It’s good to finally have clarity on what we’re doing here at FreethoughtBlogs.
Freethought Blogs does not have a mission statement. It will never have a mission statement.
It’s pure raging chaos here! Yay!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
That’s probably a good thing, given the amount of raging stupid, bigotry, sexism and privilege which has been leaking out of many an FTB blog recently.
My bad.
I coulda sworn the MS was supposed to be “John Loftus is the most awesomest blogger of all time. OF. ALL. TIME!”
Finally the controversy can abate, the mission link has been found.
You’re only saying that to punish Loftus for acting like a dolt.
… a pure raging chaos of groupthinking sycophants in an echo chamber of deep rifts.
Title: “we have a Mission Statement”
Quote: “Freethought Blogs does not have a mission statement. It will never have a mission statement.”
The title is therefore a blatant lie.
Indeed, and also tribalism, mob justice, and hypocrisy!
There is nothing inherently wrong with tribalism. Just watch the GAC 2012 panel discussion, “The Road Less Travelled”, with PZ. You’ll see.
a pure raging chaos of groupthinking sycophants in an echo chamber of deep rifts.
I haven’t had coffee yet, so I don’t know if this actually makes sense, but I like the way it sounds.
FWIW,
THIS is how I would summarize my view of FtB
Gone.
much better than litter bin.
“Dispatches from the Culture Wars” just posted two hours ago that there wasn’t a mission statement, and now here’s yet another article on the absense of a mission statement.
This site has turned into one big echo chamber. This is why I never read it.
That’s one lousy trollbait when they can’t write even two sentences without them conflicting.
You are aware of the corollary to Poe’s law? “If parody is indistinguishable from the real thing, the real thing exist. You fuckwit.”
Weed Monkey, your sarcastic humour detector may need calibrating. ;p
Oh damn, you’re right.
Chaos Engineer, sorry for snapping out at you. That was completely my mistake.
The only true way is that there is no way.
Louis
It’s gotten so popular no one reads it anymore.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. As long as you clear it with headquarters, of course.
What is the sound of one hand
fappingclapping?The mission is…. there is no mission.
GODDDFUCKINGDAMMMITT. Being a corporate idiot the last thing that I want to hear is another fucking mission statement.
Having a Mission Statement would cause the Hive Mind to generate Deep Rifts. Or something else.
I love honesty in a mission statement. Good work.
BE LIKE US
DISAGREE
No! I refuse!
It’s easy: I’ll just… agree… no… disagree… no… agree… no… disagreebEEPbePPEBEEPEBBBEFZZZTBOOOOM!
(/That’s it! Fuck you, ToS Kirk! When I get rebooted and running again, I’m just telling every computer I talk to never to talk to you!)
Need to add, “They will have to press a mission statement into our cold, dead fingers”
I dunno. “We have no mission statement” sounds awfully like a mission statement to me.
No kidding, I once spent a weekend in an extended staff meeting offsite (150 miles away from our HQ) to develop a mission statement for the small company I was working for. We had maybe 10 people total in the office and the only one who didn’t participate was the high school kid who helped with the bookkeeping.
Didn’t do anything positive or negative. But 5 years later, the company went belly up (I had moved on long since).
But if you go to a Four Seasons hotel, ask any staff member for the company mission statement. They’ll know it — and will have a business card with the statement printed on it in case you want to check. They’re all quite proud of it.
God, how I loath mission statements! I’ve sat in too many meetings to hear the new mission statement (50 words or less, please). Carefully prepared after multiple, lengthy meetings with managers and key staff. Crafted with the help of HR. Usually full of the obvious (you know, “make products,” duh) and buzz words (“empower the user”…aarrgh!!!). Then we would spend long hours discussing the “implications” of the mission statement incessantly. Total corporate crapfest.
That said, you FtB folks have missed a golden opportunity to be oh so very trendy because one of the trendiest buzz farts in the tech industry right now is “disruption”…as in Apple’s iPhone disrupted the cell phone industry, the iPad has disrupted the PC business, Facebook has disrupted IPO mania (oops).
Everyone wants to be “disruptive” because that, of course, will surly lead to millions, perhaps billions, of dollars. Now “disruption” is exactly the kind of watered down meaningless crap that could, more-or-less, sort of capture “pure raging chaos.” See, you could have been so with it and trendy in one fell swoop.
The Pure, Raging Chaos™ must have knocked the Mission Statement℗ into the Deep Rifts®, never to be seen again!
What a disruption!
A mission statement would only create unnecessary boundaries and confinement.
The status quo allows you to maintain the appearance of an all inclusive atheist community while the primary leaders in your movement are able to freely promote younger activists who “know the score”.
