swansont

Rich_A12 is banned for repeatedly violating the rules by neither supporting nor addressing objections to his speculations (soapboxing) and for sending an inappropriately-worded, abusive PM.

Anders Hoveland has been suspended one week for repeated racist comments and plagiarism/copyright violations.

questionposter has been suspended three days for using a sockpuppet account to give himself reputation, and for creating the new account to mask the negative reputation accrued as the previous user. The original account (steevey) has been banned.

! Moderator Note You can ask questions or hypothesize and answer, but you can't do both. Mainstream science is what's discussed in the science sections. Speculative material belongs in Speculations.

Temporocitor has been banned in response to the challenge "Ban me if you like" which garnered a sufficient number of "likes". And for a series of wholly inappropriate remarks which have been deleted.

Green Xenon is suspended for a week for repeated and persistent preaching/soapboxing

rajaksrna has been banned for continued trolling/soapboxing, after repeated warnings and a suspension.

El FiriFiri has been banned as a sockpuppet of Victor Elias Espinoza G., banned for posting the same claptrap over and over, after thread closures (the ban was not logged at the time)

And using sockpuppet accounts to evade a suspension or ban is a banning offense, so Greg Boyles is permanently banned as well.

njaohnt suspended for a week for repeated soapboxing/preaching and thread hijacking

muscledmice and PTerm banned as sockpuppets of Supermario

IronMan79 has been banned for returning from suspension and engaging in the exact same spammy, soapboxy behavior that led to the suspension in the first place.

John7362 has been suspended for divine trolling.

IronMan79 has been suspended for a week for soapboxing and advertising — quoting himself from other sites, with links, and not engaging in actual discussion.

And Queen of Wands has been suspended for 7 days for multiple rules violations, which can be summed up as trolling and plagiarism. ————— homie12 has been suspended for a week for continued refusal to present evidence in speculations threads and for plagiarism.

Dovada has been banned for the same behavior that got him suspended twice. Enough is enough. 999 has been banned as a sockpuppet.

G Anthony has been banned for continuing to hijack threads, not having learned from his suspensions that this is not acceptable.

GodsMouthpiece has been banned as a sockpuppet of crownedconquern

Greg Boyles has been suspended for continually evading his exile from the politics section by bringing up political topics elsewhere and engaging in the same tactics that got him tossed from that forum.

msbiljanica has been spam-banned* as a sockpuppet of bob boben. (*You won't find the body)

Dovada has been suspended for continuing to hijack threads, and with subject matter from threads that have been closed.

It's human nature to categorize people, and if you're introducing a new subject for discussion — some new, possibly untested idea that is not part of the standard curriculum of science — you don't want to be classified as a crackpot. Here is some the behavior you must avoid. 1. Vocabulary Crackpots misuse terminology, especially terms like theory, or dogma. You don't want to be the one who proclaims "it's only a theory" or "you're being dogmatic" and make it clear you don't know the definitions of the words. Unless your posts actually get redacted, don't claim "censorship," either, unless you want peoples' irony meters to explode. You also don't want to get caught making up new jargon, especially not terms you've named after yourself. 2. Background knowledge Crackpots generally have little grasp of the theories they are critiquing and/or are unaware of the breadth and depth of experimental knowledge that exists (which often leads to the building of straw man arguments). Few things will get you dismissed faster than stating a claim that is trivially found to be false. Nobody will take the guy who proposes that the moon is made of cheese seriously. 3. You need Evidence Crackpots generally don't understand what is acceptable as evidence and often make assertions which they treat as facts. In a science discussion, evidence means scientifically-obtained data rather than anecdotes or assertions. And evidence is king. The only way to test your idea is to compare it to nature; it doesn't matter how logical it is to anyone — if it disagrees with actual experiment it's not correct. 4. Smoke and mirrors are no substitute for evidence Crackpots will often try and sidestep the question of evidence either by appealing to some conspiracy or engaging in personal attacks. Any excuse to follow up on a comment that leads away from the demand for evidence will be seized upon. Even the demand for evidence will often be viewed as a personal attack. Worse than this is when they go on the offensive and claim science is a religion, often coupled with the vocabulary issue mentioned above (dogma). 5. Don't act like you are the smartest person in the room You aren't going to dazzle the audience with your brilliance. If people can't understand what you are talking about, they aren't going to simply accept it as true. If you avoid the tough questions, or your response is to simply repeat your points, people will notice that you are dodging. Don't compare yourself to Galileo or Einstein. While it's possible that you are smarter than any single member of the audience, it's unlikely that you are smarter than all of the audience put together. 6. Speak the language One of the most common attributes of a crackpot is the unwillingness to express things mathematically. If you can't do the math, you are attacking the problem with an exceedingly dull instrument. Math is precise and has a very high information density — it is very powerful. Descriptive language is a poor substitute. At the other end of the spectrum is the numerologist, who works with a lot of numbers but doesn't connect them to reality in any scientifically meaningful way; there is no link to any mechanism or scientific model.

G Anthony has been suspended for two weeks (second suspension) for continuing to post off-topic speculation outside of the threads he has already opened.

cyclops banned for continuing to troll just as before the suspension, and abusing the PM system

Steve Christopher banned for being a troll (multiple violations of rules 1 and 8)