Say Hello to Richard! November 3, 2007

Say Hello to Richard!

By Guest Contributor
November 3, 2007

For those of you who frequently comment or read the comments on this site, you’re used to seeing quality responses from Richard Wade.

Richard has been a welcome presence on this blog ever since it began. He always manages to combine humor, patience, and intelligence in his postings. To that end, I’ve invited him to begin blogging on this site.

You’ll be hearing from the two of us, at least for the time being. I hope you give him the same courtesy you’ve given me.

I’ll allow Richard to introduce himself 🙂

(You’ll be able to distinguish our postings via the bylines, by the way.)

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  • Richard Wade

    Welcome, Richard! I’m looking forward to your contributions. 😀

  • I too, am looking forward to Richard’s contributions.

    Any other Richards care to welcome Richard? 😉

  • Siamang

    Great Richard! Wonderful addition!

  • Richard Wade

    Thanks, Hemant. Hi everybody. About a year ago I somehow heard about a discussion board run by the Washington Post called “On Faith.” Many people here are probably familiar with it. It’s a huge site with dozens of panelists posting multiple articles on all sorts of issues surrounding religion. Some can generate literally thousands of comments each. Sam Harris had posted something so I read the first hundred comments or so and took the plunge to submit my own. I’d never done anything like that before but commenting and debating really became addictive. It helped me to learn about so many different points of view and to crystalize my own.

    But the site is the world’s largest verbal bar room brawl. Trolls abound, people on all sides of any argument are nothing less than vicious, and a lot of opportunities for understanding get trampled in the rush to come up with the most cruel put-downs. I began to lose interest in “winning” arguments and didn’t like the way I was treating people. I started to just want to make my point of view clear and to understand the other’s point of view without any intention of changing them. In the midst of the mayhem I found six other people who had similar viewpoints and similar distaste for the invective and we formed our own private online “club” for mutual support and first aid after a hard day in the blog trenches. We’ve kept it up and are now seven good friends. I started looking for smaller, less chaotic and less rabid discussion sites and stumbled into this one. I very much admire Hemant’s ideas and principles as well as the several other “regulars” here. So since then I almost exclusively comment here, and no longer at On Faith.

    I hope I can continue to add positive ideas and constructive criticism to this complicated, dynamic and always surprising thing that Hemant has created.

  • ash

    He always manages to combine humor, patience, and intelligence in his postings.

    looking forward to it…

    so, no pressure then…

  • Richard Wade

    LOL yeah thanks.

  • Daniel

    Are you both going to be Friendly? Maybe run a good cop/bad cop scheme with 1 unfriendly atheist?

  • Karen

    Hi Richard! 🙂 Looking forward to your posts – I know you’ll make a wonderful addition to the site.

  • Maria

    I’m looking forward to your posts Richard! You always have something good to say. Glad to see you on here 🙂

  • grazatt

    Wait , Hemant are you leaving us?

  • Richard Wade

    grazatt, I can answer that for Hemant. No, he’s not leaving us, he’s just kind of swamped with his teaching job, the blog, looking for things to post, and maybe squeezing a life in there somewhere.

  • geetha

    welcome Richard. always enjoyed ur comments. looking forward to ur posts now.

  • Richard Wade

    Daniel, Hmmm. Interesting idea. …Naw, we have bad cops of all colors who visit here or have their own blogs, enough to go around for everyone. When I was bad it was really ugly.

    Richard R, Siamang, ash, Karen, Maria and geetha, my thanks. Keep in mind that most of this website and its personality is created by the commenters rather than the bloggers or whatever they’re called.

  • Hi, Richard!!! *waves*

  • Great! I look forward to it.

  • PrimateInRepose

    Wow Richard. That is wonderful! But we will miss you here in the comments section. 🙁

  • Congratulations, Richard, this could be fun.

  • Joseph R.

    I look forward to reading your posts.

  • Great news! I think this is a fabulous idea. I’ll really look forward to your posts Richard.

  • Richard Wade

    Wow Richard. That is wonderful! But we will miss you here in the comments section.

    Uh-oh. Is there an etiquette about me not being in any of the comments sections? I have noticed that Hemant tends to stay out of the discussion of his posts unless he’s clarifying something or answering a specific question directly to him. I think that’s generally a good idea and I’ll probably follow that with my posts, but when it comes to responding to his posts I’d still like to be just one more commenter. It’s not like I have some extra authority or clout that I have to be careful not to abuse. Am I unaware of some unwritten rule?

    Hi and thank you to molishka, miller, PrimateInRepose, olvlzl, no ism, no ist, Joseph R, and Mike C.

  • Stogoe

    Hooray! The first step towards a proper group blog!

  • Mriana

    Hi Richard. Not sure how I missed this. 🙁 Sorry about that. Glad to see what all you have to comment about. 🙂

  • Richard, I think you should feel free to comment on whatever you like, though I have noticed that the best discussion blogs are the ones where the author of a post mostly stays out of the subsequent discussion. So yeah, I think the approach you just described probably is a good policy.

  • Well, I hate to inject the only negative comment here, but why doesn’t Richard just start his own damn blog? I think Hemant was doing a great job by himself. He, after all, is THE friendly atheist. I do look forward to reading Richard’s posts, but I don’t think Friendly Atheist needed any piggybacking.

  • Richard Wade

    Exterminator, those are valid questions both to me and to Hemant, and I don’t consider them negative. The reason I don’t just start my own damn blog is because I’m too damn lazy and I spend too damn much time in front of this damn computer as it is, dammit. 🙂

    Hemant can probably answer better for himself but as I mentioned he needs a life away from this damn blog. I can’t possibly match the quantity or quality of his posts. It will always be primarily his damn blog, I’m just ancillary. Batman is where it’s at; Robin just helps.

  • Robin

    Speaking of Robin……. (lol)

    ~~~~ Waving hi to Richard!

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