Suggestions

[Womble]

Having been on the the show as a caller it might not hurt to get the next caller in the call group as it gets close to the other call ending, they could sit on mute or not in the voice part of the call. Also be more on the ball with the dialing, i clicked join call, i'd muted my sound so i didn't know what was going on, i got a friend to tell me what you lot were saying. Thats another way that lining up the next caller qucker would work, there's no need to 'waste' show time sorting out dialing. Delergate someone else to do the call handling and not discuss it.

Also i'd suggest having some backups as it were, yes we've only had 2 shows but with back ups or a wider panel if one of the regs can't make it theres going to be enough people on hand to still run the show.

 

[Dustnite]

I'm very impressed with what you've set up so far with the meeting of the minds...

Here are my suggestions to help make the show hopefully better based on what your trying to accomplish:

• I think with the crowd, a moderator is definitely going to be necessary as you go along. I found it refreshing when DPRJones would jump in to stop people from talking over each other in the second episode (particularly when TruthfulChrisitian called) when it was denigrating into a shouting match. I would very much like that format to continue as the show develops.
  
  Assuming this show is going the way of the Atheist Experience (which is fine by me, love both these shows), I feel it's important to let the "crazies" say what they need to say within reason. Rein them in when they begin to proselytize, preach, or go way off topic. Preferably, I would want whomever is the moderator at the time for the show to have the power to mute microphones if possible. It gets out of control really fast when people are passionate about certain subjects.
  
  Technology issues aside, I think your doing great with what you have. I ran an online radio show 4 years ago with an audience of about 250 people and was always problematic. I can imagine the bandwith concerns with an audience of a 1000 people listening in everytime. I don't know if you have access to a digital mixer board, but I used to feed everything through a mixer and attached mp3s or wav files and mounted different controls to the access board to allow quick tone changes, bumpers, etc. It worked pretty well for me with just a basic sound blaster sound card and would help speed up your transitions or muting ability. If not, perhaps later on it would be prudent to take donations to benefit the show technology, etc.
  
  As far as the call-in technology, Skype is usually the best route if not a bit temperamental at times. I dabbled with Gizmo for show purposes, but tended to lack on quality and stability. I don't know what kind of bandwidth issues your having right now, but I used to use my web server to run the whole show and just call into it from a second Skype account. Just setting up a simple remote connection let me push my bandwith where I needed it to go.

I didn't have near your call volume or audience, but if you need any advice just toss me a PM.

 

[AronRa]

More than just questions, I'd like to advertise full discussions with this week's featured guest delerious raving religious whack-job -and allow them to present their best case before we tear it apart. It should be a different person every time, no repeat offenders. It shouldn't always be Christians either, but that's not for us to decide. We can invite the audience to petition guest speakers and advertise whomever agrees to do it a week in advance. If they don't show, we'll just do the usual questions from the audience. If our selected zealot does turn up on time, then we'll allow him to embarrass all his fellow believers for a half hour or so before we go back to the regular questions like before. That way the audience would -I think- have a lot more of interest to talk about.

We should also require that the featured guest appear on-camera just like the rest of us. That way, we'll weed out the trolls. And the beauty of it is that it doesn't matter who signs on. We can be as fair and civil as it is appropriate to be, but regardless who it is or how they try to present it, if they're promoting beliefs based on faith, then they're only ever going to prove our case that religion is a prejudiced and paranoid parallel of cultural insanity and depravity. How could anyone ever make it appear otherwise?

Perhaps we could occasionally also have climate deniers, 9/11 truthers, astral projectors, Ouija board surfers, supposedly psychic seers, anally-probed UFO abductees, and anyone who claims to have been molested by a yeti. Sure there is a remote possibility that anyone among them might present a convincing case and change all our minds, :roll: but regardless what their argument is, the result would certainly be more entertaining than us just answering questions the way we have been. Whaddya think?

 

[Womble]

That does sound like a very good idea splitting it between featured loon and the Q&A bit.

 

[Inferno]

Love it Aron.

BTW just a quick suggestion for the panel: (Especially you Aron )
While I have my preferences amongst the panel (#1 being Aron btw) I would recommend that you allow each panelist to have equal time. I don't know if that was just me but it seemed to me that Andromedas and DonExodus weren't on as much as Tf00t and not nearly as much as Aron.
It was much worse in the first show, DPR did an excellent job at moderating in the second one. (In the first one too btw.)
So yeah, while I was happy to hear a lot from you, I think fairness dictates...

 

[JP-Ras]

I managed to miss the first 45 minutes of the second show but definitely noticed it was a big improvement on the first.
I think DPR did an excellent job of delegating the questions to the panel and in my opinion did not always start with the obvious choice to answer them. It's great to hear opinions from the panel that are not necessarily in thier specialist field.

As many people have already stated we need more Creationist callers, although there absence really does not surprise me. My only suggestion is a Youtube campaign in the run up to the show. I understand that the panel must be busy with the organisation that's going on to make this all possible, which may I say it is not going unappreciated. Would it be possible that one of you guys could make a video stating the challenge, time and place? Then any memebers of the LOR with a Youtube account could mirror the video in a bid to draw the nutters out of the woodwork. The video could easily be linked to Facebook and Twitter as welI. I know Facebook has an official LOR page but other members could make thier own pages specifically stating the challenge. I have a Youtube account myself and would be happy to make a challenge video, the problem being on my own I don't have many subscibers. As a whole with everyone working together I'm sure we can reach out to a wider audience. This is also a chance for us little people to do our bit.

Keep up the good work, this is surely the start of great things to come.

 

[Inferno]

Well this is bollocks! I've been having no problem for the first ~40min and then suddenly the page goes white (the one where the show is broad-casted, I could see the chat without a problem) and it tells me "Hello! I'm not broadcasting atm yadda yadda yadda". Some other people on chat pointed out that they had the exact same problem at the exact same time, so I'm not alone on this. As a result I've already missed out ~10min from the show and I doubt that I will hear the rest.
As has been suggested: Let someone record it as a podcast (use Audacity or something) so that people can DL that one.

 

[Inferno]

Sorry for my heated post before. I did get back in at some point (I just left the site open and it suddenly started) but todays show had more tech problems than any other before.

 

[No1Mensan]

I'd like to suggest that you designate one member of the panel per question, to reduce people talking over each other and the illusion of ganging up on the caller. Maybe have one member of the panel replying to the caller and the others can text the points that they want to ask.

 

[TruthDIDSetMeFree]

I'm in full agreement with AronRa's suggestions - especially his last idea, about bringing in proponents of other forms of woo and pseudo-science to present their cases. To be honest, this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to see when the LoR show started.

I have no idea on the demographics of the show's audience, but I would guess that most of us are Atheists who already know the majority of the theist arguments, and the rebuttals, and who watch primarily for the entertainment value. By covering a broader range of irrational ideas, we're still getting the entertainment value of seeing poor logic eviscerated, but we'll be hearing some new arguments.

How many of us are comfortable with our well-rehearsed anti-creationism arguments, but don't always apply our skepticism elsewhere (just look at some of the 911 Truthers who call in to the AE)?