Let the Moron Awards Commence!

Hey guys,

As any of you who have been active in the S&T forum for a few months will have noticed, the quality of posts has dropped rather disturbingly. There seems to be more and more stupid, not to mention utterly incorrect information being posted here than ever before.

As a device to attempt to stop the rot, we are introducing a periodic 'award' known as the Abuv Top Sekrit Moron Award. It will be rewarded for posts of poor scientific accuracy.

Now, what we need is for people to nominate posts they think qualify for moron awards. This does not include questions, theories or ideas. Reread that bold part again, unless the question is so stupid that even a 4th grader could answer it correctly, questions and theories should never be nominated for awards. The moron award is more orientated towards the types of people who make absolute assertions, and attack others posts, based on completely bogus science. Or really poor pseudoscience. As an example, on one of the old boards there was a discussion about alternative energy sources, and one poster attacked another claiming 'an engine that could separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water would be the most powerful engine in the world'. Obviously completely forgetting it can be done with a couple of test tubes, a few bits of wire and a battery.

People, the idea here is not to attack posters who might not know as much about certain subjects as others, or to belittle them in any way. It is directed entirely at raising the level of conversation in this forum. Baseless assertions and stupid comments belong in the R&S forum, not in here.

Now, to nominate someone, you need to u2u me with the address of the thread (you can copy and paste that from the address bar in your browser) and quote the first few lines of their post, incase they have more than one post on that thread. Your nominations will be kept confidential (btw, moderators are not exempt from this, if you see a post you think qualifies, send it in). The standout few will be selected and voted upon in cosmic and the winners posted here. I can't say yet whether its going to be weekly/fortnightly/monthly, as we will have to wait and see how fast the nominations come in.

For the most part, if your nomination doesnt really qualify for the award I will attempt to respond to your u2u and explain why. Just to make it easier for everyone to work it out

So, let the moron hunting commence, anything you think qualifies as a stupid post, u2u me and get them in the running for this prestigious award.

Oh, and before I'm flooded with messages about old posts. This is enacted from now on, and will not be given out for posts before today.

Morons, consider yourselves fairly warned

[Edited on 11-10-2002 by Kano]