poor saps are being lied to about the shape of the earth? I mean, if what you're saying is right then it's revolutionary. It would literally change the world. Isn't that an important message you should try and get out there? But I agree you guys need to figure out what you want this place to be and then you can think about how to try and make it that.
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Your comments on the FAQ are interesting. You like that it's vague and will cause people to have questions but then lament that it's the same questions being asked over and over. Seems to me you can't have it both ways.
It is meant to be an introduction. "These are some of the most common objections, this is the answer to that".
Now that answer isn't meant to be satisfactory. Otherwise what drives you to create an account? For most people, they see a hole in it (we leave holes deliberately), and then you make your first post. That's important. The hope is it will show a wide range of objections and then you come up with your own. Innovative ones. Something new to talk about.
I don't think we can get away from the fact that you need a gradual slope to get you involved. We can't just start a person talking about the Mayan Calendar Long Count, its relationship to the cosmos and how it has a flat earth bent to it. There's too many other topics to cover before you get there. New comers would just feel excluded.
But it would be nice if having had flat earth gravity concepts explained to you, you pass it forward. You then tell someone else. They tell someone else. You help run people up to speed to include newcomers so that everyone as a whole can move on to more interesting topics. I can't create the more complex threads if half the people on the forum are still demanding answers to what causes tides. And you can't just say "well flat earthers think gravity is explained by the equivalence principle. " That's not engaging for the new person. They are just left with "Oh, so no flat earthers want to include me". You'd need to couch it as "Einstein explained how this is possible using the equivalence principle - here's a link". IE put the argument there. Draw the next objection from them. If round earthers would pitch in with the daily mucking in of onboarding new people, then we could have higher level debates as those that know the intricacies of FET can then focus more time to those frankly much more interesting discussions ...
But I've never figured out how to convince a round earther to just give the FET answer. Again they complain it is intellectually dishonest, rather than a necessary requirement to bring newcomers up to speed to join in in the debates everyone wants to have ... the challenging new ones. They are also only interested in their own enjoyment of the forum, and not creating an inclusive atmosphere for others. In fact some deliberately drive new comers away as they don't want competition for flat earther time. Again, I don't know the solution for this.
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None of my posts have been deleted or moved, I had a few warnings when I started but nothing for ages.
Most moderation action is triggered by user reports (of which I'm told I'm a very substantial part). I haven't been reporting your posts because I believed you just need some encouragement to start behaving. Now that you've stopped improving and are instead ramping your antisocial behaviour up, I'll take the kid gloves off.
It's a good thing you're not a mod on here, you'd be awful.
The reason I'm not a mod here is because I stepped down myself. I did a fairly good job. Perhaps I should offer my services again instead of just emptily demanding that someone should do it.
Just because my posts annoy you personally, that doesn't mean I'm not "behaving".
That is fundamentally correct, but your claim rests upon a false assumption. I personally don't care what you say about me, but your insistence on bending the rules to pretend you're a reasonable debater are simply disruptive to the forum. There are a small handful (5, I reckon) of RE'ers who are trying to disrupt this place while proposing their own "solutions" to the problem they create. It's an extremely transparent attempt at "forc[ing] a board to be something it isn't" - you can rest assured that I won't allow this to happen.
Well change your rules then, or shut up and get on with it.
Amazing, you've done it again. You're responding to my suggestion that the rules should be altered by saying "well change the rules then". It's impressive how often you manage to accidentally say "Do everything Pete is saying but also he's dumb" - it's almost as if you secretly liked me.
We've always had an robust and combative culture here. This isn't a place for snowflakes and feelings. The easily offended leave and you are left with people who will say what they want and to whomever they want, and they wont care about your whinging. It doesn't mean they are bad people, but they don't suffer fools gladly. If you contribute, are either fun to engage, interesting or helpful, you'll find people warm to you. If you play the victim card and complain about how you are treated, no one is going to care. Not the mods, not other users ... no one is going to invest energy into stroking your ego or nurture your desires. You'll get out what you put in.
Fundamentally, Thork is spot on here. It doesn't matter how laddish you are, innit bruv, if all you can do is whinge about how we're running our own community wrong, then perhaps you should go and run your own community instead. You'll be much happier that way, and your delicate sensibilities will be catered to... in an extremely laddish way, of course.
As for Thork's "we don't know what we want to be" point, I think it's partially correct. There are different members with different goals, and that does cause some issues, but it also lends itself to some strengths. Consider this:
Parsifal has a thing for making the site work very well, but he doesn't seem to care (anymore) about debating FET. Is that a bad thing? No - we get a site that works reliably and with minimal downtime. It means that nobody else (other than, very occasionally, me) needs to think about that side of things. Remember the Daniel days when "oh no the website is down" was like a fifth of all threads? I found my niche in off-forum activities. Again, yes, this does mean that I'm less active here, but it does also demonstrably aid our growth. Etc. etc.
Personally, I don't think the general direction we're taking is wrong, even if not explicitly defined. We're growing fast, and improving slowly. Of course, this means that there will be some dissatisfaction while we're adapting. Of course, this means that this adaptation process needs to be continually discussed and improved upon. What I'm not convinced of is that we need a fundamental shake-up. I think that as long as we improve the enforcement of our rules and perhaps tighten them around a few weak spots, most of the issues will resolve themselves organically.
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Personally, I don't think the general direction we're taking is wrong, even if not explicitly defined. We're growing fast, and improving slowly. Of course, this means that there will be some dissatisfaction while we're adapting. Of course, this means that this adaptation process needs to be continually discussed and improved upon. What I'm not convinced of is that we need a fundamental shake-up. I think that as long as we improve the enforcement of our rules and perhaps tighten them around a few weak spots, most of the issues will resolve themselves organically.
That is a little at odds with Tom's OP. He's saying "we've become busier, we aren't able to cope with that". Or the organic approach isn't working and we need a little bit of a rethink as to some structured growth. Unfortunately I'm coming up empty on any meaningful solution to that problem.
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I guess the key question is whether or not we've failed to adapt, or whether this is a work in progress and shouldn't be judged just yet. I can't pretend to know for sure, but I'm leaning towards the latter.
I essentially like the idea of a debate club, but the problem is that we'd have to convince the RE'ers to play along. I have little faith in that.
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None of my posts have been deleted or moved, I had a few warnings when I started but nothing for ages.
Most moderation action is triggered by user reports (of which I'm told I'm a very substantial part). I haven't been reporting your posts because I believed you just need some encouragement to start behaving. Now that you've stopped improving and are instead ramping your antisocial behaviour up, I'll take the kid gloves off.
Oh noes.
Luckily I have a scone and therefore and pretty much impossible to upset right now.
I am genuinely interested in what you think I'm doing wrong, what rules you think I'm breaking.
Finished my scone :(
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None of my posts have been deleted or moved, I had a few warnings when I started but nothing for ages.
I have never been banned, so by your own rules, I am "behaving" so stop being an obnoxious prick - I know that's your thing, but it's pretty tiresome.
It's a good thing you're not a mod on here, you'd be awful. Just because my posts annoy you personally, that doesn't mean I'm not "behaving".
Start making more posts like these and you'll quickly get on the bad side of the moderation team. Do not do it again, warned.
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I am genuinely interested in what you think I'm doing wrong, what rules you think I'm breaking.
Right now you are breaking the off topic rule. Take this angry ranting to AR.
This thread is about servicing our users without killing Tom Bishop.
