When I made my videon on the 10th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism, I created an animation of a taxonomic tree that worked like Windows Explorer used to a decade or so ago. A lot of people thought that software was real and I received hundreds of requests for it. This prompted me to seek funding for the Phylogeny Explorer Project. That software now exists, though not in the old Windows XP format. It looks different but the effect is the same. It took a year and a half to design the database, and a dozen or so data entry volunteers have been quietly building clades in that system for more than a year since then.

Here is what it looks like now.

But it will soon include hover-over illustrations as a guide, and encyclopedic information in each of the boxes, all entered one clade at a time.

We don't yet have a landing page, but that should be soon, once we have a secure host server. Then we'll be able to share it and show it and promote it. But before we get to that point, I want to include a link to a discussion forum where various scientists, teachers, and students can talk about cladistics and perhaps how it offends their superstitious sensibilities. I like the look and feel of this site, and I'm wondering whether I should duplicate this or simply link to a dedicated portion of this one? I don't know anything about web design. So what would the mods and engineers and such here suggest?

Looks and sounds amazing - really have to applaud your dedication to educating people, Mr Ra.

I should add that the creative team behind Palaeos.com signed on to assist and/or integrate with our project just yesterday.

I'd be happy to support this project, and can dedicate a sub-forum, a new top-level board (such as Reason), and/or an IRC channel for the purpose, if that's what you're looking for. The site is also available via TapaTalk.

I'm happy to chat about anything else you think we might be able to provide.

Can I leap in and make a suggestion here?

Could it possibly be restricted posting so that it can't be shat on by pigeons?

Prolescum wrote:I'd be happy to support this project, and can dedicate a sub-forum, a new top-level board (such as Reason), and/or an IRC channel for the purpose, if that's what you're looking for. The site is also available via TapaTalk.

I'm happy to chat about anything else you think we might be able to provide.

Thank you so much. I'll be in touch as soon as I have some idea of our schedule.

AronRa wrote:Thank you so much. I'll be in touch as soon as I have some idea of our schedule.

Look forward to it.

Sparhafoc wrote:Can I leap in and make a suggestion here?

Could it possibly be restricted posting so that it can't be shat on by pigeons?

Doesn't really foment discussion, though. Check the two great quotes in my signature for my views on fora

Prolescum wrote:Doesn't really foment discussion, though. Check the two great quotes in my signature for my views on fora

Obviously, I don't want to drag this topic off (as that would genetically undermine the point I am about to make), but just to respond to that.

It depends on what the discussion is meant to be about. If we're going to discuss fine-grained evidence about the phylogenetic relationships between taxa, then the discussion should be about that, not dragged off by a single individual to declare evolution false, or what-have-you.

Sure, perhaps everyone reading knows the worth of that rejection, but it still means that the valid discussion is diluted with crap.

I don't think being open to discussion means that we need to allow anyone to say anything regardless of the stated topic. Pigeon has to play chess, not just crap on the board for it to actually be a game of chess.

Sparhafoc wrote:Obviously, I don't want to drag this topic off (as that would genetically undermine the point I am about to make), but just to respond to that.

It depends on what the discussion is meant to be about. If we're going to discuss fine-grained evidence about the phylogenetic relationships between taxa, then the discussion should be about that, not dragged off by a single individual to declare evolution false, or what-have-you.

Sure, perhaps everyone reading knows the worth of that rejection, but it still means that the valid discussion is diluted with crap.

I don't think being open to discussion means that we need to allow anyone to say anything regardless of the stated topic. Pigeon has to play chess, not just crap on the board for it to actually be a game of chess.

You got a point. But that's what we have mods for, right? Sure Leroy or Thenexttodie won't be able to contribute anything useful to a discussion about the finer points of phylogenetics (then again I can't really either) , but the mods should be able to get them on a tighter leash when it comes to that subsection (or whatever the discussion area might shape up to be) of the forum. Sure they'll go and complain about religious oppression and suchlike, but that's their MO anyways.

Prolescum wrote:I'd be happy to support this project, and can dedicate a sub-forum, a new top-level board (such as Reason), and/or an IRC channel for the purpose, if that's what you're looking for. The site is also available via TapaTalk.

I'm happy to chat about anything else you think we might be able to provide.

The time has come to create that discussion forum. How do I make one like this one?