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2012hoax.org is officially closing today!
02 Jan 2013 02:03 by Astrogeek
Thank you to everyone who participated in the site. As I've said before, we did a good thing here.
I am also pleased to announce that our new site is 'up' although we are still in the process of copying over the relevant articles from this site. The domain forwarding has been updated, and within 24 hours or so, all queries for 2012hoax.org will redirect to cosmophobia.org. Our new forum site is also up, running on a phpBB3 forum hosted by Artelis
Please visit our new home at http://www.cosmophobia.org and our new forum site at http://www.cosmophobia.artelis.co.uk/
We also have a new Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/cosmophobia
Comments: 0 | category: News / News
Next Steps
26 Dec 2012 19:03 by Astrogeek
Ok, it's time to put some thought into how we would like to proceed.
1st of all, I would like anyone interested in being an admin on the new site to drop me a note at gro.xaoh2102|nimda#gro.xaoh2102|nimda (or gro.aibohpomsoc|nimda#gro.aibohpomsoc|nimda) with your wikidot id and email address. Anyone currently an admin or mod of this site is invited automatically, but I don't have all of your email addresses. Anyone interested in joining the site as a member and steering the future direction of the site is also invited. What I would like to do is start a semi-private conversation with you on a google group to discuss the future of the website (or websites).
In my mind there are several questions that need to be answered:
1) One new site, or multiple sites? I'm considering some advice I was given by a few people active in the science education community (specifically Ian O'Neill and Tony Darnell) regarding the future of the 2012hoax.org site and how we handle future doomsday hoaxes.
2) Direction of the new site. Specifically how 'in your face' are we going to get with various doom-mongers heading down the road. This is related to #1 above, in that we can have a 'kinder & gentler' education site under the 'Cosmophobia' banner and a more aggressive site under a different domain name.
3) Platform: I like the current platform for the main site (but I'm not married to it). I am not it so much as a forum platform. I would like to discuss everybody's feelings about this, and gather suggestions as to what we should do in this area.
4) Migration: Related to #3 above, if we stay on the current platform, the migration will be a lot easier. I would prefer to work out a way to leave the existing site untouched, and copy the relevant articles to another site or sites.
5) Roles: we have not had an organized system so far. This has served us well enough in the past, but we should talk about whether that will serve us well enough moving forward, and what kinds of roles people are interested in pursuing).
I would like to have the skeleton of the new site in place by the first of the year, so I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Comments: 20 | category: News / News
What is next?
22 Dec 2012 07:43 by Astrogeek
I have seen the question over and over, both here and on Facebook. "What's next for this site?"
I plan on taking a few days off from here. Not that I don't like you guys, but I have put a lot of time in here, and I just want a few days off.
After Christmas, I will be announcing a new site. This one is great, but it is already somewhat dated. :-) The new site will be debunking more doomsday and pseudoscience, but it will not be tied to a specific year. 2012hoax.org will redirect people to the new site, and I hope that several of the "crew" here will stick around to be a part of the new site.
More to follow after Christmas.
Comments: 20 | category: News / News
Doomsday Myths Debunked at Blokely.com
21 Dec 2012 17:31 by Astrogeek
http://blokely.com/geek/apocalypse-wow-doomsday-myths-busted/
Thanks to http://www.jacamo.co.uk/ for putting this together for http://www.blokely.com/
Comments: 0 | category: News / News
CBC Radio
18 Dec 2012 17:24 by Astrogeek
I just recorded a short interview with CBC Radio that will air on 25 to 20 stations in Canada in the next couple of days.
Comments: 5 | category: News / News
BBC World News rescheduled for Thursday 12/20
18 Dec 2012 16:10 by Astrogeek
The BBC World News interview has been rescheduled. They have moved it up a day to Thursday 12/20, at the same time; 19:15 GMT, or 11:15 PST, 13:15 CST, 14:15 EST.
Comments: 16 | category: News / News
More Media Coverage of 2012hoax.org
18 Dec 2012 07:08 by Astrogeek
- "Dec. 21 doomsday rumours keeping scientists busy" at The Toronto Star
- "It's not funny anymore: the 2012 doomsday is a hoax" by William Atkins in ITWire
- "Mayan end of days - what should you tell your children" by David Heath in ITWire
I note the regrettable tendency of the news coverage to give me (Bill Hudson a.k.a. Astrogeek) the lion's share of the credit (if not all of it) for setting up this site. Let me reiterate for anyone unfamiliar with the history of this site: I am a relative late-comer to the group of people who founded this site. I'm just the tech-head who set up the domain and the site. I'm also a pretty fast typist which helped me to crank out a lot of the articles, but the content of those articles belongs in large part to the original group. In particular bikenbeer2000,
ticktock, and
Alene Y, among a group of others. However, I think that gets edited out of the coverage even though I discussed it with the reporter (The Toronto Star article is the only one in this list that I collaborated on, the other stories apparently jumped off from the Wall Street Journal coverage).
