I am not sure how many members here were members of the Richard Dawkins Foundation forum before the decision was taken to change to the current format. The forum was seen as the largest atheist online community having tens of thousands members. When the new format was announced there were various complaints and a great deal of friction between the site admin, paid salaries by Dawkins and a large volunteer Moderators group who all gave of their time freely. The forum was locked various members and mods had their account wiped and in some cases thousands of very good posts were lost.
The first link is a good rundown of the happenings by one of the ex-moderators.
http://realityismyreligion.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/locked-entry-will-open-soon/
The webmaster and main administrator for the RDF site was/is known as Josh Tinomen, Dawkin’s latest book “The Greatest Show on Earth” was dedicated to Josh! As admin one of the functions Josh took care of was the online shop selling DVDs, t-shirts and other items to raise money for the Foundation. News emerged that Dawkins is now suing Josh as the result of his alleged fraud in the reporting of the income generated in the shop.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/10/22/31283.htm
On various sites on the web much is being made of this apparent deception and of course the morals of the atheists. Many of the woo mongers are taking full advantage.
What are your feelings on this whole story.
morals are morals and atheists are atheists; if we were to link xtian/muslim/jewish perpetrators of fraud etc to their religions we would be very busy for a long time! People are like goats and goats are are full of shit!
It appears that a fair number of the 80 odd thousand former members at the RDF forum have some comment to make on this story. The Ratskep forum has a thread on the story that has gone to 30 pages since 7 last night!! There are busy theads on JREF (James Randi)and Rationalia on the subject too.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news-politics/dawkins-sues-josh-timonen-t14455.html
It’s quite sad that things have come to this…
Not nice, specially since he was trusted, but people are people, and you get pedophile priests and atheists that commit fraud. Though the religious folk obviously will have a field day with this, its all much of a muchness in the state of humanity.
I was a member of the RDF forum - it was the first forum I joined. When the whole thing shut down I just moved on (and came here). It was a bummer because I lost many good contacts when they shut the forums down, and some awesome threads too.
The fraud allegations? I guess we are guilty of saying “Ha!” when a prominent Christian screws up, so now they can have their “Ha!” for one of us who screwed up.
lol
more InterWeb dramas
Took me two days to get up to speed on the Dawkinsnet debacle - how long will this one take? I bet a million people are screaming at Dawkins “Told ya so, ya daft whatchamacalit” >:D
Thanks for the headsup ingwe.
ETA: that thread is at 65 posts! zomg!
Steve, so was I. 
It all moved to ratskep and the same bunch can be found there, including the awesome Calilasseia.
The blue butterfly continues to amaze!!
That thread is now over 80 pages long with comment by PZ Myers amongst others.
Not only PZ, Josh himself registered and has a few posts 
Spend most of yesterday catching up with the drama - way way way better than 7 de Laan.
No good reason for atheists / fans of Richard Dawkins to have any firmer moral compass than anyone else…and although Xtians might think there is reason to have a more wobbly one, it is only necessary to point at the latest disgraced evangelical or outed Catholic paedophile to nail that one down.
So - sad, but no reason to take any personal umbrage at all.
The Dick v Josh trial will start within a few days, Saw today it’s only 18 days left. But as have been said “We told you so”. Wonder what this sewende laan will result in? 8) 8) 8)