Category: Vridar

I would like anyone who has produced a blogpost or knows of a blogpost discussing what has happened to the Vridar blog to drop a comment and link, here, please. Also — any online discussions maybe.

I have left comments on a couple I chanced upon and would like to reestablish contact with those (and I do apologize — last few days have been a bit chaotic and I haven’t kept records to recall who I have visited recently). We’ve lost all our old blog links and subscriber lists as far as I can tell and need to reestablish these from scratch. I’d also like to offer personal thanks to any blogger who has commented on this fiasco and perhaps give an explanation on any blog that has been misinformed about the facts.

Cheers and many thanks,

Neil

Here’s one I came upon a few moments ago. I’m sure there are a couple more somewhere (including another I commented on recently) . . .

 

Related articles

• Reinstate Vridar

Here’s the other one I was trying to recall at the time I wrote the above:

 

 

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/joel-watts-neil-godfrey-censorship-and-dishonesty/

and another:

http://irrco.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/dmca-censorship-and-the-wattsgodfrey-debacle/

 

Also Pithom’s —

 

 

http://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/the-prayer-of-monsieur-twats/

 

Well, we’re alive again.  Did I miss anything while we were dead?

“Waaaah!  They stole my content!”

Here’s the short version of what happened. In one of Neil’s blog posts, he copied the content from one of Joel “Takedown” Watts’ posts, not to steal content (heaven forbid), but to prove that Joel had merely scraped Google for links related to “the science of history.”

Joel took issue with it and claims he sent Neil an email. Perhaps he did. Neil still can’t find any evidence of it, not even in his spam pile. Joel then complained to WordPress.com, and demanded that the post containing his stolen property be taken down.

As far as we can tell, what happened next is that the WordPress guys put that post on private, but neglected to tell us why. Yesterday, Neil asked if I’d changed a post’s status to “Private,” or if we were experiencing another WordPress glitch. I said I might have fat-fingered something.  I had been setting some posts I was working on from Draft to Private, because I was worried I might accidentally publish them.

“Nice blog ya got here. It’d be a shame if sumpin’ was tuh happen to it.”

So Neil, unaware of the storm brewing on the horizon, set the post back to Public. At that point, it appears WordPress interpreted our behavior as evidence that we were flouting the rules and ignoring the DMCA takedown order. Please note that neither Neil nor I received any warnings from WordPress about the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Continue reading “Rising from the Ashes”

WordPress have collated and forwarded me these stats for the past year:

450,000 views in 2012. This was up from 280,000 in 2011. The shift began with posts on Paul-Louis Couchoud and responses to James McGrath’s vacuous efforts to “review” Earl Doherty’s Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, but a new plateau was established with posts on various responses to Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?, in particular Earl Doherty’s chapter by chapter reviews. These have been collated and edited into a new ebook.

Most popular posts:

• 1 10 characteristics of religious fundamentalism June 2007
• 2 The Twelve Disciples: their names, name-meanings, associations, etc  July 2008
• 3 Blind Bartimaeus: some meanings of the story surrounding his healing  February 2011
• 4 The origin and meaning of the Emmaus Road narrative in Luke  November 2007
• 5 Why Christianity spread so rapidly to become the main religion of the Roman empire  August 2010

The busiest day last year was April 27th when I posted Carrier versus Ehrman: Reflections — 2,618 views on that day.

Thanks everyone for commenting or just quietly lurking. Glad to be able to write posts others find of interest.

 

While catching up with other blogs I came across this comment in a post by Ian at Irreducable Complexity that jolted me. It was written by Sabio Lantz who has sometimes left a comment here:

He wrote here:

I actually enjoy Neil Godfrey’s writings sometimes — but it is usually beyond my pay grade – as is Ian’s stuff when he is not kind! But usually Ian is very kind and keeps stuff simple for us lay folks.

Ouch. That smarts a little because it’s true. When I started this blog I was always sure to keep my posts clear. I kept foremost in mind how I had to struggle when first reading esoteric terms like “Q” and “redaction criticism” and “oral tradition” and “intertextuality” and “Messianic Secret” etcetera etcetra to get my head around what the writers were talking about. Continue reading “Ouch! It’s True!”

Funny things sometimes happen browsing the web. In searching for what others were saying about a book highly recommended to me as a solid case for astrotheology (I found that the book makes no case at all — no, it’s not by any author I have reviewed on this blog before) I stumbled into a rather suspect discussion group whose moderators have made recent notorious appearances here. Along with some highly dubious titles they include some works that look like real gems:

Freedom of Speech

First of all, before anyone brings up the subject of human rights and freedom of speech, let me be clear:  We’re all for freedom of speech in the public square. But this isn’t the public square. It’s Neil’s blog. Since its inception Vridar has permitted open commenting — you don’t have to wait for approval, unless you’re on the list of spammers who get sent to the trash heap right away or on the roster of off-topic windbags, copypasta commandos, and attention-whores who have to pass muster first. We don’t intend to change the policy.

Neil and I like comments. We don’t want to write in a vacuum, and we certainly don’t want to set ourselves up as knowledge-transmitters like certain scholars who would much rather talk than listen. You certainly don’t have to agree with us. Is there anything more boring that talking to somebody who thinks exactly the same way you do?

So I think we’ve been really tolerant for the most part. Unfortunately, that leniency has often come back to bite us when certain people abuse the privilege. It’s a problem we’ve needed to address for some time. We need to get a handle on comments.

New Rules

Vridar is not my blog. I’m just a lazy roommate who sleeps on the couch, leaves his stuff lying around, and steals beer out of the fridge. So to earn my keep, Neil has asked me to start helping moderate comments. I said I’d be glad to, as long as we can agree on the rules.

1. All decisions are final. If your comment is denied, go publish it somewhere else.
2. No abusive language. We get to decide what’s abusive language. We’re not impartial judges.
3. No threats of any kind. No exceptions.
4. Your comment must be relevant to the current post. If you want to publish a tract on your favorite scholar, get your own blog. There’s a vast Internet out there.
5. If you can’t be interesting, at least be brief. If your comment is excessively long and and extremely dull, it will probably be denied. If your comment is really, really long and is not broken up into paragraphs, it will definitely be denied. Seriously, if you don’t have time for minimal proofreading, or if you’re too busy to break your wall of text into paragraphs, then we don’t have time to read it.
6. Do not repeat your points. If you feel very strongly about a particular subject, start your own blog. Squatters are not welcome.
7. Fairness is not an issue. If you think your comment was unfairly denied, you may be right. On the other hand, see rule 1.

We’ve already started the process. Neil and I began filtering comments yesterday. If yours aren’t showing up, or if they disappear suddenly, now you know why.