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Of course bias sounds like a negative quality. There is a positive way to consider the same trait, i.e. that of having a particular perspective which may serve to illuminate some aspect of a topic. In this sense there's no need to suggest that people are unable to see their own bias, rather that specific outlook is the very contribution which they are able to bring and the reason why they should be valued.

If that perspective is not harmful to any individual, I might agree with your view. However as long as there are victims, it will always have a negative aspect in my opinion. Maybe that's ok too? (A genuine thought, not a dig ;))
 
If that perspective is not harmful to any individual, I might agree with your view. However as long as there are victims, it will always have a negative aspect in my opinion. Maybe that's ok too? (A genuine thought, not a dig ;))


How can someone's opinion be harmful to another individual? Assuming they are not on their way over to your house with a weapon, or are verbally abusive (which happens by some individuals here and should be moderated), we are all individually responsible for how we respond, and even how we feel about a certain interaction. Not everyone we come across will be respectful of differing opinions and we have a choice of how we respond to them.

I have never blocked anyone on this forum (except Interesting Ian who wasn't very interesting - sorry Ian). I have ignored many comments that I didn't like after I read them. I completely agree that there are a majority of posters who will never change their perspective significantly and are here only for the purpose of persuading others of their point of view. We all know who they are and as Typoz says, we take from them what we need. Maybe they do illuminate some parts of the discourse for us.

I see aggressors (not many), persuaders, deniers, compartmentalizers, jokers and trolls but most I see people who genuinely wish to discuss topics which few people 'in the real world' get into. What I don't see are victims.
 
One thing about the forum-settings that kinda irritates me is the Alert-settings. If one follows a thread that one either has participated in, by writing comments - or just put a check in Follow This Thread, because one finds it interesting to read and follow - one gets a red "flag" on the Alerts when there is a new post in that thread. So, the thing that is kinda irritating is that, if I put the cursor over the Alerts and drop-down-list shows which threads that are updated, and I at that time doesn't click on each Alerts and open up that particular thread, I dont get an alert the next time someone post in that thread. Do you follow what I mean?

It means that, if I just hold the cursor over Alert and just acknowledge that someone has written in the thread, I dont get an Alert from that thread the next time. Is there some setting you can change so this doesn't happen? It makes me miss out on updates on lots of threads I have written in, or/and just has interest in reading.
 
One thing about the forum-settings that kinda irritates me is the Alert-settings. If one follows a thread that one either has participated in, by writing comments - or just put a check in Follow This Thread, because one finds it interesting to read and follow - one gets a red "flag" on the Alerts when there is a new post in that thread. So, the thing that is kinda irritating is that, if I put the cursor over the Alerts and drop-down-list shows which threads that are updated, and I at that time doesn't click on each Alerts and open up that particular thread, I dont get an alert the next time someone post in that thread. Do you follow what I mean?

It means that, if I just hold the cursor over Alert and just acknowledge that someone has written in the thread, I dont get an Alert from that thread the next time. Is there some setting you can change so this doesn't happen? It makes me miss out on updates on lots of threads I have written in, or/and just has interest in reading.

Since nobody else has responded yet, I'll take a stab at this...

I know exactly what you're getting at, and as best I can tell, from checking user preferences and googling, this behaviour can't be changed i.e. you have to actually visit the thread and view pages with new posts to reset notifications for that thread. I hope I'm wrong, though, and that somebody comes up with a solution.

The way I deal with this is to middle-click on thread alerts to open in a new tab, and then just leave the tab open in the background for when I'm ready to read it. It's kind of a kludge though.
 
Since nobody else has responded yet, I'll take a stab at this...

I know exactly what you're getting at, and as best I can tell, from checking user preferences and googling, this behaviour can't be changed i.e. you have to actually visit the thread and view pages with new posts to reset notifications for that thread. I hope I'm wrong, though, and that somebody comes up with a solution.
.

To bad you couldn't find a solution to it. But thanks for looking anyhow.

The way I deal with this is to middle-click on thread alerts to open in a new tab, and then just leave the tab open in the background for when I'm ready to read it. It's kind of a kludge though.
Yeah, I use to do like that, but sometimes you accidentally close the browser, or it crashes, and the tabs are gone.
 
Yeah, I use to do like that, but sometimes you accidentally close the browser, or it crashes, and the tabs are gone.

You can minimise loss of tabs in at least Firefox by selecting Tools->Options->General and beside "When Firefox starts:" selecting "Show your windows and tabs from last time". Occasionally you may have a crash/scenario bad enough that they aren't restored, but most of the time this works. In any case, I think we agree that leaving tabs open for later is not ideal.

Another potential (if also kludgy) solution is to select to receive email notifications too - then just leave unread those email notifications that you are going to look up later - or, if you open them, then re-mark them as unread (or move them to a special folder).
 
Another potential (if also kludgy) solution is to select to receive email notifications too - then just leave unread those email notifications that you are going to look up later - or, if you open them, then re-mark them as unread (or move them to a special folder).
Yeah, thanks, that might be an idea. One can also look at the Alert-history, and try to sort out which thread/topic you might have missed. But sometimes you just forget to look there, so there is good with a second backup-reminder, like the RSS-feed/mail notification.
 
Can we have a function to delete all the spam PMs in our message boxes instead of just marking them as read? I've got some tedious junk in mine that I want to get rid of!
 
Spam in conversations? Odd, not something I've noticed. You can leave any conversation though, even one you've started, and that makes it disappear.
 
