[serious] Off Topic Moderation Input - Part 2

[Asher]

traffic has been going down for the past 5 years or so

Yes, but to my eyes it's leveled out to a pretty core set of posters in the OTF that has not appreciably changed in volume since Plomp's ascendancy.

[RGBVideo]

The traffic to the OTF is unchanged

traffic has been going down for the past 5 years or so

traffic of all 'poly forums relative to cfc has been going down since civ3

[Asher]

I can't think of anyone who has left, but I could name a bunch of new arrivals...and a bunch of people who came back after years away.

[notyoueither]

I'm pretty sure there are fewer people around here now, and that the toxic environment has had an influence on the decrease.

[Asher]

Ming:

So whats the excuse now for this place being exactly the same as it was before besides not having all those old insane Admins with the ego's the size of Solar Systems.

The differences of I took over Poly and turned it into a free-for-all uncensored troll pit with little to no rules and DanQ's "family friendly," Fury of Ming, PolyCast or Bust snoozefest is solely based on the site owners preferences, even you agree.

The traffic to the OTF is unchanged, so the excuse that the rough crowd in the OTF drove people away is obviously bunk.

The content is still stale, that's the problem.

[RGBVideo]

shut up, nazi

[Heraclitus]

Another unsound comment of our resident racist.

1) I said religion, not theism.

Valid point. A unfair assumption on my part, Apolyton has this *thing* with Christianity so I sort of jumped to conclusions.

Another unsound comment of our resident racist.

2) As an aside, an irrelevant comment though, many Buddhists basically treat Buddha as a god.

Actually a better argument is that many Buddhists belive in other gods or traditinal spirit ancestors. Buddhism in many ways is a agnostic religion. Buddha is called the teacher of Gods and men afterall. Gods in some interpretations are simply beings who picked up loads and loads of good karma even beyond the human stage but haven't reached transcendence if I recall right.

Another unsound comment of our resident racist.

3) A local exception to a trend does not disprove the general correlation between IQ and atheism.

I don't recall claiming it would. It is however fair to point out counterexamples don't you agree?

Another unsound comment of our resident racist.

4) You have a history of making doubtful claims, so I'm not sure if I can even trust your assertion that South-Korean Christians have a higher IQ.

I don't quite see what you mean by doubtfull? I provide plently of citations for most of my contraversial claims and judgements and reashearch both sides of the question extensivley before coming to fairly certain conclusions.

Anyway here is the nearest source I can find on short notice.

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001791.html

Religious Koreans aren't stupid!

My Christmas Eve post which plotted religion vs. national IQ kind of developed a life of its own. But within broader patterns there are details that are missed. For instance, this article documents the rise in religious affiliation in South Korea in the post-war period, and the correlation of Christian affiliation with higher socioeconomic status and educational attainment. A 1997 Gallup Poll in South Korea showed that:
1) Christians are far more likely to believe in "miracles," God" and other supernatural entities and processes than Buddhists or the non-affiliated South Koreans[1].
2) Christians are more well educated than other Koreans & more likely to be middle to upper middle class.

It would follow that if religious belief has a positive correlation with education & income, it is likely IQ also does if it covaries with education & income, at least in South Korea[2]. Also, it might interest readers to note that Roman Catholicism in particular is an upper to upper middle class religion in the Korean context (and tends to be associated with "progressive" political views), while Protestantism tends to correlate more with a modest middle class status.

I point this out because South Korea is one of those countries with individuals of high IQ and low religious sentiment (though Americans have a stereotype of South Koreans as very religious Christians because of Korean Americans, only 1 out of 4 are Protestant or Roman Catholic).

fn1. Though one might wonder how many "non-religious" Koreans accept fortune telling and astrology, beliefs that were not included in the survey, and so might mask the tendency toward irrationalism in people who are without religious affiliation.

fn2. Within the "Christian" affiliation there is obviously a range of beliefs, and it is sociologically documented that high status individuals with weak religious motivations often attend establishment religious services as a signal of their high standing in the community. It could be possible that within the Christian population of Korea the most well educated tend to have the least conservative religious views (this is often found cross-culturally). Also, please note that the same Gallup Poll found Christian South Koreans were more socially progressive on issues such as family and the rights of women than Buddhists or non-religious South Koreans.

