Pete, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't look like edby has ever directly claimed to be a faculty member on this forum, nor used such status to bolster his arguments.
You are missing something. Around the time I started pointing out edby's lie, he was using his status as an "academic" to bolster his position within the forum. This is what originally motivated me to investigate his claim, and, upon discovering that it's a lie, to expose him. I achieved my goal in stopping him from employing that strategy, but he never did apologise or retract his original claim.
For all we know, "Faculty Member" could just be the least inapplicable of some limited set of affiliation options on academia.edu, and I don't think pointing to it was his reason for linking to that page.
I am familiar with academia.edu. "The Logic Museum" should not exist on it, since it is not an academic institution. The "Faculty Member" kerfuffle is just a consequence of that lie, but it is another lie nonetheless. I will be addressing that part of his fraud with academia.edu separately. I doubt they'll act on it, but that's their purview. Meanwhile, the only way edby can get me to stop calling him out on his lie is by retracting his claim and editing his previous posts to highlight that he is not, in fact, a member of any academic institution.
I also have my doubts about edby's affiliation with the University of Bristol and am curious if they know he's using their name in current publications. For now, I have chosen not to enquire on that matter.
Given that, and the fact that we're talking about a two-year-old post by now, I think it's reasonable to back down now that he's made it clear he's become uncomfortable. I don't think this is any different from the "Things Tom Bishop Doesn't Understand" thread, which was locked because Tom was uncomfortable with it.
There is a fundamental difference. The Tom thread was a list of topics that the authors considered Tom to be incompetent at. It was a thread for relentlessly pointing out mistakes. This is entirely different. Pointing out that someone is lying and backing it up with what I think is an overwhelming amount of evidence is not something that can be sensibly suppressed. If your decision is that we can no longer point out people's lies/outright fraud because they say they don't like it, I hope you realise the precedent this will set.
You have a tendency to try and tow the middle line, and I understand why you do that. However, I refuse to back down in this case. edby is acting in a manner that, without further clarification, appears to be fraudulent. I consider it my moral obligation to highlight that in order to protect those who might not realise.
To be transparent, this is not the first time that edby tried to suppress this information, and not the first time that I'm refusing to back down. He previously tried to shut me up through junker:
He [edby] PM'd regarding the warning I gave him, based on the post you reported here
He is lashing out as he has taken issue with your claims he has falsified his academic credentials. he included these links for reference:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=11803.msg180035#msg180035
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=11803.msg178672#msg178672
He did provide me some personal evidence that he is a published academic. Obviously someone should not take things too personally on an internet forum, but I told him I would address it with you to avoid such claims in the future.
Thanks for letting me know. My position remains unchanged - when asked to prove his credentials in public, he linked to an academia.edu profile, where he claims to be a "faculty member" of the "Logic Museum". I called him on his bullshit last summer.
Of course, since he posted his real name on the forum, it's not difficult to find out that he has some publication record (and he tried posting about this before), but that's primarily translations and reviews of translations of works in philosophy. Perhaps the links he gave you were different/better, but that's all he's presented publicly to date - doesn't it seem a bit suspicious that he has to reach so deep?
As far as I'm concerned, edby is claiming to be an academic and is using that to ad-hominem others. "I'm an academic and this isn't how science works, you probably just read a pop-science book and misunderstood it." Calling him out is the least I can do.