Spam in conversations? Odd, not something I've noticed. You can leave any conversation though, even one you've started, and that makes it disappear.
Cheers, I'll check on that. It perhaps wasn't spam by technical definition, it was from one of our posters, but it kind of wanted me to buy into an idea with a hint of aggression. Wouldn't want the poster hanged but it would be nice to be able to clean up his sputum. At the moment, it stares me in the face like something I scraped off my shoe!
 
Can we have a function to delete all the spam PMs in our message boxes instead of just marking them as read? I've got some tedious junk in mine that I want to get rid of!
The only way you can get spam in your PM box, is from another user. Can you PM me some evidence, and I will try to stop whoever is responsible.

David
 
The only way you can get spam in your PM box, is from another user. Can you PM me some evidence, and I will try to stop whoever is responsible.

David
I don't really think it was intended as spam but there had been tension on the forum and I didn't really want one of the posters that had behaved like wolves in a pack sending me stressed out messages. It was only one message and was in keeping with Skeptiko rules as far as I can tell. If anybody ever does really bother me I will certainly let you know. Thanks.
 
I don't really think it was intended as spam but there had been tension on the forum and I didn't really want one of the posters that had behaved like wolves in a pack sending me stressed out messages. It was only one message and was in keeping with Skeptiko rules as far as I can tell. If anybody ever does really bother me I will certainly let you know. Thanks.
Well spam has a particular meaning - an attempt to sell something!

You don't need to reply to any PM if you do not wish to!

David
 
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Yeah, thanks, that might be an idea. One can also look at the Alert-history, and try to sort out which thread/topic you might have missed. But sometimes you just forget to look there, so there is good with a second backup-reminder, like the RSS-feed/mail notification.

Oh, hey, Pollux, not sure how I discovered this but somehow I clicked on something, and... well, see how you like this link for your purposes. :)

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/watched/threads
 
Well, I've realised how I got there: I found the "way" to it as a link labelled "Unread Watched Threads" in the bottom right of all "new post" notification emails.
 
An important theme in understanding paranormal phenomena and consciousness is, "why do we believe what believe". This means that any controversial subject is appropriate for the skeptiko podcast because by looking outside paranormal topics we might learn something about the debate about paranormal topics. This is why I usually disagree with people who say that some topic or other is not appropriate for skeptiko.

Therefore I would like to suggest that Rich Higgins, author of the memo included below, would be great person to interview on skeptiko podcast. Higgins was fired from the National Security Council after he wrote the memo (which implicates his boss in illegal activity). (Alex often asks members to help set up interviews so I will say in advance that since I cannot control the questions or the direction of the interview and I don't think it is appropriate for me ask someone to come on the show.)

Below is the first page, the full memo is at the link:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/10/heres-the-memo-that-blew-up-the-nsc/amp/
"The author of the memo, Rich Higgins, who was in the strategic planning office at the NSC, was among those recently pushed out."

POTUS & POLITICALWARFARE

May 2017

BACKGROUND.The Trump administration is suffering under withering information campaigns designed
to first undermine, then de legitimize and ultimately remove the President. Possibly confusing these
attacks with an elevated interplay of otherwise normal D.C. partisan infighting and adversarial media
relations, the White House response to these campaigns reflects a political advocacy mindset that it is
intensely reactive, severely under-inclusive and dangerously inadequate to the threat. If action is not
taken to re-scope and respond to these hostile campaigns very soon, the administration risks implosion
and subsequent early departure from the White House.

This is not politics as usual but rather political warfare at an unprecedented level that is openly engaged
in the direct targeting of a seated president through manipulation of the news cycle. It must be
recognized on its own terms so that immediate action can be taken. At its core, these campaigns run on
multiple lines of effort, serve as the non-violent line of effort of a wider movement, and execute political
warfare agendas that reflect cultural Marxist outcomes. The campaigns operate through narratives.
Because the hard left is aligned with lslamist organizations at local (ANTI FA working with Muslim
Brotherhood doing business as MSA and CAIR), national (ACLU and BLM working with CAIR and MPAC)
and international levels (OIC working with OSCEand the UN), recognition must given to the fact that
they seamlessly interoperate at the narrative level as well.
In candidate Trump, the opposition saw a
threat to the "politically correct" enforcement narratives they've meticulously laid in over the past few
decades. In President Trump, they see a latent threat to continue that effort to ruinous effect and their
retaliatory response reflects this fear.

INTRODUCTION. Responding to relentless personal assaults on his character, candidate Trump
identified the players and the strategy:


"The establishment and their media enablers will control over this nation through means that
are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a
xenophobe, and morally deformed." - President Trump, Oct 2016
Culturally conditioned to limit responses to such attacks as yet another round in the on-going drone
from diversity and multicultural malcontents, these broadsides are discounted as political correctness
run amuck. However, political correctness is a weapon against reason and critical thinking. This weapon
functions as the enforcement mechanism of diversity narratives that seek to implement cultural
Marxism. Candidate Trump's rhetoric in the campaign not only cut through the Marxist narrative, he did
so in ways that were viscerally comprehensible to a voting bloc that then made candidate Trump the
president; making that bloc self-aware in the process. President Trump is either the candidate he ran as,
or he is nothing.

Recognizing in candidate Trump an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the
prevailing cultural narrative, those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction.
For this cabal, Trump must be destroyed. Far from politics as usual, this is a political warfare effort that
seeks the destruction of a sitting president. Since Trump took office, the situation has intensified to crisis
level proportions. For those engaged in the effort, especially those from within the "deep state" or
permanent government apparatus, this raises clear Title 18 (legal) concerns.



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Here is an interview with Rich Higgins:
 
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