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Can someone PLEASE delete my account. I have been trying every year when I get my birthday email from you. I have actively been sending PMs for over 2 weeks and no one is acknowleging my requests. I just want to be deleted. I haven't posted here in 2 or 3 years. Thank you.

That's part of signing up and visiting the website -- you agree that we store the information you give us. She is more than welcome to login and change every detail so that the account can no longer be associated with her. But it is unreasonable to suggest that I should honor every request to delete specific information about someone that they gave us on registration.

People who are registering second accounts to circumvent a ban, yes we extend the ban to the new account.

One thing that caught me by surprise was that the notification came to me via my gmail account rather than the internal message system.

I messed upo my blog. A Rose is A Rose appears twice in recent blog list, but clicks on both do not work. I tried to delete them but it didn't work. How do I get them off the site, and reload a correct version? Please help.

Hm. That's a bug in my code, not your fault; it looks like the system that puts recent blog posts on the front page didn't notice that your posts were deleted. I've removed them manually. Feel free to re-post. In the future, you shouldn't need to delete posts if there's something wrong with them; you can edit them or set their status back to "draft" to make them invisible again while you edit.

Possibly, but the consequences shouldn't be much more than the 30 post rule and even if it happens the moderators of those forums would just lock or delete the threads. No matter what policy change is made, there will be some negative repercussions, but at this point the problem has simply gotten too bad for inaction. The optimal solution may not be ideal, but that does not justify holding to a non-optimal solution.

I can merge this account with your old one, yes. Which username would you prefer to keep, Transdecimal or Daecon? Also, welcome back to SFN!

We can put you in touch with admin if you wanted access to your old account? They can let you know which email you used and potentially change it for you.

What's just worked for me is to highlight the text you want, right click and choose Copy then highlight it all (except quote tags), and delete it all including the bit you copied then paste in between the quote tags to put in the bit you saved.

I am having trouble making these functions work in the posting/reply editor here. Can we do these things here ( if so what I am doing wrong or what procedure should I be following ) ? I seem able to select/all but then I can't copy, cut (although paste seems OK) ? I have to use backspace or delete to get rid of unwanted content. any help much appreciated

The personal settings page merely lists all of your attachments on posts -- they are not separate. It doesn't make sense for you to delete a file from your settings but still have it attached to your posts. I'd like to increase the upload limit, but we currently are running out of disk space. I think we'll be upgrading to larger disks soon.

@SillyBilly You wanted an example of you making stuff up. You concoct motivations and conspiracies to account for the manner in which some members deal with you. I suspect you may actually believe those fabrications and it is therefore difficult for you to see them, but they are fabrications. 1. If ten people do this, it is because ten people believe you have been "guilty" of these actions and they object to them. There is no conspiracy involved, no group action, as implied by your use of the word "rally". 2. You say you may lack the time or competence to address questions. Really? If you lack the competence we might wonder why you were making assertions on a topic in the first place, but that aside - what would be so difficult about saying you don't know enough to answer the question. It would be the work of a moment. As to the lack of time - well, you have sufficient time to make six posts in this thread that have nothing to do with the thread, yet you cannot find the time to answer questions concerning earlier assertions you have made. To hijack your own words: "You do see a problem, don't you?" 3. This is a science forum. We deal with technicalities. If you find yourself "snowed" by any of them you need only ask and one or more members will be happy to explain. Continuing to argue a point that is contradicted by the evidence will not be viewed positively. Do you think it should be? 4. If you make commonplace and obvious logical fallacies then why should you expect other than a "predictable and formulaic" response. It would be a bizarre and subtle logical fallacy that would merit an unexpected and original response. On a separate point, you accused me in an earlier post of having insulted you. I have not done so. Trust me on this one, if I choose to insult you at some point in the future you will be in no doubt that it has occurred. I may have offended you, however that is often the consequence of writing unpleasant truths.

So far, I've restricted members to having signatures only after 10 posts. Particularly devious spammers would make a completely innocuous post, wait a couple weeks, and then add links to their signature, so that nobody would notice the links and they could sit for months. I've also restricted the number of PMs sent by new members, since some spammers just PMed spam to everyone. It's also possible to do a flood limit and limit them to a certain number of posts per day; that would slow down the ones that want to make as many spam posts as possible, but it's not particularly helpful as we can delete all of the posts with one "Flag As Spammer" button. I could, hypothetically, ban new members from using links altogether, although that would be trickier, and would be very inconvenient for the non-spammer members. Looks like this only applies to members with less than thirty posts. I'm not sure that's intentional.

