Split: Comparing SFJN to other sites: Biased or not?

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GStone
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Post by GStone » Sat Sep 30, 2006 5:30 pm

It reminds how often you'll get very simplified rebuttles by the rabid pro-wars contingent, as they dog pile on you, swarming when a few of the pro-trek people (rabid or not) are arguing with the rabid wars people. Though, they did lessen that a lot during most of Strek-v-swars.com's existence, since the majority of the people debating regularly there were pro-trek, however that wasn't the case early on in its existence or during the time of the first st-v-sw.com forum.

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Mon Oct 02, 2006 2:31 am

This harkens back to Kane's recommendation to email Wong.

<http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=98295>

This thread from SDN serves no perpose other than to make fun of the poor guy who emailed Wong and to try and make pro-Trek debaters out to be idiots. I seriously doubt that Wong's quote is accurate based exclusively on the lack of Trek knowledge. This is as good of a strawman fallacy example as I've seen. Also, note how he generally compares Trek debaters with Creationists and says everyone with any intelligence considers the debate dead. Sorry Wong, we're not the ones with the holy and infallible book we nearly exclusively make reference to.

Right Kane I'm going to email Mike Wong after some shit like this. I don't trust him to a) listen to what I have to say or actually consider any of the evidence I might present, or b) to properly represent my arguments.

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Post by GStone » Mon Oct 02, 2006 3:59 pm

I had emailed him at one point (long before I got into the debate itself), giving counterclaims to stuff he made on his site, like the lesser importance of biologically created stuff, such as weapons and ships, over machined items of the same nature (where he was poking fun at the "brain bug" of organic technology) and a couple other things about biology and the like and I never got a response. But, I had never ever expected a response, especially one based on biology. Even when you exclude the fact that he probably doesn't have a whole lot of time (assuming the size of his family is what has been reported by him), the only emails he puts on the board and on his website are the ones that are more easily spun.

If we go by what he has apparently shown for a knowledge of biology (excluding his apparent need to point to credentials and his lack of bio credentials, which he thinks would be needed to talk of potentials about biology, like he feels is necessary for other subjects, like physics-- or he'd be using a double standard), he doesn't know crap about biology, not enough to be able to spin bio-facts.

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Mon Oct 02, 2006 8:16 pm

So he's smart enough not to try and make someone out to be an idiot when they could whoop his ass at a debate on the subject in question. And he does use double standards often, but most people already know that ;)

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Post by GStone » Mon Oct 02, 2006 8:58 pm

The most he ever does are general ideas of "evolution takes years, jackass", "creationism isn't science" and "there's a reason why people use metal and tools; living stuff is soft and squishy, turd."

Nothing about organisms that live in extreme environments on Earth, nothing about self-repair (not everything heals at the same rate) to save on resources, nothing about potential self-generating energy to save resources (you'd just need raw materials (even the waste could be reused and recyled with a type of organic fission/fusion processess or something else, like animals that eat only blood-- their base componenets are broken off until it is in a form that can be used; the rest of the materials could react chemically to do other things for the system, like making new, temporary bonds that the tissue can use; take a wild guess, chances are you'll hit on something that could be done, if you can control base pair sequences of DNA, creating more and more complex systems [even creating artificial materials by growing them from cell division and controlling that division somehow] ). Organic tech can be extremely complex. Not a thing about how Transfiguration could be looked at as an increase of the conscious control of energies that make up the species' bodies; we never got a full account of just what the "baseline" state is and how it differs from the new ones.

I can go on and on, but I'll stop for now.

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Post by Nonamer » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:06 pm

His replies to emails are generally meaningless. I've never seen him reply to anything resembling a meaningful discussion. It's always bashing the dumber ones.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:19 pm

Speaking of bashing, let's move on. I think any other reader will have by now read quite enough complaint about what - if anything - comes out of writing to Wong.