I guess the key question is whether or not we've failed to adapt, or whether this is a work in progress and shouldn't be judged just yet. I can't pretend to know for sure, but I'm leaning towards the latter.
I essentially like the idea of a debate club, but the problem is that we'd have to convince the RE'ers to play along. I have little faith in that.
I too have little faith in that. But I think that is an exasperated suggestion from Tom who just wants a better solution. As for 'shouldn't be judged yet', this isn't a new website. Its got many years under its belt. When do we judge it and what are we working towards? This isn't a criticism, but I do feel a lot of empathy for Tom. I don't post anywhere near as much or with the same quality in the upper fora as I used to, and its because I find it hard to stay interested in the debates there because I've done them all before ... as have you, as has Tom, as has Parsifal etc.
I wonder if we can't gamify this in some way? Have a flat earth karma type system, where if flat earthers 'like' or approve your posts, you get points and ascend through certain ranks. Ie rewarded for posting the FE answers in a descent way. This way a little green tick might signify we are happy with the response to newcomers as well.
10 'likes' or approves ... your account title becomes flat earth beginner
50 flat earth novice
100 flat earth amateur
200 flat earth journeyman
500 flat earth proponent
1000 flat earth advocate
2000 flat earth expert
3000 Lady Blount's bitch
4000 Rowbotham himself
5000 NASA's worst enemy
And then make those titles open up the forum to users in certain ways.
Maybe at 10 you can now have your first whinge in S&C.
Maybe say at 500 you get access to the FE believers section or whatever.
At 1000 you can contribute to the wiki.
5000 and you can start dropping Karma points on people cos frankly you've done your bit.
Even as a round earther. If you put in say 300 pro FE posts and got 1000 approves from the flat earther's on the site ... sure you can be trusted to now join the fold and contribute more heavily to how the place runs. You've put a lot of work in helping the site to run.
Give the RErs something to work towards.
But ... would the RErs want to play?
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this isn't a new website. Its got many years under its belt
Ah, but the situation we're currently in is newfound. I appreciate that a lot of this is happening behind the scenes and might not always be visible, but as situations arise, we often need to put a lot of work into fixing them.
To give you an example, a few years ago we had a spambot problem. The problem wasn't always there - originally we were too small to attract them. And then there was a period where it was a reasonably serious burden on mods who had little choice other than manually ban them. Eventually, we figured out a range of solutions that made the problem disappear entirely. But, if you chose to judge our solution before it was fully figured out or implemented, you'd reach the conclusion that the system was failing.
I suggest that this surge of unprecedented popularity is our new "problem". We don't have a solution yet, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually work out. My suggestion is that the problem is not with the general approach, but merely with the fact that it hasn't yet finished organically developing to suit this new situation.
When do we judge it and what are we working towards? This isn't a criticism, but I do feel a lot of empathy for Tom. I don't post anywhere near as much or with the same quality in the upper fora as I used to, and its because I find it hard to stay interested in the debates there because I've done them all before ... as have you, as has Tom, as has Parsifal etc.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I think we're on the same page with regards to the challenge we're facing, and I don't think our thoughts about how to fix it are all that different from one another. A lot of this is just us phrasing similar concepts in very different ways.
I wonder if we can't gamify this in some way? Have a flat earth karma type system, where if flat earthers 'like' or approve your posts, you get points and ascend through certain ranks. Ie rewarded for posting the FE answers in a descent way.
It's an interesting idea, but I think it needs some polishing. It would be unfair to have just FE'ers approve posts, and I worry that people would over-correct for writing posts that (for example) Rushy likes instead of expressing their actual thoughts. Of course, the other extreme of letting everyone rank posts should also be avoided, or we'll end up like our now-defunct subreddit.
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this isn't a new website. Its got many years under its belt
Ah, but the situation we're currently in is newfound. I appreciate that a lot of this is happening behind the scenes and might not always be visible, but as situations arise, we often need to put a lot of work into fixing them.
To give you an example, a few years ago we had a spambot problem. The problem wasn't always there - originally we were too small to attract them. And then there was a period where it was a reasonably serious burden on mods who had little choice other than manually ban them. Eventually, we figured out a range of solutions that made the problem disappear entirely. But, if you chose to judge our solution before it was fully figured out or implemented, you'd reach the conclusion that the system was failing.
I suggest that this surge of unprecedented popularity is our new "problem". We don't have a solution yet, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually work out. My suggestion is that the problem is not with the general approach, but merely with the fact that it hasn't yet finished organically developing to suit this new situation.
When do we judge it and what are we working towards? This isn't a criticism, but I do feel a lot of empathy for Tom. I don't post anywhere near as much or with the same quality in the upper fora as I used to, and its because I find it hard to stay interested in the debates there because I've done them all before ... as have you, as has Tom, as has Parsifal etc.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I think we're on the same page with regards to the challenge we're facing, and I don't think our thoughts about how to fix it are all that different from one another. A lot of this is just us phrasing similar concepts in very different ways.
I wonder if we can't gamify this in some way? Have a flat earth karma type system, where if flat earthers 'like' or approve your posts, you get points and ascend through certain ranks. Ie rewarded for posting the FE answers in a descent way.
It's an interesting idea, but I think it needs some polishing. It would be unfair to have just FE'ers approve posts, and I worry that people would over-correct for writing posts that (for example) Rushy likes instead of expressing their actual thoughts. Of course, the other extreme of letting everyone rank posts should also be avoided, or we'll end up like our now-defunct subreddit.
Approval could only be done by FErs. Otherwise you'd find RErs had all the Karma. That would suck. We want to encourage pro FE posting to everyday questions.
We could start with just mods and long time FErs who we know would have earned untold FE points over the years ... but if someone has been posting pro FE to help us out regardless of their actual conviction, I don't see why they couldn't then be trusted. It would take a lot of time and effort to get to the point where you'd abuse the system ... and to be honest, I think most people who get there, would by then have some love for TFES and wouldn't want to see it wrecked by other people.
It was an off the top of my head suggestion but it could be polished if it was a goer. Again would need to know if RErs would be interested in such a system to give them rewards and extra access for their efforts though.
By the way I've always thought there should be a post limit on S&C. What do we care about the suggestion of someone who has only made 3 posts here and contributed nothing? They just spam it up with petulant whining. Even a small limit like 50 posts.
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By the way I've always thought there should be a post limit on S&C. What do we care about the suggestion of someone who has only made 3 posts here and contributed nothing? They just spam it up with petulant whining. Even a small limit like 50 posts.
Potentially a good suggestion. Could you make a separate thread about it so it doesn't get lost here?
EDIT: Actually, same goes for your karma idea. This thread is a bit messy and I doubt much will come out of it. If you separate your suggestions out, you'll have a better way of gauging interest and holding people to account if the ideas prove popular
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I know that there are many extracurricular ideas we would like to participate and execute. I would like to do that too. However, I firmly believe that we need to fix the fundamental issues with the debate forums first. We need to generate a movement. On this website the debate forums are the focus of it all. I think we can all agree that debates and the website in its current format are not working to generate momentum. I have identified here that the problem lies with the "we are the experts who have all knowledge, debate us" theme that people get, whether we are explicitly stating that or not.
Can we agree that we need to generate a movement first, before focusing on what else we would like to do?
