The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[tavie]

Evening, everyone.

Let me clarify something since it is important people understand how we apply this rule.

1. It may get little attention in most cases - which is usually a good thing since we don't want to create more disruption - but the rule has been enforced multiple times over the last year or two by Koen, and in the last few months also by me. The rule is our way of finding a balance: it helps keep the original thread on topic while still allowing people to continue sharing their theories and debate them.

2. We aim to be consistent. We don't want this to be a rule that is seen as applying to some people and not others. If you think we've not intervened when we should have, you can report the post to bring it to our attention. It may be that we missed the post in question. It may instead be that we disagreed: we thought it was neither a clear-cut issue, nor related to a topic that is likely to overshadow the original subject with a lot of replies.

3. With particular reference to the above point, had someone responded to the watermark thread saying "This is a known 17th century watermark, that's even more evidence that it's not a modern hoax", I would have taken the same action as I did in this case: asked people to take that particular argument to the modern hoax thread, and - if it continued - moved the posts both for and against modern hoax.  This has nothing to do with my thoughts on the modern hoax theory and a lot to do with how it is a topic that always generates a lot of replies, likely to overshadow the original subject. 

And back to your regularly scheduled programming.