Suppose an atheist goes to a church and, in the middle of the sermon, starts shouting loudly that the God the parishioners worship is a fraud. Or suppose a fundamentalist goes to a meeting of some atheist organization and starts shouting loudly that the members will burn in Hell. Neither has any right to freedom of speech in those venues. The only expectation either one should have is that they will be tossed, maybe vigorously, that they may be arrested for disturbing the peace, and that they may be sued for harassment. Your right to freedom of speech ends at the moment you leave the public sidewalk. Once you enter private property you have no such rights. Even on the public sidewalk your rights are not absolute. If you make a lot of noise at 1AM in a neighborhood you can be arrested for disturbing the peace. If you and a whole bunch of people get together to hold some protest at 1PM but do not obtain the necessary permit the whole lot of you can be arrested for disturbing the peace. What the government cannot do is refuse to grant you the necessary permit because they don't like what they think you will be saying. The owners, administrators, and moderators of an internet forum focused on science face a dilemma: Do they take an open or closed stance regarding fringe/nonstandard/completely whacked science? Both sides of the dilemma have advantages and disadvantages. The closed stand risks missing the boat on what truly is a major scientific breakthrough but has a much greater chance of having real discussions of science. The open stance risks having all energy going into arguing over nonsense, with no real discussion of science, but allows the possibility of a major breakthrough being discussed at their site. Freedom of speech, or lack thereof, is not an issue. Almost all sites quickly and quietly delete posts that tell people where to buy knockoff designer handbags or pills that can enhance your virility. Regarding the deletion of posts: I would prefer it if there was a whole lot more deletion of nonsense posts and banning of crackpots at this site. Almost all energy at this site goes into arguing over nonsense, leaving very little room for real discussion of science. However, since I am not the owner of this site, my desires for stronger moderation are not satisfied here. To see my desires realized, I would need to either start my own forum or go to another that better suits me. I do the latter. My posting rate is considerably lower at this site than it is elsewhere.

"you could make a private contract with someone to be your slave, but if you tried to enforce that contract in the courts of almost any jurisdiction, the contract together with all its obligations and penalties for breach, would be declared a nullity. " The only way to try to enforce that contract would be by threat of violence or some such. That threat would be unlawful anyway. The contract would not be void because it contravenes the HR act, but because it would be impossible to enforce. Any attempt at legal redress (like suing them for breach of contract) would fall flat because it is a breach of the contracts act (which requires contracts to be "reasonable"). The contract here on this forum is different. It's perfectly simple for the owner of the website to block someone and delete their postings if he wishes to do so. Most jurisdictions would permit me to eject someone from my house for saying something I didn't like. In the same way, they would let me throw you off my website if I didn't like what you said.

Hi Michel, My Computer was off for the last 6 hours but I had failed to log out, so it must have shown that I was online. I thought that we were in good terms and I note that you were the only one who gave me recently two praises but the effect on my overall score was lost as I again got some more neg voting. From my side you got more than 7 to 9 up voting in the last few days and perhaps you did not note that. Though these voting must be strictly done on merit I have realized that no one is doing that here and simply give praises to whom they like and down vote whom they dislike. Apart from you I also gave up voting to many and as I suggested that this can be transparent I did try and inform the recipients of my praise. Many of them have recently even got more than 5 praises individually. For those who have already a high score this hardly matters. Honestly I did think that I can bury this issue as suggested by imatfaal but your post has triggered this response so that I can give an account of what's happening. My score overall has never been worse than what it is with minor fluctuations. Ever since it started sliding down from -9 I have been upset and always thought that it is a matter of time before it becomes normal again. Frankly I could not concentrate on real science , Maths etc as I tried in my initial months here and I am unable to digest this hatred being shown here. Imagine someone telling me that he will give me 3 Neg Votes etc. If I am mean minded I can go after his 3500 score by down 3 every day. I have given over 100 praises perhaps [may be more] since I joined here but only 20 or less Negative voting. I have a fairly good idea who have tried to be mean with me. I am now reverting back to my Policy of giving No Praises and No Negative Voting to anyone whatsoever and let me see whether I'll be able to regain my equanimity !

You can't kill cool smiley...He's too cool...In all seriousness does anyone ever even use it? If not I guess it should be removed... <-Your should probably delete that one too...

If a moderater could delete this thread that would be great. No need for it anymore. Thanks Cap'n Refsmmat for your help.

I do think these things count. I just disagree that this is the proper resolution to the issue. Editing a member's post for inaccuracy is, IMO, a huge deal. Moderators are simply not empowered to do this — we have a moderation policy, and it is centered on rules violations — those are the only threads we edit, and then it is to delete passages that violate rules (e.g. advertising links, smut, flaming) As the message forufes received has conveyed, simply being wrong is not something that is against the rules. Going in and changing what someone said has its own ethical considerations, because it's not what the person said. I'm not going to fix what forufes said a few posts back, "95% of earth and life scientists in the USA accept evolution," which is wrong. That was never posted, nor is it what was said in the links. But it's not my place (or that of anyone on staff) to edit it. It's what forufes said. I can call it out as an error, if I choose to. Since the thread was locked, another solution has to be available. And it is. As long as you are not restarting a thread to circumvent the closure (i.e. as long as the locking was not due to thread degeneration), start up a discussion thread on the topic. In this case, a thread on the accuracy of the number, posted in the appropriate forum. That's has sort of happened here, amongst other topics in question, except that it happened in suggestions, and was part of a reported post.