To shift the topic over to SB.com more than SDN...
Enterprise E wrote:Yeah, I remember at SB one time where a Trekkie really didn't know what he was talking about, so I and a couple others, I don't know if was one of them helped out, putting this guys argument into coherence and adding some supporting evidence. Alyeska gave me and the others who tried to help this guy, and stick up for my helping him, a warning despite the fact that we did so politely and we politely asked why were not allowed to help him. If anything sums up the biased nature of Spacebattles, that was it and I think that they came out looking worse than we did.
Can we explore this a little more? I think developing this line of discussion may be more useful both to us here, and also useful to a number of individuals currently active at SB.com. Exactly what is up with the moderation at SB.com?

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Post by Nonamer » Tue Oct 03, 2006 12:19 am

Alyeska is also a mod at SDN, and is well known for his absurd biases at the vs. forum. Along with the rule that say "ICS = truth," there's little more to be said other than that they've made all XvsSW debates retarded and meaningless.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:04 am

Nonamer wrote:Alyeska is also a mod at SDN, and is well known for his absurd biases at the vs. forum. Along with the rule that say "ICS = truth," there's little more to be said other than that they've made all XvsSW debates retarded and meaningless.
There's an actual rule saying the ICS is by definition truth? Or is this just the current moderators' interpretation of a pre-existing rule?

And - I realize you may not have been keeping count, but I must ask - how many people have been banned to enforce the rule that the ICS is and must always be true?

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Post by Socar » Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:19 am

Nonamer wrote:Alyeska is also a mod at SDN, and is well known for his absurd biases at the vs. forum. Along with the rule that say "ICS = truth," there's little more to be said other than that they've made all XvsSW debates retarded and meaningless.
Alyeska is a mod of the "Pure-Star Trek" forum (though lately he hasn't been active much there). He does even less in the vs debate forum.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:There's an actual rule saying the ICS is by definition truth? Or is this just the current moderators' interpretation of a pre-existing rule?
I'm not aware of any specific "rule", but according to their canon policy, the ICS is canon, and since most of them feel that it is not contradicted by the movies, they therefore -do- pretty much expect it as truth.

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Post by Nonamer » Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:33 am

Jedi Master Spock wrote:
Nonamer wrote:Alyeska is also a mod at SDN, and is well known for his absurd biases at the vs. forum. Along with the rule that say "ICS = truth," there's little more to be said other than that they've made all XvsSW debates retarded and meaningless.
There's an actual rule saying the ICS is by definition truth? Or is this just the current moderators' interpretation of a pre-existing rule?
It's kinda both, as they wrote the rule themselves.
And - I realize you may not have been keeping count, but I must ask - how many people have been banned to enforce the rule that the ICS is and must always be true?
I've been banned once or twice for violating that. I also know quite a few people who were either banned or came close to it (warned at least). I known the following people at least have serious beef with it: Truthteller, Sharp Thorn, Mith, grdja, Sendell, Plushie, Kerrus, Bear_lover, Thanatos, and white_rabbit. And there's always the random new guy too.

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Post by watchdog » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:02 am

What can one say about Mr.Wong that has not already been said. Me personally, I owe a debt of gratitude to both Wong and Poe. I was once one of the more delusional Trekkies who thought the Emipre could never stand a chance against the Enterprise (any Enterprise). While I dont compleatly agree with the ideas behind the asteroid destruction scene that is apparently the backbone of their entire argument, their ideas did wake me up to the fact that there was more to the debate than I had previously given credit to.
I have debated Mike Wong by e-mail myself and he was always pretty nice, no name calling and no flaming. I had brought up the fact that there are scenes in some of the wars comics that show a mass of torpedos could knock out the shields of imperial ships when used just right. To my surprise he claimed that the incidents were non-canon because the x-wing stories were based off of a video game and that it was contradicted by on-screen evidence (fighters attacking trade fed ship in TPM), I point out that those were random torpedo strikes fired at random parts of the hull and my evidence shows 7 or more torps (his showed 4) all focused at one point of the hull impacting at the same time. I never gave up on that point and he eventually stopped responding to me, that same month it appears he got the last word on his naval combat comparison page (no knowledge of naval history) where he insists that fighters can't possibly harm cap ships. That wasnt even the argument I was trying to make, I was focused on the torpedo strikes and what effect massing them in a focused attack had.
I joined SB.com shortly after that (user name is watchdog there as well). I participated in quite a few debates and I still lurk around there sometimes to see what threads are posted. I dont post much there any more because my interest was trek vs wars, after the ICS came out there were the usual debates about the info within leading ultimately to many there simply deciding to capitulate to the book. After that many of the old debates dried up making way for debates about sci-fi that I'm either unfamiliar with or have no interest in (I still dont know what the Culture is). It is funny though, last spring I started to post chapters from my (still) unfinished fan-fic 'When Empires Collide' which has the Empire allying with the Romulans and mixing and sharing tech, while Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie and Lando are sent to find out what the imps are up to they wind up teaming with Captain....Kirk, I actually had someone comment that they hoped I wasnt going to have the Empire pull a 'star destroyer rampant' on them. The pro-wars side was so prevalent in their minds they thought that I would do something like that, will never happen because I dont believe half of what Mr. Wong has claimed on his site.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:33 pm