Pete, you say that you have doubts that the RE'ers will play along with a debate club. I see your skepticism on this matter, but would like to show you that we already have examples of easily converted RE'ers who are willing to argue in favor of FET. Look at the Flat Earth YouTube Videos. After someone posts a video there are often dozens of people who jump on board:
someone name the experiment that proves we are on a spinning ball cause I can name one that proves we are motionless. Now i think about it no teacher K thru 12 ever proved it or explained how its proved except for that stupid ship over the horizon crap that someone used in their argument with me. lol Crazy is not questioning the status quo. crazy is believing it with no demonstration that its true.
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Watching now another very good one you hit it out of the park. At 30:00 min very good explanation on the distance you would have to be to see the edges of the earth. Boy they have really hoodwinked us. I'm still shaking my head all of this is very new to me and very upsetting
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Look at the NASA yearly budget. Look at all the minds of people they own too and the propaganda that comes with it. Control, power, and money. You can also hide land and resources from the people if you tell them they live on a ball where everything "has already been discovered".
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The Earth's not a ball. A Grand Jury would clearly see enough evidence to proceed to trial. The helio-model has made plenty of claims that need piercing, diligent, and thorough scrutiny and dissection. Gravity is a theory, stop your crying. Big Bang is a theory. We've been lied to, stop your crying. Those who choose to not look into the errors of the helio-model will slip deeper into cognitive dissonance.
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An excellent educational talk, Thank you
YouTube isn't just a special place full of crazy people. These are just normal people who use YouTube. There are hundreds of regular people willing to debate in favor of Flat Earth Theory on a dime. So what is the secret sauce?
The secret sauce is thus: The authors of those YouTube videos are inviting people to question our authorities, not debate their own authority. That is the secret. The secret sauce is the message people are entering with. The message isn't one of me vs. the experts. It is me vs. our authorities. This is why those videos are so popular.
This is exactly the success of the AboveTopSecret forum. The forum invites one to investigate the possibilities of UFOs and Aliens and the JFK murder, and so on. The forum turns the average user into the investigator. That is why there are so many people over there arguing in favor of aliens having visited earth and such. It is the presentation. If the presentation of the AboveTopSecret website was "We are the experts who know that aliens have visited us, debate us" people would be instantly combative. I know that I would be combative to that message.
We see with the above examples that our current path and the message we are sending is a bad one.
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This is something that I can get on board with and could be easily implemented.
We just need to change the boards.
Currently we have
Flat Earth General ...
Flat Earth Q&A ...
Flat Earth debate ...
We inherited them from Daniel. They probably weren't that well thought out to begin with.
And as Tom says, they are all combative.
FE Q&A is just asking for it. Ask anything you like, we'll answer and you can object for the next 10 pages.
FE debate is the exact same thing. Come debate us.
FE Gerneral ... well to be honest that ends up the same ting too.
So maybe changing these to leave ONE that is FE debate and then swap the other two, might go to alleviate the problem
So maybe have
Flat Earth Investigations. A place to examine RE Proofs and debunk the latest round earth propaganda. --- This is a major switch up ... we aren't doing the defending any more. This is holes in RE, not FE. Got a complaint about the FET equivalent, take that to the right board.
Flat Earth Media A place to discuss earth shape videos, blogs, and other external content.
Flat Earth Theory A place to examine the flat earth theory and its doctrine.
So only the last one is a place where we need to put flat earth's case forward. The first an attack on round earth - defend it if you want. The second a neutral look at what's going on outside our web domain and more discussion on conferences, video content, what degrass Tyson has just said on Twitter etc -very neutral and civil from both sides. Just discussing content. The third the place to attack FET.
I'm not saying these should be the final forum choices ... but I like the idea that there aren't 3 pretty much identical sections that are all noobs complaining about FET. It also gives us another distinguishing feature from Daniel's site.
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I agree, although I still like Flat Earth General in principle - we should have a place for discussing the community and tangential subjects rather than the theory proper. We just have a problem with people not understanding what it's actually for. It probably needs a rename, and a more rigorous execution.
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I agree, although I still like Flat Earth General in principle - we should have a place for discussing the community and tangential subjects rather than the theory proper. We just have a problem with people not understanding what it's actually for. It probably needs a rename, and a more rigorous execution.
I'm guilty of that . I don't really know what flat earth General is for either. It is a bit vague.
Also ZC forum might be a good place to discuss the community and tangential subjects. We don't use it for much else. Just rename it Flat Earth Community or something. We already have threads like improve the wiki in there.
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I don't really know what flat earth General is for either. It is a bit vague.
The understanding of that seems to have died over time, I'm not entirely sure why. Basically, it's the place you'd go to discuss the recent YouGov poll that determined 1/3 of millennials believe in FET, or the Economist article about the movement's growth in America. It's where you'd go to talk about the Flat Earth shop that opened in Scotland, or the little clashes we've had with Elon Musk and Neil DGT. Things that are very clearly related to FET, but which are not directly part of the debate.
I doubt it would be a very high-traffic board, but I do think its existence is justified.
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I don't really know what flat earth General is for either. It is a bit vague.
The understanding of that seems to have died over time, I'm not entirely sure why. Basically, it's the place you'd go to discuss the recent YouGov poll that determined 1/3 of millennials believe in FET, or the Economist article about the movement's growth in America. It's where you'd go to talk about the Flat Earth shop that opened in Scotland, or the little clashes we've had with Elon Musk and Neil DGT. Things that are very clearly related to FET, but which are not directly part of the debate.
I doubt it would be a very high-traffic board, but I do think its existence is justified.
Perfect. That's the Flat Earth Media board I mentioned. :-)
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Perfect. That's the Flat Earth Media board I mentioned. :-)
Kind of but not completely. If you look at FEG's description, you'll also find that "conspiracy topics belong here". That's because the space flight conspiracy, while not strictly part of FET, will obviously warrant some discussion.
Basically, I agree with the idea, but I think the boards need more thought (you already expected that to be the case, so really I'm agreeing with you and throwing in some extra suggestions)
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Yeah, I'd move the conspiracy stuff out into Tom's investigations bit. Its looking at NASA and Elon Musk and then takes the emphasis of "How many people are involved in the conspiracy?" and WHY are they hiding the shape of the earth? Its no longer FEs question to answer. Its a look at the flaws in the data those organisations present. Moon hoaxes, photoshopped images, again us (hopefully with the help of those Tom eludes to) on the attack, not defending.
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Thork, I like where you are going with the renaming of the forums. We know what the problem is. The problem is the "debate the experts" theme. I like your ideas for changing the forum names. I like the investigations forum idea. Lets keep talking about this and keep up this momentum.
Lets take a look at this with fresh eyes as a new user:
(https://i.imgur.com/KhravHr.png)
The user comes to our website and sees our name. "Okay, this must be an established society of people who believe that the earth is flat" the user thinks to himself.
(https://i.imgur.com/cm0Ukgw.png)
Next the user is invited to come "engage in conversation with our community." "Our community" is already creating the idea that it is them vs us. "engage in conversation" creates a suggestion that we are inviting them to be combative. The user reads this as: "come debate against the Flat Earth Society".
Then, as Thork has shown, the user is presented with a list of combative names. Forum names with themes such as "Post your questions and we will answer," and "Come engage in debate!"
Not only do we need to change the forum names, we need to change the blurb on the front page. We can invite the user to investigate the subject matter. This is essentially the same as the debate club idea. They should not be expecting to come and engage in a debate against us at all, or have the faintest idea in their mind that we are asking them to do that. We need to move away from the "we are the experts, debate us" theme.
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I like where this is going - I'd certainly be on board with altering the homepage to change the tone slightly. The board structure will probably require some more discussion to make sure we get it right rather than just plunge into another suboptimal solution, but it could definitely happen!
