Slashdot Mirror


Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED

J. J. Ramsey writes "Talk.Origins is an archive with thousands of pages exposing creationist pseudoscience. Rather mysteriously, Google pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that this Google policy harms honest webmasters." From the article: "My mission, whether I liked it or not, was to find and fix whatever problem the [Talk.Origins Archive] might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at all about where to start looking... I was extremely lucky. The damage to my site was limited and in the first place that I happened to look. Other honest webmasters might not be so lucky. They may have to undertake an arduous process of vetting pages, essentially having to second-guess the mind of the cracker in trying to locate a problem that Google knows the exact location of." Thanks to an alert reader who sent in Matt's blog posting about how Google handles hacked sites.

10 of 575 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The real question is by kfg · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No I would not give you false hope,
    on this strange and mournful day.
    But the mother and child reunion,
    is only a motion away.

    KFG

  2. Re:ahhh i love it by Laser+Lou · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Why do you equate creationism with Chritianity; Christianity is all about Jesus; there's no "gospel" of Adam and Eve.

    --
    No data, no cry
  3. Re:The real question is by larry+bagina · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    my hash brown recipe doesn't involve eggs.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  4. Re:You love to whine, don't you? by electrosoccertux · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Creationist" != "Christian", but don't let that stand in the way of your pretending to feel victimized. Go search for any article talking about Christians/Creationists and you'll be met with hundreds of anti-Christian posts flaming about what idiots Christians are and how stupid they are for believing that an all powerful, self sufficient being created the world, instead of a "cause-and-effect law" breaching big-bang theory. There's no pretending about the existence of such hate, its right there in plain sight.

    I'm not sure why this general personal vendetta exists in the online community, but the best explanation I've come up yet is that most refer back to a list of bad things [Christian] people have done, and associate the Christian name with the bad people that did those things (crusades, for example). But, as usual, guilt by association is illogical. Nothing in the bible condones the crusades, nor any other of the violations against the Laws of Humanity/Nature(tm) that are on these lists. Given the techincally-minded slant of the /. community, perhaps the problem is the percieved confliction between the bible and science? I've seen many claim that the Bible is in 180 degree confliction with many fundamentals accepted by the scientific community. But in reality, there's nothing in the Bible that says being illogical is good, or that ignoring facts is the right thing to do. Many people have asked "but this conflicts with..." or "what about here, where it says..." sorts of questions, but all of these that I've seen so far have stemmed from a misunderstanding of what the bible was saying, or the context in which it was speaking. The only areas that put scientists at odds with the Bible are the parts where scientists leave the experimentation->observation->repeat x number of times->conclusion method. But that's not a problem with the bible. Nor is it a problem with the science, as what was going on when the scientific method was breached was not science. It is a problem of a different kind, the same sort of problem that lead the crusades: people. Before it was people in power exploiting the power they had, combined with some verses twisted out of context to bring about the crusades; in these cases it is scientists leaving the scientific method. The problem is people. It is not the bible, as many seem to believe.

    So the GP is right in claiming to be victimized.
  5. Re:ahhh i love it by derubergeek · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Dude. You're never gonna get modded +1 anything with talk like that around here. Just get in line and join in with the majority controlled jeering. You'll do far better.

    Note to mods: I'm thinking Offtopic would be your best bet in silencing me, but Flamebait might work equally as well [just trying to make your jobs easiers].

    --
    Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the /. bean counters might report.
  6. Re:You love to whine, don't you? by notwrong · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Nothing in the bible condones the crusades, nor any other of the violations against the Laws of Humanity/Nature(tm) that are on these lists.

    The difficulty I see is that things that you are attempting to distance yourself from, such as the crusades (and there are many more examples), were once accepted by the vast majority of Christians as being in accordance with, or even required by, the biblical scholarship of the time.

    If you can say "oh, those Christians in ages past were all just misguided, we've got the right idea now", how can you be sure the same won't be said of modern Christians' viewpoints in another few centuries?

  7. Re:Synopsis by iainl · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No, that is simply Talk.Origins' description of what their site is. Not everyone knows who the site is, even though they are pretty much the default place to link when telling Intelligent Design proponents why it's pseudoscience.

    Other than feeling personally insulted by being told that your religious beliefs are religious beliefs, and not science, what's your problem?

    --
    "I Know You Are But What Am I?"
  8. Re:Synopsis by DrXym · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It isn't a bias to claim creationists use pseudo science because they do. All of the time.

  9. Re:Synopsis by Conanymous+Award · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It is "biased" only if you use the word in the Faux News sense, i.e. it makes a factual statement you take offence from. It's no wonder people's view of reality is getting muddier by the day, we can't even talk about facts without some newspeak PC crap. And no, I'm not going to define (or, alas, re-define) science here. All I have to say is that anything that somehow involves a supernatural creator is pseudoscience by definition. If you cannot accept that, it's exclusively your problem.

  10. Re:Synopsis by Angostura · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Not necessarily. The writer could well believe in creationism. Whether or not you are creationist, there is no doubt that there is much pseudoscience used to support the creationist view. The right-up doesn't state that all scientific evidence for creationism is pseudo science, neither does it state that creationism is dependent on pseudo science. It merely points out that talk.orgins does indeed expose the pseudo-science that is there.

    The rest is your inference.