That's the email generated by the "send email" form on a user's profile; it means they opted to email you through that form rather than sending a private message. I'm not sure what could cause a conversation to be deleted. I am not aware of anyone deleting private messages recently; the last messages deleted were a mass spammer when we were still using vBulletin. Now, I'm not yet familiar enough with IPB's system to know how conversations could be deleted; I don't know if the other party could possibly delete the conversation. Regarding email addresses: Email addresses are visible to all moderation staff. The software makes profile information visible to moderators so they can remove objectionable content. However, as per our privacy policy, we do not reveal email addresses or share them with anyone. The only staff who can read PMs are those with direct access to the server to make software changes -- that would be the administrators only. The forum software itself gives no provisions for reading PMs unless they are reported by a member. Now, I did recently receive an e-mail from a member who had been experiencing troubles with the PM system after spending an hour composing a message -- the system logged him out before he could send the message. Perhaps something similar happened with the person you're conversing with and they used the email form instead. Again, I'm sorry your messages seem to have vanished. I don't believe any of our staff deleted the messages. Perhaps you could check to see if the other participant can still view them; if so, there may be some software glitch that I need to take care of.

As per our privacy policy (under section 6), we do not read PMs unless we have reason to believe someone has violated the rules. We also do not delete messages unless they are known to be advertising. When you say "forwarded as email," do you mean that the system sent you the message as an email, or that the member you were communicating with was forced to send the message as an email? If there's a problem where messages are unexpectedly deleted, give me as many details as you can and I will investigate to determine if there's a problem.

! Moderator Note Unless this is not your first account with us, your statement that we have deleted a previous thread of yours on this topic is quite incorrect. I have once closed a thread of yours, though as best as I can tell, it is unrelated to this one. Furthermore, you were given adequate room in that thread to flesh out your hypotheses. You didn't and it was shut down as a result. The same will happen to this one if you follow the same path. Do not respond to this note within the thread. Edit. I went and reread your previously closed thread to check I hadn't missed something and I now retract my comment that the two are unrelated. You were not permitted to reopen the topic of conversation and as such, this thread is closed.

Why? Are you planning on breaking the rules? Pioneer was banned for creating a sockpuppet account, which is against the rules.

swansont; I don't think you realize how many people have an interest/passion in science, especially now that baby boomers are retiring. During the 40's thru the 60's and to some degree on to this day, many folks read science articles, without much time or the means to follow up for additional information. We and I do mean myself as one, after retirement and the advent of the Internet, renewed our interest, at the level of these accumulated references from the past. Popular Science, other publications and Science sections in newspapers/magazines were and probably still were/are, well read by us, engaged in other fields. In turn these people as I did years ago, will google one of these allusive science issue, Astronomy, Biology, Physics or others and find information available with specification unknown to their generations, read or now can listen to specific viewpoints, with the ability to ask questions or reply with their own viewpoint. Television Documentaries are also popular, run and rerun many times, but for the most part are a one way media and as you know, are not always accurate. To my point; Many of us, older people or today's students, not familiar with today's science method or this unquestionable acceptance of current understandings (really new to us, we distinguished between science law and theory), will read through a forum, many times getting shut down on our first time posting in science or never bother posting, but have a history in other sub-forums, most Science Forums now offer. To carry over that 'Science Method' for acceptance to some social issue, Historic Event or Philosophic/Religious other two-sided issues, is being disingenuous to the poster or potential poster, in my opinion. I don't mean to pop your bubble, but most people knee deep in science, science issues or a science career are NOT going to come here, to learn something. There are just too many other places they can go, if they have that much time, in the first place. If you can ban, censor, delete posters in Science, which does happen from their first post (Megabrain, a reputable English moderator and former NASA advisor, from another Science Forum, thread was dropped to speculation and quit), then you can certainly punish or ban a member on their first or second post on any sub-forum. To the thread; The simple fact Administration, would ask questions of their active membership is a plus, or the continuous replies to members questions. More often than not, most forums Science/Political or what have you, will simply maintain their original model, hoping for the best...Oh, and I don't have any complaints on the quality of moderation either. If you continue to have 'percieved problems' in Politics or some sub-forum, I don't think you do, you might consider picking a single moderator for that or any non-science sub forum. Pangloss, seems to get along with everone there, as does ParanoiA and Mr. Skeptic or bascule, seem to be well liked, from both sides.