Another unsound comment of our resident racist.

5) Even if that's a fact, there can be other historical or cultural factors leading to that connection, or christians could simply have, for whatever reason, a better socio-economic status, better education, which leads to better IQ scores. Also according to this wikipedia article, Christianity is viewed as more egalitarian and meritocratic than traditional Korean culture, something which in the past, when no one had ever heard of atheism before, would have attracted the intelletual elite. Do you have also have figures of *real* Korean atheists?

You are correct. But then again what if Christianity for example or religiosity is only associated with lower IQ because of poorer socio-economic status, poorer education in the Western world?

5) But most importantly, I didn't equate "mental handicap" to "low IQ".

I suppose this is true. But you do realize that legally a very low IQ is how people determine a whole class of mental handicaps right?

racist

How charming.

[ZEE]

Ming:

So whats the excuse now for this place being exactly the same as it was before besides not having all those old insane Admins with the ego's the size of Solar Systems.

The differences of I took over Poly and turned it into a free-for-all uncensored troll pit with little to no rules and DanQ's "family friendly," Fury of Ming, PolyCast or Bust snoozefest is solely based on the site owners preferences, even you agree.

[Wezil]

Nikolai - Your exact quote.

Originally Posted by Nikolai View Post
So, only tolerance for people who agree with you or you can understand. Great stuff.

A lie.

Do the Christian thing and apologize.

[Princess Peach]

I would like to point out that I am not a DL at all, and I am certainly not Asher. I would be pretty offended if I was banned for something I did not do. If you are going to assume I am a DL of someone, make sure you are 100% sure next time. You can even check the IP address, it will be different.

[Ming]

The "family thing" was a mark and dan thing... and it had nothing to do with the "hosts".

Our new owners kept what they liked, but made changes that dramatically shifted the tone of the OT.
Just compare the OT now to what it was under Mark/Dan, or even Dan/and gang. Big differences.

[ZEE]

maybe not, but Plomp sure is sticking by DanQ's old rules (and I believe Dan to be heavily paranoid about the "family friendly" thing)

[Ming]

As a 21 year veteran user of the internet, i can say that I think it all comes down to Admins having this sort of "Site Host" paranoia, thinking the Host (still The Planet now rite?) has this 'Big Brother' mentality and spying on them 24/7 and responding to the slightest complaint with the Fury of Zeus in a manner of seconds.

In practice, however, Site Hosts rarely get involved with client site's affairs, even in some extreme cases of 3rd party sites claiming the client site "invading" them or a few complaints of seriously innappropriate images or site content, least of all some joker making DL's.

So it basically comes down to how do you want your site to draw traffic which generates ad revenue without having thousands of people complaining about it (in which case the site host would take notice.)

I'm sure this isn't even a consideration to the current owners.

[SlowwHand]

Cracker isn't really like ******. Blacks will call other blacks a ******, but whites don't call each other crackers. I think porch monkey is more the equivalent to cracker.

[ZEE]

As a 21 year veteran user of the internet, i can say that I think it all comes down to Admins having this sort of "Site Host" paranoia, thinking the Host (still The Planet now rite?) has this 'Big Brother' mentality and spying on them 24/7 and responding to the slightest complaint with the Fury of Zeus in a manner of seconds.

In practice, however, Site Hosts rarely get involved with client site's affairs, even in some extreme cases of 3rd party sites claiming the client site "invading" them or a few complaints of seriously innappropriate images or site content, least of all some joker making DL's.

So it basically comes down to how do you want your site to draw traffic which generates ad revenue without having thousands of people complaining about it (in which case the site host would take notice.)