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These are some current thoughts based on what we have been discussing:
Front page Forum section blurb
"Welcome to the Society, free thinker! This is a place to chat, share your research, and participate in Flat Earth projects."
Top Level Forums (Based on Thork's suggestions on the previous page)
Flat Earth Investigations - Examine Round Earth proofs and debunk the latest Round Earth propaganda. A place to explore the possibility of a Flat Earth.
Flat Earth Media - Discuss external content such as earth shape videos, blogs, books, and news articles.
That's it.
All of the words used in the descriptions should be carefully thought out to give the visitors the impression that they will be the investigators to explore such possibility of a Flat Earth. We are not the experts who they must debate against.
Current threads in Q & A, Debate, and General would be be combined into Flat Earth Investigations. We don't really need more than one main forum to keep track of. It is annoying checking three forums every day. Thork's third forum idea, "a place to talk about Flat Earth Theory," would naturally take place in the Flat Earth Investigations forum (I added a second sentence to the description: "A place to explore the possibility of a Flat Earth").
Flat Earth Information Repository can be renamed into Flat Earth Media (so one can casually refer to it as "the media forum")
Any Flat Earth forums beyond that should be for community projects and such.
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You could just change ZC into Flat Earth Community and carry on from there.
I'm not sure there is much of a downside. I'd be nervous if we were suggesting removing any chance of debating FErs, but moving those 3 forums to one and narrowing its impact ... if all the debates still end up in there, we know it didn't work but lost nothing.
I clicked a link today, that referred to the other forum and whilst there (I haven't visited in years, am just not curious), but I scanned through their S&C to see what issues they faced.
They have 3 issues as I see it.
First, the majority of the complaints come from FErs. But prominently 3 FErs. 3 FErs who tend to post nonsensical posts that as a fluent English speaker versed in FET, I still find hard to follow and understand. I'm glad we don't have the Bullhorn/Sandokhan weirdness posters. Everyone here uses plain English.
They complain about hostility in the upper forums to a much greater extent than we do. They have more of the clocktower (remember him?) problem with long term RErs jumping on every single post forever and ever. Some racking up 20,000 posts+
They suffer tyranny issues, mainly brought about by Davis having free reign over an ever absent Daniel. Unfairness seems to still be a huge problem over there, as does lethargy and the general like it or lump it attitude.
So really the only main problem we share in common is the under siege FErs in the upper fora, and of course the only thing we really have in common is the same debate structure of the forums. So I'm all for this, even as a trial.
But we've had the input of 3 people. Before we even think of finalising the changes, we need to go to the rest of the community and ask for objections and potential concerns with such an idea. Do they think we'll kill traffic, ruin the reasons they come here, destroy what the society is supposed to be about? I mean Tom said we have a problem where we are seen as the experts on FET and the people to challenge and ask. Well, we kind of are, and its the reason the press ask us things and not random youtubers.
I'd be interested in the views of longer term users of the site ... particularly those who use the upper forums. I care less about what new people think and not so much about those that never venture from CN or AR because to be honest, they likely wouldn't even notice and this isn't their problem. But Rushy, Junker, Parsifal, Dither etc.
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I'd be interested in the views of longer term users of the site ... particularly those who use the upper forums. I care less about what new people think and not so much about those that never venture from CN or AR because to be honest, they likely wouldn't even notice and this isn't their problem. But Rushy, Junker, Parsifal, Dither etc.
I've always said my main concern is providing a reliable platform for debate to happen rather than being overly invested in how the debate happens. I haven't posted much in the upper fora in years and I'm happy to let the people who do post there decide this.
Now, if you ever have some suggestions for how to better architect our hosting setup for reliability, then I'll be a more active participant in the discussion.
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People like foil. I know that you mean Thork. But what if the foil was just carefully crafted provocative messages presented to the user in some form.
Imagine if they clicked on Flat Earth Forums and above the table of contents page which lists the forums there was a big header message at the top:
"NASA says that everything is known about the world and you are stupid to be here. What do you have to say about that?"
or
"Is a Flat Earth strictly and physically impossible? Explore with us!"
Not in those exact words, perhaps. But I am sure you get the idea. Messages such as the above reinforces that this place is about you vs. the authority or you vs. nature.
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Now, if you ever have some suggestions for how to better architect our hosting setup for reliability, then I'll be a more active participant in the discussion.
I don't even know how many digits in an IP address so ...
but thanks for playing along as though I might actually have a useful suggestion on that front. :)
Not in those exact words, perhaps. But I am sure you get the idea. Messages such as the above reinforces that this place is about you vs. the authority or you vs. nature.
I'm onboard, Tom. But we need more people onboard with such a proposal. For you, Pete and I to make such a sweeping change would be ... well unfair on everyone else who uses the site. We need more input.
I think we used to have a message of sorts like that. Something like "teach the controversy". Maybe adapting a bit for a new slogan "Challenge what you're told", or "Thought, not Taught" or something?
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I'd be interested in the views of longer term users of the site ... particularly those who use the upper forums.
i'm not totally sure how what i'm going to say fits into the schema y'all are tinkering with, but i'll toss in my two cents.
like many folks here, i started as a lurker and transitioned to angry noob. i wasn't the angriest noob, but i was definitely in the "omg how could someone believe a different thing than me" camp. after a month or so of arguing with tom, i made a p funny angry rant and thought i'd bail. then some kind user sent me a pm saying something to the effect of "dude don't be so srs bsns. there's more fun to be had with the society than arguing with tom." so i came back determined to relax and have some fun arguments and maybe make some internet friends. i've definitely lost my temper a few times since then; but all-in-all, this is one of my favorite little corners of the internet, and i'm glad i took that user's advice.
so i guess what i'm saying is that whatever system you decide to implement, i think part of the culture should change, too. i think part of your goal should be to make the people who come here see that if you're willing to chill out just a little, then you can have some really fun discussions and debates about all kinds of shit. this is something i know thork has preached for a long time, and i agree with it.
i really dunno how to be more specific than that. i just feel like somehow replicating the experience i had would get more long term users. i have two sort-of-suggestions: 1) i think the way you respond to noobs has to change a bit to be less aggressive and more inviting. most of the time that's still not going to work, and most folks who come here to rage at fet just aren't salvageable anyway. some are, though, and we should maximize the chance to disarm their "omg different thing" response.
2) maybe try to "advertise" the lower fora more. like "come for the flat earth debates and stay to argue about politics and sports and thork's computer and why russia is our ally." that sort of mentality.
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maybe try to "advertise" the lower fora more. like "come for the flat earth debates and stay to argue about politics and sports and thork's computer and why russia is our ally." that sort of mentality.
Well I have the slogan for that one sorted. - The Flat Earth Society. Come for the flat earth, stay for the society. ;)
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I'd be interested in the views of longer term users of the site ... particularly those who use the upper forums.
I've been dabbling in and out of the upper fora for a while, and I don't have much new to add, but I think Tom Bishop has the best approach here.
It may be a side-effect of the split, or just time wearing down the Flat Earth advocates, but it used to be that those that "got it" would be willing to advocate for a Flat Earth. I haven't seen a new voice, at least on this forum, enter the Flat Earth side in a while and there's only so many times people can handle the same discussions and questions from Round Earth advocates who refuse to lurk moar. Also, when did we quit having "lurk moar" as an acceptable response?
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Thank you for your opinions.
