Both forums need an introduction

[Laird]

I would have thought that it would be better if those who want to contribute (myself included) would work offline, and submit the result to Laird or anyone else he nominates.

Ah, man, I really wish you'd stop treating me as the owner/president/whatever of Psience Quest - it's really disrespectful to all of the other decision makers in this community. I keep on pointing this out to you but it doesn't seem to sink in. To be clear: the views I've expressed in this thread are mine alone and have no binding power. I like the ideas you and Chris have expressed, I think you should go for it and put together a draft, but if enough others don't like these ideas, then I don't intend to, nor do I have the authority to, impose them on the community.

I don't get it... why do you want to change the landing page of the forum?

Without careful thought you can easily bugger up our search engine ranking. Most traffic will arrive via the search engines, and that through direct links to forum sub-pages. The forum pages should all be linked and accessible through a logical nested directory structure from the landing page. Then all internal sub-forum page links should reference that same structure, and they should all feed back ranking with links to the root landing pages. This gives the root landing page lots of link juice for google manufactured from the content of forum sub-pages, which is distributed down to the first layer of the forum directory structure - which gets a weaker amount of juice. Google also looks at activity on these pages, and gives greater ranking to sites with pages which change regularly.

Traffic comes from search engines Google, and to a lesser extend Bing... with some smaller regional search engines like Yandex etc.

Traffic is attracted into the site in the sub-pages which contain the users search keyword content.

That content should be contained in pages that link back to the landing page, in a way that feeds the sub-pages ranking back into the root landing pages.

I think it is extremely unwise to make a static flat landing page, you could conceivably kill the sites traffic, in an attempt to make a nice looking landing page.

New visitors don't come into the site via the root landing page, they arrive because of content in the sub-forum pages which match their search terms.

Well I am not an expert about such matters, I am just pointing out that a forum such as this or Skeptiko only presents the latest posts in each category. Without drilling deeper people may have little or no idea as to what they have found.

Maybe a different way of presenting a front page would be preferable.

David

Ah, man, I really wish you'd stop treating me as the owner/president/whatever of Psience Quest - it's really disrespectful to all of the other decision makers in this community. I keep on pointing this out to you but it doesn't seem to sink in. To be clear: the views I've expressed in this thread are mine alone and have no binding power. I like the ideas you and Chris have expressed, I think you should go for it and put together a draft, but if enough others don't like these ideas, then I don't intend to, nor do I have the authority to, impose them on the community.

I really think you are making too much of this issue. Sending a document to you, does not mean it has to stay with you, you can do what you like with it. All I am saying is that the front page has  to be something looked after by the founding fathers (and mothers, those of indeterminate gender, and not excluding any possible future alien, or discarnate founders.......) not by everyone on the forum! Just as I don't suppose ordinary members can fiddle with the forum software.

Peace!

David

Ah, man, I really wish you'd stop treating me as the owner/president/whatever of Psience Quest - it's really disrespectful to all of the other decision makers in this community. I keep on pointing this out to you but it doesn't seem to sink in. 

David is a bit of an autocrat. If you think that's annoying hope Andy Paquart does not join. Oh, if he does, both he and David should never be mods.

David is a bit of an autocrat. If you think that's annoying hope Andy Paquart does not join. Oh, if he does, both he and David should never be mods.

Does that mean you would be happy for me to be a moderator if Andy doesn't join?

All that is academic - I have no intention of becoming a moderator here!

David

OK - here is the first portion of what I have in mind (minus references and suitable markup). Maybe Chris and Max_B will explode,
so it is probably worth trying to resolve that before moving firther.

Welcome to psiencequest!

There are an enormous number of psi websites on the internet, as I am sure you are aware. PsiScienceQuest is rather different. As the name implies, we are exploring the interface between science and psi phenomena. 

We use the term psi to include any phenomenon that involves consciousness (i.e. the mind) in ways that seem to go beyond ordinary science. In recent decades, science has come to see consciousness as essentially a 'computation' performed by the brain. Sometimes the brain is even referred to as 'wetware' by analogy with the hardware that runs our computers! That in turn leads to the idea that the mind is analogous to computer software. Unfortunately, rather than testing this model of the brain critically, many scientists simply assume it is true, and reject anomalous phenomena that clearly don't make sense within that model. These anomalous phenomena are at the heart of our discussions here. 

Near Death Experiences

A really glaring example of anomalous consciousness is to be found by listening to people who have had a cardiac arrest, and been resuscitated. While about 85% of people remember nothing from the period when their heart was not functioning, 15% experience a Near Death Experience (NDE). These are typically complex and vivid - many people report feeling more awake than ever before, yet their brains are not receiving any oxygen or other nutrients! This is rather analogous to a computer continuing to function after its battery was disconnected! (* references to relevant forum threads *) Clearly there is something fundamentally wrong with thinking of the mind as software running on the wetware in the bead! 

NDE's often involve contact with dead relatives, and certainly suggest that consciousness continues after death - another idea that is normally rejected because it contradicts the brain as computer model! A number of people on this forum have personally experienced NDE's. (* references to forum posts *) 

Telepathy 

At the opposite extreme we have telepathy. This has been researched for a long time in well controlled conditions. Typically one person selects a card at random from a pack with four different types of card and tries to send its image to a receiver, who reports what he receives (or guesses). Clearly he has a 25% chance of guessing the right answer by chance. When large numbers of tests of this sort are averaged together, the results generally come out slightly above chance. However, much better results are obtained if the receiver is sense-deprived in a flotation tank, or in other ways. This experiment is known as the Ganzfeld experiment, and in this case results average at just over 30%. This result seems to indicate that telepathy is real, and is discussed in threads such as (* references *) It is interesting to note that many NDE experiencers report that when they 'talked' to others in their NDE, this happened telepathically! 

It is believed that telepathy is far more efficient in extremely emotional circumstances. Thus a woman may become aware that her husband is in mortal danger, or dead before any conventional news can arrive. Such phenomena obviously cannot be tested in a laboratory setting, but nevertheless the accumulation of such reports is very suggestive. 

Communication of this sort does not seem to be restricted to human beings. For example tests have been done that confirm that some dogs are aware when their owners are returning home - long before there is any physical way for them to know (phones and other electronic devices are switched off). (* references *) 

David

I still think this is primarily a discussion site, and it doesn't make much sense to have a statement on the main page setting out positions on the questions that people are going to discuss. It seems a bit too much like the judge opening a trial by saying whether he thinks the defendant is guilty.

I still think this is primarily a discussion site, and it doesn't make much sense to have a statement on the main page setting out positions on the questions that people are going to discuss. It seems a bit too much like the judge opening a trial by saying whether he thinks the defendant is guilty.

Well perhaps you should have a go!

I was trying to make the connections - to demonstrate the various ψ phenomena as connected.

I can't remember just how skeptical you are, but of course an extreme skeptic sees ψ phenomena as a mass of disconnected phenomena that each require explaining away - which wouldn't make much of a front page!

David