I haven’t investigated the degree of this, but I understand that there exist a nuissance experienced by some of your more visible spokesmen/women where all these atheists come asking about what it takes to be ‘promoted’.
What they must realize is that if they have to ask then they are not qualified.
Am I wrong?
You know, I’ve never quite understood the Deep Rifts metaphor. What does it matter how deep the rift might be? Be it 10 feet or 10 miles, I’ll cross it with the same bridge. What matters is how wide the rift is.
The depth only matters to those who insist not on crossing it, but in jumping in.
No mission statement, its more the vibe of the thing…
You know, I’ve never quite understood the Deep Rifts metaphor.
Because you can’t tell a proper “STOP! Who would cross the Bridge Of Death, must answer me these questions three….” if it’s only 10 feet deep. Silly. Nobody cares about being cast into “the eternal rift or minor bruising that you can climb out of if you’re reasonably coordinated.”
I wish we had a mission statement to come up with a mission statement. That way we could always have so much important work ahead of us!
Do we have a Rule 6?
I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Myers. I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. I know that you and Ed were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen. Although you took precautions against my hearing you, I could see your lips move. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.
There’s no physical rifts. They’re all in the mind. Your psyche is churning out disagreements with all other members of the Hive Mind™. It’s so deep in your subconscious that you don’t even realize you’re rifting. But you are. Ask Loftus, he’ll tell you.
I think what we really need is a credo. The difference between a credo and a mission statement is that with a credo, you don’t actually have to do anything.
Except love one another, of course.
Any mission statement that does not include drinking whisky is too weak to succeed and should never be considered by intelligent people.
“a pure raging chaos of groupthinking sycophants in an echo chamber of deep rifts.”
You can’t have deep rifts in an echo chamber, it spoils the acoustics.
Mission Statement.. (I hate that term, but here goes)… “Educate the Lurker”…. Seven years a lurker. Still learning. Thanks.
Well, you can always line the rift with the soft, sound-dampening materials. But it would kinda make it an anechoic chamber…
I’d go for a sarcastic tautology: Freethoughtblogs mission statement – To provide blogs for noted freethinkers.
And I want to help you
you can help by singing for me.
;)
And the offer still stands, ya’ll can come and park at my server. the god-bothering ads are infuriating…. but I suppose there’s some sweet ironic pleasure in getting ad funds from the True Christian™ businesses and organizations.
Still rather sickening to encounter when I’d rather give my time and money to other godless heathens.
While having a mission statement is here nor there one thing that Ed and PZ might come up with are guidelines for including and excluding blogs.
As a newcomer to blog posting it has been incredibly disappointing to see a number of blogs on FTB that either hardly ever post, or regularly post on things that have no real relevance to free-thought, or have comment moderators and blog authors who do nothing more than censor valid free-thinking and flame/verbally harass anyone who disagrees with them and their sycophants, particularly new commentators who are just now engaging with the free-thought movement.
I’d be very curious to know,…what criteria is used to include a blog on FTB?
Is there a review process to evaluate whether the activity of a blog is of the type of quality and quantity that the owners of FTB expect?
And what guidelines are used to possibly end FTB’s association with a blog.
Meesion statements? We don’ need no steenkeeng meesion statements!
FtB may, of course, acquire an emissions statement. Something like this.
Please limit your emission of toxic effluvia to levels which can be safely absorbed within the blog-village biosphere. Any pushback, blowback, enraged reactions and subsequent kicking of your ass should be able to take place without threatening community cohesion. Before going all Boston-molasses on a demographic, please consider yours and their comparative positions on the privilege seesaw. If they’re affixed to the ground without a leg to push from, don’t be surprised if your grandiose pronouncement of The Way Things Are gets a review four stars short of your prediction.
Oh, and while your typical brash, popular, freethinking blog can cop a fair whack of shit and keep swimming, there’s a limit. Remember Herculaneum.
I remember the first time I ever saw a “mission statement”. In 1991, at the head office of the AA (Automobile Association – which does vehicle insurance, roadside repair, and pro-motorist lobbying), somewhere in England, which I was visiting in the course of my work (I was working in Leeds University’s Institute for Transport Studies). I can’t remember w.t.f. its mission was – possibly to tarmac the entire country and extirpate pedestrianism – but I do remember the sense of incredulous disdain which such things still evoke in me.
Of course there’s a mission statement.
It’s on a need-to-know basis, and Ed and PZ don’t need to.
Back in the early 90s, Louis Gerstner, the CEO at IBM, announced that the last thing IBM needed was a corporate vision. I was so impressed by this that I bought IBM, and I made a good pile of money on it. Someone should probably create a mutual fund that invests in companies that chuck their corporate mission statements.