So far it appears that we want to get away from the current "debate the experts" theme. We can keep that topic open to objectors, but I believe there will be consensus we want to get away from that. I don't like that idea, and it appears that the few FE'ers who post here do not like that idea, and so why force us into that position?
I would also like to continue hearing what others in the community has to say about this, especially long time members. Please post your opinion. I do like the recommendation that we should also encourage users to post in the lower forums as well.
I would like to continue discussing execution. The ideas of pitting the user against authority, or against nature, are interesting. As is the concept of a debate club. These should be our goals.
I am thinking about Thork's concerns that the forums will just end up being a debate forum against FE'ers anyway. This is possible. Someone who wants to challenge FET will post threads challenging every aspect. This brings me back to the original debate club idea. All of our discussion forums should be debate clubs, and explicitly stated as such. Maybe when the user clicks on the forums link on the main page there is a message at the top, clear and center, over the forum table of contents listings, which clearly describes what this is.
"Welcome to the Debate Club
The top level Flat Earth Discussion Forums are a Debate Club. As in any debate club, the goal is to exercise your ability in debate to poke holes in arguments and expose weaknesses, even if you do not believe in that position yourself. Keep in mind that this is a friendly debate. Post in the Flat Earth Debate Club and join the fun!"
A simple explanation, a simple concept, but with great effect. Maybe we can place similar messages at several levels into the forums to make it very clear. Now, when an angry RE'er posts threads with content claims that "this is impossible" or "they wouldn't lie to us," it is literally then the entire forum's goal to knock it down. The effect is that the debates are self sustaining. The RE'ers are not waiting for the FE'er experts to appear. In fact, there is no specific group of "RE'ers" at all in this concept.
We are not preventing people from putting out their criticisms or opinions, like how the Eric Dubey forum disallows non-FE thought. People can still express whatever it is they want to express. We are just attempting to create a more self sustaining discussion.
Those who post in favor of Flat Earth will get opposition to whatever thoughts they express anyway, debate club or not. This concept enures that people posting in favor of Round Earth will get the same treatment. It creates better debates and solves the problem seen in many threads over the last several years being poorly attended to because of lack of FE'ers.
We might also want to rethink the implicit concepts the forum and website promotes of certain people being "FE'ers" and other people being "RE'ers" entirely. We need to thoroughly reinforce that this isn't about "you vs. us" at all.
More thought needs to go into what we want to name our main discussion forums, and how many of them we need. Perhaps there can be more than one main discussion forum, since one massive forum may prove to be unwieldy. I am not entirely sure how we should partition them out. I would like to see other ideas on this as well.
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Some things to consider.
We don't want people asking "why aren't you saving up to go to the ice-wall", "why aren't you remapping Australia", "why don't you go into space" ... the stupid 'TFES has unlimited budget and should therefore be researching this'. Personally I feel we should be more like we curate and maintain FE history and become custodians for that part of world history. Not researchers and scientists looking for new ways to prove the earth is flat. Then efforts can be directed at collecting and maintaining a great FE library of resources which can be built up over time. In effect we're still the experts, but more in the way a historian is an expert than a scientist.
Debates need two sides. We'll have to make some effort to draw contrarians and anti-authoritarians to field the non mainstream side of debates. This may cause teething issues as anti-authoritarians are unlikely to want to observe things like forum rules.
We need to stay true to our demographic. People who are drawn to TFES tend to be above average intelligence, interested in science and technology, of a libertarian bent and are mostly introverts. We don't want to be swamped with people we don't like. Rabid SJWs, idiots that obsess over celebrity culture, barely literate individuals who struggle articulating themselves or 4chan children that think swatting and phone pranking are the new black. Its not that we don't want to be inclusive, but no one wants to read a 4th thread on Kim Kardashian's new shoes by someone who calls everyone Bae. This isn't Tumblr.
To that end, the upper fora ... the ones people initially use ... need to remain technical, not social forums.
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I’d be happy with almost any of the changes being presented here, even if just for the sake of shaking things up a bit and differentiating us more from the other site.
I don’t enjoy the upper fora anymore. For a very long time I’ve been the only one actively moderating, and that has absolutely killed any interest I have in participating. I just don’t have the patience for retarded RErs. But now that Pete is on board, I hope that will change. And changing things up may also help with that.
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I see a potential solution to Junker's problem in this as well. If people were actually attempting to debate both sides, people would naturally shout down any low quality posts when they appear in threads and ask that they create better arguments. That would be an easy win. The net result is social pressure for that user to make better quality posts. Then junker is less needed to meticulously scan every thread.
Also, I feel that many of the "You guys are so dumb," "prove it to me," etc., posts are because of the "we are the experts who know that the earth is flat, debate us" theme.
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I'm not sure you'll get better posts out of culture and expectation. You are an articulate man who likes to state his viewpoint. You'll always post like that because you want to and because you can. We can't turn a "flat earthers are gay" type poster into someone with interesting things to say. They didn't come here to be interesting.
Anyway, we've haven't had a single word of opposition to the proposal ... so i guess we should move on to drafting the new layout. Any thoughts as to the names of the new forums, what they are for and how we push some together and create new ones or rename old ones?
For brevity and in the interest of actually getting something done, I'd suggest only the technical flat earth forums are looked at, forget S&C, the social forums or the nonsense forums. Let's start with a lump of iron suggestion and then start hammering it into shape. - maybe this warrants a thread of its own. This one served its purpose.
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Also ... I wonder ...
If we change from trying to prove modern FE (a thankless and frankly pointless task) to being more custodians of FET and its history, will the upper forums become more light-hearted? Its an important question because it sets the tone.
Example ... If someone asks (and they will) 'what is on the other side of the earth', the answer is we don't know. There is no FE source material I can use for that. Now that I don't have to reach for the most likely explanation for a science point of view which will be met with angry responses, can I just reply 'Morlocks?' before explaining we haven't any source material for that? Can I bring people in on the joke without them feeling I'm poking fun at them? Its not that I want the upper forums to be a joke and for us to be a parody site. Quite the opposite. But I think with some humour a lot of the confrontation would go away. Its hard to be aggressive to someone who is both giving you answers and pulling your leg at the same time. If someone asks "what about time zones in Australia" and I reply that Australia doesn't exist and reference Shenton's article "australia not down under" article, I've both given them some useful FE material and had fun with them. Its then not you vs me. Its us discovering FET and having more of a laugh whilst doing it.
Done right we could make this place more fun to visit when you first get here, much less srs business and those who share the jokes and want to be part of the community stay. It would be very different to the constant and frankly tiring battleground the upper forums are. We can still have fun posting FE proofs and puzzling people whilst they work out what is going on, but we don't have to staunchly defend sunset times to the point of stubborn refusal which is the point people get pissed off at us.
FET is now pretty mainstream. There is enough evidence of flat earthers out there ... you can watch them on youtube ... so do we need to be a defender of FET? Or can we just tell you everything you need to know and have a laugh sharing that with you. Very different to what we've done before and what the other site does. Then let them soak up the pain over there, and hopefully we'll just attract the people with a genuine curiosity as opposed to those with an axe to grind.
It will repel die hard FErs, but honestly the likes of sandokhan or brotherhood of the dome ... no one enjoys their wall of nonsensical text and failure to actually respond to questions. They basically shitpost and copy/paste from religious sources. Its not enjoyable content.
We could then gear the FAQ to be more fun, and the wiki to be more of a resource of traditional answers. IE we think the earth could be flat, explore that with us, but it isn't a deal breaker if we don't agree and we can see the funny side of some of this stuff so we aren't like the other site with a broom up our arses.
