R.I.P. Skeptiko forum

I remember the Mind-Energy forums and was active there back then, but not as active as David and a number of vocal skeptics, some of whom also post on this forum from time to time. Back then, there were a large number of active posters. I wonder what has changed.

I think in the early days of Skeptiko I saw it as a vast repository of discussions - many of them quite involved - that would make a permanent record of ideas and links to experiments.

There was then a time when Skeptiko nearly got overwhelmed by jokers of various sorts. It was clear that Alex was not moderating the forum vigorously enough to stop this onslaught, and I offered to help. Doug was active on Skeptiko as Trancestate , and we worked together to try to get the problem under control. Doug produced a huge list of sleeper members, who had joined but never posted and which had links to irrelevant material in their personal information. I remember deleting over 100 such 'users' in a process that took hours because of the way the moderation part of the website worked.

Doug put a lot of effort into saving Skeptiko, even as he was dying of cancer. We were good internet friends, and he agreed to try to contact me after he passed. Unfortunately he never managed to do that - I think my mind is somewhat dense in that respect.

As time went on, Alex's decisions became quite arbitrary, and he was unwilling to discuss them. One of the most extreme - and pointless - changes was to block off most of the subject sections so that they were locked to further development.

Skeptiko had always mixed psi topics with politics. At the time I thought that made sense - because the two are probably very linked - but I later became convinced that excluding politics - as happens here - was the better approach.

The final straw for me was that Michael Larkin and a few others introduced the topic questioning whether the evidence for certain viruses was sound. This seemed to me to be an interesting topic, but Alex was utterly opposed to people discussing this idea. He didn't seem to have good control of the website, and people were blocked in a rather weird way - myself included. I just left Skeptiko at that point.

David

Vintage Alex.  No notice.  No expression of any gratitude or appreciation for the contributions, time, and energy from those who frequented those forums.

Consistent with his approach to shutting down most of the forum years ago (spawning our community here; at least one good thing).

I don't leave my time with him holding a favorable view; at least of his (what seems to me to be) lack of common courtesy.  He always made it clear it was HIS show and HIS journey.  That always struck me as overly self-centered and ego-centric.  Certainly not how I would have handled things.

All that said his journey had sunk into a conspiracy laden nightmare and really wasn't that interesting other than via a "grab some popcorn and watch the slow moving wreck" kinda way.  His most recent interest in the AI space seemed potentially promising; I'll grant that.

I don't leave my time with him holding a favorable view; at least of his (what seems to me to be) lack of common courtesy.  He always made it clear it was HIS show and HIS journey.  That always struck me as overly self-centered and ego-centric.  Certainly not how I would have handled things.

And when conducting interviews, HIS opinions were undeniable and anybody who disagreed with him was being stupid or dishonest.

Vintage Alex.  No notice.  No expression of any gratitude or appreciation for the contributions, time, and energy from those who frequented those forums.

Consistent with his approach to shutting down most of the forum years ago (spawning our community here; at least one good thing).

I don't leave my time with him holding a favorable view; at least of his (what seems to me to be) lack of common courtesy.  He always made it clear it was HIS show and HIS journey.  That always struck me as overly self-centered and ego-centric.  Certainly not how I would have handled things.

All that said his journey had sunk into a conspiracy laden nightmare and really wasn't that interesting other than via a "grab some popcorn and watch the slow moving wreck" kinda way.  His most recent interest in the AI space seemed potentially promising; I'll grant that.

A shame because the discussions provided value, especially earlier on, as I found out recently trying to find something on there, it was gone!

I mean wasn't Alex an entrepreneur or something? That would explain his single mindedness! I can relate to it tbh, especially as one gets older, the less you care about what others think, but yeah, it is annoying. Oh well, long live psiencequest!

[Laird]

A shame because the discussions provided value, especially earlier on, as I found out recently trying to find something on there, it was gone!

There was a recent(ish) thread Making a copy of the old Skeptiko forums available online in which we discussed the idea of republishing the contents of the Skeptiko forums that I scraped back in 2017 when Alex first started deleting/closing forums.

It seems that that discussion now has more relevance.

I remain wary of publicly republishing their contents, but I'd be happy to privately supply you with a copy so you can find what you were looking for, as I did for Wanderer.

Thanks laird, I may take you up on that one day!

Doug put a lot of effort into saving Skeptiko, even as he was dying of cancer.

Nice to hear about Doug again.

Regarding the forums - unfortunate to have them completely disappear but not a surprise.

There was a recent(ish) thread Making a copy of the old Skeptiko forums available online in which we discussed the idea of republishing the contents of the Skeptiko forums that I scraped back in 2017 when Alex first started deleting/closing forums.

It seems that that discussion now has more relevance.

I remain wary of publicly republishing their contents, but I'd be happy to privately supply you with a copy so you can find what you were looking for, as I did for Wanderer.

Is it assembled into a structure of HTML that can be searched much as the original was?

David

There was a recent(ish) thread Making a copy of the old Skeptiko forums available online in which we discussed the idea of republishing the contents of the Skeptiko forums that I scraped back in 2017 when Alex first started deleting/closing forums.

It seems that that discussion now has more relevance.

I remain wary of publicly republishing their contents, but I'd be happy to privately supply you with a copy so you can find what you were looking for, as I did for Wanderer.

Is it assembled into a structure of HTML that can be searched much as the original was?

David

[Laird]

Is it assembled into a structure of HTML that can be searched much as the original was?

It wasn't at first - it was in JSON format - but I wrote a little script to generate HTML out of it at Wanderer's request.