I had brought up the fact that there are scenes in some of the wars comics that show a mass of torpedos could knock out the shields of imperial ships when used just right. To my surprise he claimed that the incidents were non-canon because the x-wing stories were based off of a video game and that it was contradicted by on-screen evidence (fighters attacking trade fed ship in TPM), I point out that those were random torpedo strikes fired at random parts of the hull and my evidence shows 7 or more torps (his showed 4) all focused at one point of the hull impacting at the same time. I never gave up on that point and he eventually stopped responding to me, that same month it appears he got the last word on his naval combat comparison page (no knowledge of naval history) where he insists that fighters can't possibly harm cap ships. That wasnt even the argument I was trying to make, I was focused on the torpedo strikes and what effect massing them in a focused attack had.
Funny how he decided that this info would be non canon, just because he says so, while he should have actually tried to rationalize this, like most EUphiles are happy to chant.
You know, the "don't ditch it, fix it" motto.
He compares two different ships, built by two different industries (in the EU), and claim that if one system works on ship A, it has to work on ship B.
That's brillant. I guess he never heard anything about design flaw.

That is again a good demonstration of his very biased ways.

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Post by Praeothmin » Sat Jan 20, 2007 5:35 pm

There's one thing to be said in favor of Mike Wong though:
His arguments are well-presented, well thought-out, and many of them make sense.
I don't agree with many of his conclusions, and what I dislike the most is the fact that he accepts many things from SW at face value (lightsabres work, and he never questions that), but will trash anything from ST which he believes cannot exist because they are not scientifically plausible (in today's world at least).
He functions a lot with double standards, and while he always uses the highest firepower exemples for SW, he will always use the lowest ones for ST when comparing the two.
He is, for all intents and pusposes, clearly heavily biased on the Wars side.
But as far as badmouthing opponents, as far as I could tell the last time I went to visit SDN, he was far from the ost aggressive or insulting debater there.

But I found that much of the same can be said of G2K (or 2046 as he is known here)on the Trek side.
His arguments are well thought-out, well written, but he sometimes assumes the highest results when what we are show would not necessarily warrent it.
Although he is a lot fairer to SW then SDN is to Trek, you can clearly see his Trek bias in his arguments.

The versus dabate has always, as far as I can tell, revolved around what the other side is willing to accept.
No matter how well, and how clear to everybody else on how much this piece of tech is superior to that piece of tech, there will always be diehard fans of that piece of tech that will believe it is ultimate, and will alwasy refuse to believe any evidence to the contrary.
This is how rabid Trekkies and Warsies behave.

This i why Ilike sites like this one, where even when you alsolutely isagre with the opposition, you still never yell at them, or fling insults their way.
Quite the opposite of SDN or SB.com.

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Post by GStone » Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:24 am

He'll then pepper his arguments with gems like this apparent stab at liking live singing competitions, so he can rant about humanity in general:

"American Idol is the number one rated TV show. Why should anyone be surprised at any amount of stupidity they encounter in a sci-fi argument? The general population is full of idiots. Accept this."

Most people do suck, but regularly complaining about it is childish. 100 bucks says he can't sing either and just really wants to.

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