Comments: 4 | category: News / News
90-Day Stats through December 16th
17 Dec 2012 18:27 by Astrogeek
On 12/16 we had 23,569 visits from 20,938 unique visitors.
Comments: 5 | category: News / News
Here is an interview I did for a blog
17 Dec 2012 16:48 by Astrogeek
Here is an interview I did for the blog 'The Undiscovered Goddess' (no, it's not a new-age site).
Comments: 0 | category: News / News
Wall Street Journal article online
15 Dec 2012 07:19 by Astrogeek
Here is the WSJ article. By the way bikenbeer2000 the reporter quoted me talking about you…
Comments: 6 | category: News / News
90-Day Stats through December 12
13 Dec 2012 20:51 by Astrogeek
Yesterday's numbers: 20,467 Visits, 18,499 Unique Visitors
Comments: 0 | category: News / News
Forum Posting Rules Update
13 Dec 2012 17:06 by Astrogeek
We have made an important change to the forum posting rules.
Seeing as how this site's traffic has increased nearly 7-fold in the space of a few weeks, and we are now seeing over 600 forum posts per day, the administrators simply don't have time to deal with nonsense politely any more. If you 'troll' the forums by posting content that mocks or denigrates another user based on their stated fears, or if you admit to 'trolling', then you will simply be banned from posting.
Please take the time to read the rules and make sure you are following them.
Comments: 0 | category: News / News
90-Day stats through December 11th
12 Dec 2012 20:37 by Astrogeek
http://www.2012hoax.org/local--files/analytics/20121011-20121211.pdf
December 11th: 18,998 visits, 17,222 unique visitors.
Comments: 3 | category: News / News
Another new record for traffic
11 Dec 2012 01:01 by Astrogeek
Sunday December 9th: 14,033 Visits, 12,671 Unique Visitors
Top 10 Traffic Sources:
Comments: 5 | category: News / News
USA Weekend Magazine December 7th Cover Story
08 Dec 2012 08:00 by Astrogeek
USA Weekend Magazine is a "News Magazine" that is inserted into the weekend edition of more than 800 newspapers. According to their website, their circulation is 22.6 million copies every weekend.
The cover story of the December 7th issue is: "What, Me worry? 6 other views of doomsday".
Here is an excerpt from the 'teaser' section:
… what does the cool, calm, rational voice of science say about our impending demise?
“Bull. It’s all bull,” says astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, head of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York.
“Crazy. People always worry about the wrong things,” says MIT physicist Max Tegmark, who studies ways the universe could really end — in billions of years.
“The end of the world isn’t something the Maya made prophecies about,” declares Maya expert David Stuart, author of The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth About 2012.
Also featured is some commentary by William Saturno of Boston University
It's a good overview of the objections to some of the basic claims, and I'm hopeful with those kinds of circulation numbers, that it will get into the hands of some people that need reassuring.
Comments: 2 | category: News / News
BBC World News
06 Dec 2012 23:56 by Astrogeek
I am scheduled to be on BBC World News live for a 3 to 5 minute interview on December 21st at 11:15 AM PST, which is Friday, December 21, 2012 at 7:15:00 PM GMT
Comments: 13 | category: News / News
Why?
04 Dec 2012 23:55 by Astrogeek
One of the frequent questions we handle here at 2012hoax.org is "Why do people seem to want to believe this stuff?".
As it turns out, Michael Shermer from Skeptic magazine and the Skeptics Society wrote an article in New Scientist magazine in June 2011 titled "The end is always nigh in the human mind". It is definitely worth a read.
Comments: 1 | category: News / News
Dazza the Cameraman's "Countdown" video
30 Nov 2012 21:09 by Astrogeek
Here is Dazza's latest video, in which he discusses the consequences of pushing the 2012 belief system on people, as well as a great recommendation for 2012hoax.org.
Comments: 3 | category: News / News
Phil Plait pimps 2012hoax.org!
28 Nov 2012 22:02 by Astrogeek
Awesome, Phil!
Comments: 9 | category: News / News