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It will repel die hard FErs, but honestly the likes of sandokhan or brotherhood of the dome ... no one enjoys their wall of nonsensical text and failure to actually respond to questions. They basically shitpost and copy/paste from religious sources. Its not enjoyable content.
You and your pals wouldn't be here today without me.
There are countless threads here where you (you meaning the FE defending FET right here on this forum) are unable to answer very simple questions: it seems like you are up shit creek on a daily basis.
A wall of text might pertain to very specific bibliographical references.
Only someone who has published enough ORIGINAL material (math, physics and much more) can copy & paste the best references.
You think you can debate FET with me?
It takes less than 5 seconds to debunk the UA.
As a final proof that it is movement of the receiver which is significant--not whether that movement is in a curved or straight line path--a test was run using the highly precise differential carrier phase solution. The reference site was stationary on the earth and assumed to properly apply the Sagnac effect. However, at the remote site the antenna was moved up and down 32 centimeters (at Los Angeles) over an eight second interval. The result of the height movement was that the remote receiver followed a straight line path with respect to the center of the earth.
The Sagnac effect was still applied at the remote receiver. The result was solved for position that simply moved up and down in height the 32 centimeters with rms residuals which were unchanged (i.e. a few millimeters). If a straight line path did not need the Sagnac adjustment to the ranges the rms residuals should have increased to multiple meters. This shows again that it is any motion--not just circular motion which causes the Sagnac effect.
http://web.stcloudstate.edu/ruwang/ION58PROCEEDINGS.pdf
(Conducting a Crucial Experiment of the Constancy of the Speed of Light Using GPS, R. Wang/R. Hatch)
ANY UPWARD movement of the Earth would be registered/recorded immediately by the GPS satellites using the Sagnac effect.
What do you think would happen if you were to open your own thread (here or elsewhere) on FET and keep it online for eight years in a row?
There are threads which have hundreds of pages and thousands of messages: my AFET has only some 18 pages, yet it has received over 400,000 views (and it is not required reading). You might want to ask those readers if they agree with your assessments listed above.
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It will repel die hard FErs, but honestly the likes of sandokhan or brotherhood of the dome ... no one enjoys their wall of nonsensical text and failure to actually respond to questions. They basically shitpost and copy/paste from religious sources. Its not enjoyable content.
You and your pals wouldn't be here today without me.
There are countless threads here where you (you meaning the FE defending FET right here on this forum) are unable to answer very simple questions: it seems like you are up shit creek on a daily basis.
A wall of text might pertain to very specific bibliographical references.
Only someone who has published enough ORIGINAL material (math, physics and much more) can copy & paste the best references.
You think you can debate FET with me?
It takes less than 5 seconds to debunk the UA.
As a final proof that it is movement of the receiver which is significant--not whether that movement is in a curved or straight line path--a test was run using the highly precise differential carrier phase solution. The reference site was stationary on the earth and assumed to properly apply the Sagnac effect. However, at the remote site the antenna was moved up and down 32 centimeters (at Los Angeles) over an eight second interval. The result of the height movement was that the remote receiver followed a straight line path with respect to the center of the earth.
The Sagnac effect was still applied at the remote receiver. The result was solved for position that simply moved up and down in height the 32 centimeters with rms residuals which were unchanged (i.e. a few millimeters). If a straight line path did not need the Sagnac adjustment to the ranges the rms residuals should have increased to multiple meters. This shows again that it is any motion--not just circular motion which causes the Sagnac effect.
http://web.stcloudstate.edu/ruwang/ION58PROCEEDINGS.pdf
(Conducting a Crucial Experiment of the Constancy of the Speed of Light Using GPS, R. Wang/R. Hatch)
ANY UPWARD movement of the Earth would be registered/recorded immediately by the GPS satellites using the Sagnac effect.
What do you think would happen if you were to open your own thread (here or elsewhere) on FET and keep it online for eight years in a row?
There are threads which have hundreds of pages and thousands of messages: my AFET has only some 18 pages, yet it has received over 400,000 views (and it is not required reading). You might want to ask those readers if they agree with your assessments listed above.
Sandokhan, ignore Thork. You are as welcome here as anyone else. But yes, your incredibly long posts are not conducive to swaying new forum members, as they likely aren’t read in their entirety due to the sheer verbosity and length. There is undoubtedly a wealth of knowledge contained in the posts, but the goal here is to make them more palatable to the layperson as well as new users.
I certainly hope you don’t see any of this as an attack on you by us, that isn’t the intention. I also hold you in different regard as intikam/BotD, as he is far too emotional and polar. You are typically consistent throughout all your posts and that is helpful. Just remember we are on the same team, so don’t let nuance get in the way of productivity, and don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
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You and your pals wouldn't be here today without me.
Where would we be? You've made under 200 posts in the upper forums in 5 years. You've made 300 in the religious section. Averaging 1 post a fortnight in the upper forums is hardly keeping the forum afloat.
There are countless threads here where you (you meaning the FE defending FET right here on this forum) are unable to answer very simple questions: it seems like you are up shit creek on a daily basis.
On a daily basis, you aren't here helping out.
A wall of text might pertain to very specific bibliographical references.
Only someone who has published enough ORIGINAL material (math, physics and much more) can copy & paste the best references.
??? What? Where is your original material? Everything you post is copy pasta.
You think you can debate FET with me?
No. You don't debate. It doesn't matter what I reply, you won't read it. You'll just paste the next paragraph of something you don't understand under my post. Then the next. That isn't a debate. You make no effort to connect to me as an individual, you make no effort explain anything.
It takes less than 5 seconds to debunk the UA.
Well it does if ctrl+c/cntl+v is your method, sure.
As a final proof that it is movement of the receiver which is significant--not whether that movement is in a curved or straight line path--a test was run using the highly precise differential carrier phase solution. The reference site was stationary on the earth and assumed to properly apply the Sagnac effect. However, at the remote site the antenna was moved up and down 32 centimeters (at Los Angeles) over an eight second interval. The result of the height movement was that the remote receiver followed a straight line path with respect to the center of the earth.
The Sagnac effect was still applied at the remote receiver. The result was solved for position that simply moved up and down in height the 32 centimeters with rms residuals which were unchanged (i.e. a few millimeters). If a straight line path did not need the Sagnac adjustment to the ranges the rms residuals should have increased to multiple meters. This shows again that it is any motion--not just circular motion which causes the Sagnac effect.
And it begins. What does that even mean? You ripped it out of context. You haven't even reworded it. And then you posted it
here https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=69708.msg1882711#msg1882711
and here http://www.anti-relativity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6227&start=45
and on Daniel's site etc.
That's not a debate. That is you picking a topic (UA) and then copy pasting an unrelated alternative explanation again and again. You didn't do the maths. You didn't even reword it ... you never do. You don't explain anything because you don't understand it. So you just post it and leave the reader to interpret it. And if there are any comebacks ... you just post the next paragraph.
ANY UPWARD movement of the Earth would be registered/recorded immediately by the GPS satellites using the Sagnac effect.
You'll find we don't subscribe to GPS satellites around here. A repurposed Loran system using ground based receivers is perfectly capable of delivering location data. Besides, what you are posting has nothing to do with that. The Sagnac effect is for a ROTATING round earth and the discrepancy between a transmission out to the satellite that is moving a long way (bigger circle) and the transmission back to a rotating earth (smaller circle) giving rise to different speeds. The satellite has more lateral movement giving rise to the error. If GPS was in place over a FIXED (non-rotating) flat earth, the earth and GPS satellites have to accelerate at the same speeds upwards... so no Sagnac effect. This is what I mean by you posting things you don't understand.
