Announcement: New Rules for the PF Philosophy forum beginning January 1, 2011

Evo

The rules are very clear, you seem to have formed your own interpretation of them. You forgot page two and the global guidelines. Creationism is a banned topic.

harrylin

I didn't understand that no suggestions about references to publications against creationism are allowed, sorry for that! However, that's irrelevant for that topic (and no problem to leave that word out) as well as for the discussion here about the New rules, so I'll leave that aside.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: According to New rule 1 a pertinent reference must be provided which the OP did not have, and neither did I have one that exactly fitted. However, New rule 2 provides an obvious and reasonable exception to New rule 1 (at least, that's how I interpret it):

2) If you do not have a reference, you may state your question in the form of "This is the topic I am investigating. Can you recommend resources?"

So I tried to apply New rule 2 and referred to it in my post, and I also tried to apply what was left of New rule 1: "focus the topic along the lines of a specific area of research or school of thought" by referring to literature about the scientific method.

Upon which Dave responded:
Please read the Philosophy rules before posting.
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=459350
1) When starting a new topic, you must reference a published philosopher or researcher who has worked on the topic. The idea is to focus the topic along the lines of a specific area of research or school of thought.

And you added:
"Dave is correct, this does not meet the guidelines."

Evidently there is an ambiguity about the application of New rule 2; I can't believe that New rule 2 is invalid because of New rule 1.

Note: It may well be that mentors think that comparing science and religion in general (even without value judgment) is a too sensitive issue for discussion on any of the forums, and that is of course up to their judgment. However, that's again another topic.

Ryan_m_b

I understand where you are coming from but I don't agree. If an OP doesn't have a single reference from which to build on then they haven't done their research properly. We do not exist as a pre-cursor to google, OPs are required to have done some research of their own first to outline the issue they wish to discuss. In the philosophy forum owing to the tighter rules (thanks to the propensity of people to see philosophy as a place where they can circumvent our rules on overly-speculative/personal theory/crackpot posts) this means that in addition to doing basic research an OP is expected to find and highlight academics for which this is an actual topic of discussion.

harrylin

I have no issue with that, although in this particular case I even linked to my reference to Popper about the scientific method, which is certainly relevant for the OP's question. My question here remains what that leaves for applying New rule 2. Or is New rule 2 dead? If so, please scrap or modify it so that I and others don't waste our and your time on dead rules!

Evo

You are not reading rule #2. It says This means that you can ask for links to books, websites, etc... on the philosophical topic, that's all, no discussion of the topic. It's extremely clear.

It evens give an example I have added a clarification that these are the three OPTIONS for how a thread can be started, incase that wasn't obvious. Hopefully that helps.

harrylin

That's clearer!

Not everyone understood that we have the option to apply rule 2 instead of rule 1; thanks for improving the text on that point.

However, I presented my post as a request for resources and just added a few general comments and background information. So I suppose that if a thread is started to request for resources then no comments are allowed at all, and if proper resources are found then a new thread must be started based on that resource, for discussion of that resource. Right?

So, what is still missing is the clarification that no comments are allowed at all - "that's strictly all" isn't clarified in the rule and is only obvious if it is already understood what is intended.