ADMIN: relevance and posting criteria
- From: SBE moderator <evolution@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:56:02 -0500 (EST)
We've had a spate of barely-relevant posts recently, and I want
to take a moment to lay out my views on what contributes to, or
detracts from, the "postability" of any particular contribution.
As in the charter, articles need only be 1) "about" evolutionary
biology in some broad sense, and 2) NOT about the creation vs.
evolution argument, to be worthy of posting.
There are obvious subjective aspects to these two criteria.
Michael Ragland's recent attacks on "reductionism" are, in my
view only tangentially related to evolutionary biology, and are
only relevant so long as they are focused on that subject -- which
means that generalized attacks on the philosophical underpinnings
of "reductionism" (I use quotation marks because I think many
critiques are not really about reductionism but rather some straw
man version thereof) are NOT RELEVANT. Do not go there.
I might add that simply mentioning Darwin is not sufficient to
gain my imprimatur.
As to the second criterion, obviously, "Intelligent Design" is
creationism, and as such, articles about ID (either pro or con)
are not acceptable.
For the next few weeks I will be taking a hard line on accepting
and rejecting articles in an effort to bring some order to the
newsgroup. Don't be offended if I reject your article: think about
why I did it and fix the problem.
-Josh Hayes, moderator, sci.bio.evolution
.
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