What do you think would happen if you were to open your own thread (here or elsewhere) on FET and keep it online for eight years in a row?
If I opened a thread in a part of the forum no one else had access to and was able to keep bumping it for 8 years? I suspect it would rack up thousands of views by virtue of the traffic on the forum and nothing to do with the content I put inside it.
There are threads which have hundreds of pages and thousands of messages: my AFET has only some 18 pages, yet it has received over 400,000 views (and it is not required reading). You might want to ask those readers if they agree with your assessments listed above.
Maybe we should ask the 400,000 viewers on this site why they read "ask a jew anything" in just 3 short years? Or "ask Rushy about bitcoins" gathering more posts per day than your special bumped post of 8 years?
As Junker says, you are free to post here. But I don't think where we are going with a new format is going to please you. I picked you out as an FE purist, and I think most of us are done with that.
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You've made under 200 posts in the upper forums in 5 years. You've made 300 in the religious section.
Your friend, rushy, told me to get lost one year ago: he said something to the effect, "pick up your things, get out, and never come back".
Where would we be?
Once I came on board, everything changed for the FES (2007-present, especially the period 2009-2014). If FET is so popular now on youtube, it is because I contributed more than anybody else in the debates, for the first time providing the answers everyone was looking for, and much more than that. I never used ENaG or any other classic FE material, I started anew. I was the only one able to explain the beam neutrinos, ring laser gyroscopes, seismic waves, Eotvos effect. Without my input, the FES would find itself at the level where it was in 2006, a mere curiosity, debates which went nowhere.
Where is your original material? Everything you post is copy pasta.
My global natural logarithm formula:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1910773#msg1910773
The hidden structure of the zeros of the zeta function:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1855591#msg1855591 (18 parts)
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2006274#msg2006274 (5 parts)
The first correct explanation for long distance projectiles on a flat earth:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2029817#msg2029817 (2 parts)
The flat earth terrestrial gravity hydrodynamic equation:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2033009#msg2033009 (8 parts)
The difference between the Sagnac and the Coriolis effect registered by interferometers:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2024700#msg2024700 (10 parts)
The first correct quantum atomic model of the ether atom, the crucial observation that the second string in the Whittaker potential waves is the gravitational wave (dextrorotatory spin):
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2006274#msg2006274
TUNGUSKA event linked to FET:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1676400#msg1676400 (6 parts)
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1995026#msg1995026 (2 parts)
No other FE had ever thought to link the Tunguska explosion to the fact that it becomes the most direct proof of the flatness of the Earth's surface. But I did.
And much more.
I brought to the FES undreamed of levels of rigor, graduate level mathematics and physics, striking proofs, correct explanations for each FE phenomenon, A-Z.
You don't debate. It doesn't matter what I reply, you won't read it. You'll just paste the next paragraph of something you don't understand under my post. Then the next. That isn't a debate.
My "long posts" always receive the most views.
That is what readers want to see.
They seek to be challenged, they want more than just plain information, they are looking for energy, power, spirituality, you have to establish a relationship based on trust with them.
What does that even mean? You ripped it out of context.
My viewers know that I always provide the very best explanations, proofs, bibliographical references. Always. No ripping out of context.
If the Earth was moving upwards, this fact would be registered not only by the GPS satellites, but by every RING LASER GYROSCOPE interferometer in the world. It is a fact that this does not happen.
Those interferometers do not even register the 30 km/s orbital speed, or the rotational speed.
Your assertions have just been refuted.
The Sagnac effect is for a ROTATING round earth and the discrepancy between a transmission out to the satellite that is moving a long way (bigger circle) and the transmission back to a rotating earth (smaller circle) giving rise to different speeds.
That is why the readers do not read your messages (perhaps only marginally) and come by the hundreds of thousands to read mine.
The Sagnac effect registers TRANSLATIONAL/LINEAR/UNIFORM MOTION. Please convince yourself:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2023979#msg2023979
If I opened a thread in a part of the forum no one else had access to and was able to keep bumping it for 8 years? I suspect it would rack up thousands of views by virtue of the traffic on the forum and nothing to do with the content I put inside it.
There are plenty of other threads which have been "bumped" over the years: they get nowhere the numbers of views that my messages receive. My AFET is not required reading. It is not "post a picture of yourself" or "now playing". Just 18 pages. A formidable achievement to get over 400,000 views.
That is what the readers want to see, to read.
You mean this?
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=1183.0
Is this supposed to be a joke?
That thread has 102 PAGES.
My AFET has just 18 pages.
You do the math.
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=1196.0
26 PAGES.
My AFET does not get bumped by having other users post new messages. The readers come to get the best information possible on FET on a voluntary basis.
By far, the most successful thread in the history of any FE forum.
If you did open a thread, presenting your views on FET, you'd find very fast how difficult it is to keep the readers' interest alive for your messages, even for a period of time measured in months. It is an art to have them come back again and again, to give them what they really want.
Make no mistake about it: the readers, RE and FE, want to be challenged with lengthy messages, with plenty of information, with the correct explanations.
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I see a potential solution to Junker's problem in this as well. If people were actually attempting to debate both sides, people would naturally shout down any low quality posts when they appear in threads and ask that they create better arguments. That would be an easy win. The net result is social pressure for that user to make better quality posts. Then junker is less needed to meticulously scan every thread.
Also, I feel that many of the "You guys are so dumb," "prove it to me," etc., posts are because of the "we are the experts who know that the earth is flat, debate us" theme.
To need good debate you need
1) An interesting topic - well, we certainly have that
2) People who have differing opinions - we have that too. You lament sometimes how outnumbered you are but you're not really, there are round earthers like me signing up but there are plenty of FE posters here, it's just that most of them don't post in the upper fora.
If the reason for that is that the same debates happen over and over again, the same threads getting started then part of that is because the FAQ and Wiki aren't comprehensive. Thork mentions "what is on the other side" and the answer "we don't know". It's not a very satisfying answer, but it's an answer. So stick it in the FAQ. Might not stop people posting that, but at least you can point them at the FAQ, heck someone like me could do it to save you the bother. I'm quite happy to point new posters in the right direction about things like that if there's a direction to point them in.
But another reason that the same topics come up over and over is that you are not willing to concede any ground on any topic. A recent example is horizon dip. Now let's not get into that debate here, but you've been shown 4 different ways to demonstrate horizon dip, you refuse to accept any of them and you refuse to do any experimenting yourself so it becomes a frustrating conversation. There has to be some honesty in debates and that involves conceding some ground when shown to be wrong. The way progress has been made in science is by doing experiments and when the results show current models are wrong changing those models. Just blindly accepting any experiment which appears to show a result you believe in and dismissing or calling fake experiments which show the reverse isn't honest, it's just stubbornly sticking to dogma and doesn't make for interesting debate. How about thinking about why horizon dip might occur on a flat earth (hint, jelly beans!) and how your model might need to change to account for that. Rather than saying there is no flat earth map, that you don't know if there's one pole or two and so on, how about some discussions about how you would go about determining these things? If your model evolves then debate about it can evolve, if it doesn't then you're going to get the same discussions over and over.
Absolutely agree with Thork's comment about the upper fora being more light hearted. I said that some time ago and got shouted down. And fine, it's your place, you guys make it what you want it to be, but a bit of humour is no bad thing IMO.
