The Atheist Blogger

I previously wrote about why I left Atheist Nexus, for reasons that I believed saw the site turning into a more commercial business than a friendly social networking site. I have left the controversial article up, but let me make one thing very clear:

I was wrong.

The article was written as a response / inquiry to the donations listed on the Atheist Nexus website. People have accused me of being impolite by posting “private” donation targets in the public domain. I stand by my actions of posting the amounts, not because I wanted to be impolite, but because the same donation amounts are easily accessible by any member of the public. All you have to do is register (for free) on Atheist Nexus and click the donations link. Is this private? I don’t believe it is. Just because you have to type in a few letters and give your email address doesn’t mean that somehow you have crossed from the public world to a private one, especially when the action requires no payment and little trouble for the end user.

I have also been accused of writing an accusatory article without first consulting Brother Richard on the matter, or anyone at Atheist Nexus. I admit I should have contacted someone official before writing the article, but my previous attempts at contacting anyone at Atheist Nexus have not resulted in any emails other than those explaining that they have received so many emails and are currently going through them all. I could have posted the article in the forums, but how would this have been any different? The forums are public (I can read them when logged out), so what is the difference between posting the article on my website (which I know is read by some Atheist Nexus members) than on the forums. In the end, a subscriber (vjack) linked my article in a thread on Atheist Nexus specifically about the donations.

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This article does not display my current opinions on the subject in hand, and has only been kept up for archive purposes. For my true opinions and explanations, please read this article.

Amongst all the trouble the site suffered during its conception I didn’t think it could get any worse. Power was transferred from the relatively new atheist “Thor” to Brother Richard, an atheist blogger.  Brother Richard asked for volunteers for web design, lawyers, graphic designers, representatives, moderators, and a host of other roles. He also asked for “donators” since the site wasn’t going to pay for itself. I remain slightly skeptical of this part. The site is hosted on Ning.com, a free social networking engine that expects high server usage, so where exactly does Richard need the money? The issue of lawyers seems a little strange as well, seeing as the site isn’t corporate and is in fact governed by Ning.com (who I assume have lawyers).

I was recently invited by vjack to join his new group on Atheist Nexus; a group dedicated to stamping down on atheist discrimination. It’s a great idea, and I support it even if I have now left Atheist Nexus. I suggest anyone still on the site joins the group straight away.

Once I got the email inviting me to join the group, I went straight to Atheist Nexus and did indeed join it. However, I noticed a link at the top of the page saying something about “Phase 1″ of fund raising. Intrigued, I went to the page and read.

Brother Richard starts by commenting on the wonderful transformation the site has gone, becoming one of the fastest growing atheist sites on the web. He also tells how he recently sold his business and is in a state of “semi-retirement”. He wants to spend the rest of the year (which he claims does not need that much income) helping with the site. However, he states:

Of course, it is our hope that the site will continue to grow and provide a comfortable income for our family and the staff that has been working with us, but only time will tell.

What? Excuse me? Since when did Atheist Nexus, a free site, hosted by a free organisation (Ning) for FREE become a platform for earning money? So now we see the corporate nature of Brother Richards ideas. Instead of simply relying on volunteers he decides to earn some money for doing what most people would call a “hobby”. The site doesn’t need that much tending. All the admin is done by Ning, as are the server upgrades and anything else that might take time. What was wrong with keeping volunteers to do the work? I’d already gladly volunteered to help redesign and possibly remake the entire site (FOR FREE) but I never got a response.

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So a few people are talking about this new website “Atheist Nexus“. I was invited yesterday by the managing director Thor and I signed up to take a look. Although the site is a very good idea, it is currently very poorly designed. I’d love to comment on all the great things it could do for the community, but before it even tries to connect people it needs to address a load of issues:

• There is far too much code on every page. This bloats the website out which leads to slower loading times as well as slower actual scrolling of the website.
• There is a stupid amount of CSS for the site layout. I’ve been designing websites for years and the site could be made easily with a fraction of the CSS they use.
• The JavaScript is bloated and used way too much. AJAX is great in moderation, but using it for everything only works when you have very tidy and small scripts working together, not a load of large scripts dotted all over the place.
• What is up with the theme? Since when did cityscapes have something to do with atheism? I’m afraid that light blue on white doesn’t go very well for the main links, and they could have saved resources in a load of areas by using color attributes instead of images.

Now I know everyone is getting all excited about a new social networking site, but it’s not new at all, and it certainly isn’t original. A quick look at the source code tells you that the entire site is just linking into ning.com, a “make your own” social networking site. Put simply, this entire project isn’t original, and it hasn’t got a team of devs behind it. It will be updated when ning.com wants to update their entire system.

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