Round Earthers who sign up to tell you that "earth is round, ur gay", just ban them and let the grown ups get on with discussing things.
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AATW, you are saying the same thing over and over. We've already heard it, and we've already disagreed. Please avoid posting content which does not contribute to the thread. Warned.
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You've made under 200 posts in the upper forums in 5 years. You've made 300 in the religious section.
Your friend, rushy, told me to get lost one year ago: he said something to the effect, "pick up your things, get out, and never come back".
Why don't you know how to quote properly? Ok, so what of the other 4 years? And by the way, I don't think the majority of us want you to leave. All contribution is welcome. I just fear you will not enjoy the proposal we are making. It won't be conducive to your style of posting. But you haven't actually replied to the topic at hand. Do you have any valid objections to us changing the format, and if so what are they? This is important and I'll come back to it later in this post.
Where would we be?
Once I came on board, everything changed for the FES (2007-present, especially the period 2009-2014). If FET is so popular now on youtube, it is because I contributed more than anybody else in the debates, for the first time providing the answers everyone was looking for, and much more than that. I never used ENaG or any other classic FE material, I started anew. I was the only one able to explain the beam neutrinos, ring laser gyroscopes, seismic waves, Eotvos effect. Without my input, the FES would find itself at the level where it was in 2006, a mere curiosity, debates which went nowhere.
This is both delusional and incorrect. I don't believe you are providing the answers people want. I would back that with media requests. Over the years, it is people like Tom Bishop, myself, john Davis and Pete (pizzaplanet) who are asked to do media engagements. I don't remember you ever being asked to take your ideas to the public at large.
Where is your original material? Everything you post is copy pasta.
My global natural logarithm formula:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1910773#msg1910773
The hidden structure of the zeros of the zeta function:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1855591#msg1855591 (18 parts)
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2006274#msg2006274 (5 parts)
The first correct explanation for long distance projectiles on a flat earth:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2029817#msg2029817 (2 parts)
The flat earth terrestrial gravity hydrodynamic equation:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2033009#msg2033009 (8 parts)
The difference between the Sagnac and the Coriolis effect registered by interferometers:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2024700#msg2024700 (10 parts)
The first correct quantum atomic model of the ether atom, the crucial observation that the second string in the Whittaker potential waves is the gravitational wave (dextrorotatory spin):
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2006274#msg2006274
TUNGUSKA event linked to FET:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1676400#msg1676400 (6 parts)
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1995026#msg1995026 (2 parts)
No other FE had ever thought to link the Tunguska explosion to the fact that it becomes the most direct proof of the flatness of the Earth's surface. But I did.
And much more.
And those original ideas are all copy pasta from other people's efforts, often wrongly applied. That's not an attack on your posting, it is what it is. I don't care what you post, I only encourage you to do so. And that's important. Again I'll come back to that later in the post.
I brought to the FES undreamed of levels of rigor, graduate level mathematics and physics, striking proofs, correct explanations for each FE phenomenon, A-Z.
No, you didn't. You contributed ... you didn't reinvent the wheel.
You don't debate. It doesn't matter what I reply, you won't read it. You'll just paste the next paragraph of something you don't understand under my post. Then the next. That isn't a debate.
My "long posts" always receive the most views.
That is what readers want to see.
This is the part I want to pick you up on. This is a forum. Not a personal blog. Views is not a metric I care deeply about. I care more about other metrics such as 'replies'. How many people did you engage in debate? How many people did you get talking about FET? How many people saw your post and were inspired to create an account and join in. I actually look at metrics like Top 10 topic starters (which my accounts over the years before I close them are usually near the top). I look at how many people joined in your debate.
Here is a post of mine from 2010.
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=42558.0
Note it spawned 55,000 views in under a year (if that is important to you), but drew 21 pages of debate. Not me posting. OTHER PEOPLE wanting to discuss it. And original idea that drew people to join in. That's what we want on the forums. This isn't Blogger. We want people contributing and breathing life into the forums. We crave interaction, not attention.
They seek to be challenged, they want more than just plain information, they are looking for energy, power, spirituality, you have to establish a relationship based on trust with them.
No ... they want to be entertained. TFES is a free time leisure activity.
What does that even mean? You ripped it out of context.
My viewers know that I always provide the very best explanations, proofs, bibliographical references. Always. No ripping out of context.
Your viewers? You don't run a successful website. Again I question the validity of having a post bumped to the top of a board for 8 years in a section called "Believer" named "Advanced Flat Earth Theory". That to me, is clickbait. Congrats, you created some clickbait. Hardly anyone has replied and I don't see people spawing new threads to discuss the content.
If the Earth was moving upwards, this fact would be registered not only by the GPS satellites, but by every RING LASER GYROSCOPE interferometer in the world. It is a fact that this does not happen.
Those interferometers do not even register the 30 km/s orbital speed, or the rotational speed.
Your assertions have just been refuted.
The Sagnac effect is for a ROTATING round earth and the discrepancy between a transmission out to the satellite that is moving a long way (bigger circle) and the transmission back to a rotating earth (smaller circle) giving rise to different speeds.
You've misapplied the Sagnac effect. It doesn't matter. I've no interest in shooting down your FE ideas. One might call that an own goal.
That is why the readers do not read your messages (perhaps only marginally) and come by the hundreds of thousands to read mine.
First, I know when to let a thread die. When people no longer want to participate. When they have participated and exhausted the concepts and wish to spend their time on something else. Second readers do read my messages. I know this because they reply to them ... often in large numbers.
The Sagnac effect registers TRANSLATIONAL/LINEAR/UNIFORM MOTION. Please convince yourself:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg2023979#msg2023979
Don't be facetious.
If I opened a thread in a part of the forum no one else had access to and was able to keep bumping it for 8 years? I suspect it would rack up thousands of views by virtue of the traffic on the forum and nothing to do with the content I put inside it.
There are plenty of other threads which have been "bumped" over the years: they get nowhere the numbers of views that my messages receive. My AFET is not required reading. It is not "post a picture of yourself" or "now playing". Just 18 pages. A formidable achievement to get over 400,000 views.
I'm pretty sure we discussed click bait already.
That is what the readers want to see, to read.
I wonder what your bounce rate is? Being as no one is discussing the content. There's a metric I'd like to know.
You mean this?
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=1183.0
Is this supposed to be a joke?
That thread has 102 PAGES.
My AFET has just 18 pages.
You do the math.
I did the math. Your post brought joy to one person. You were the only person who participated. That's not a forum metric I'm interested in. That's a vanity project.
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=1196.0
26 PAGES.
My AFET does not get bumped by having other users post new messages. The readers come to get the best information possible on FET on a voluntary basis.
By far, the most successful thread in the history of any FE forum.
Bumping, clickbait, bounce rates, you linking it repeatedly all over the internet on other sites ... yeah, we covered this.
If you did open a thread, presenting your views on FET, you'd find very fast how difficult it is to keep the readers' interest alive for your messages, even for a period of time measured in months. It is an art to have them come back again and again, to give them what they really want.
You must think I've never used this forum before. I've been posting for the better part of a decade. I've made over 40,000 posts all in, on my various accounts between the two sites.
Make no mistake about it: the readers, RE and FE, want to be challenged with lengthy messages, with plenty of information, with the correct explanations.
No, they want a debate. You know, multiple people exchanging ideas. That is what a forum is for. THIS ISN'T YOUR PERSONAL BLOG!