God's most highly blessed prophet that he has sent to the world in the last 5,993 years is puffing his little chest out again believing his writings are so significant and truthful that they will now be able to reach untold audiences of readers and religious leaders who are going to be so enthralled by his writings that they will drop everything they are doing and join the one true church (his church), the church so perfect it knew the correct books of the New Testament centuries ago before those dumb pseudo-Christians canonized it in the year 393. Bwana Bob leads the only true Church of God that can trace its lineage to those early true Christians.
The dual-minded prophet has been spreading his message around the internet since well before his apostasy from the Living Church of God in December 2012. For the last decade-plus he has been doing this, NO ONE other than 150 people worldwide has decided to join him from "British-Israelite" countries. His influence has been unimaginably pathetic for a "true" COG leader.
Reaching Religious Writers
Yesterday, I uploaded some information related to our book: Who Gave the World the Bible? The Canon: Why do we have the books we now do in the Bible? Is the Bible complete? to Academia.edu, whose logo is shown below:
This is something I had intended to do last month, but was not able to get to it. I plan to do more of this later this year.
Anyway, the use of Academia.edu is an interesting open door as it helps us reach readers and leaders that we otherwise would be less likely to reach. These religious writers are now getting exposed to organized historical information about the true Church of God, and in this case, evidence of why the early Church of God knew the books of the New Testament centuries before the Greco-Roman councils did. Not only is this a witness (cf. Matthew 24:14), it is also an avenue that could get more doctrinal truth to others should any refer to our literature or the CCOG in any of their writings.
It Is Not A "Real" .edu
First and foremost? That web address is more than a little deceptive. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association (MLA) remarked on her blog, "the first thing to note is that, despite its misleading top level domain (which was registered by a subsidiary prior to the 2001 restrictions), Academia.edu is not an educationally-affiliated organization, but a dot-com, which has raised millions in multiple rounds of venture capital funding." Historian Seth Denbo probably said it best when, almost a year and a half ago, he warned scholars that they were providing free data to a for-profit company rather than participating in an open-source, non-profit often associated with .edu domains. Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu
Also, they do something that is right up Bwana Bob's alley. Paying to get recognized.
Paying For Status
Last year at this time, the site received a hefty amount of criticism due to its emailed queries to scholars asking if they might want to pay a "small fee" in exchange for getting papers "recommended" on the site. In other words, they were offering to signal boost publications in exchange for money. This was met with quite a bit of backlash from users and some especially bad PR, which essentially seemed to kill the initiative. However, the site remained committed to figuring out how to get more money from users by introducing the "premium feature" in late December.
This feature allows users to get special data analytics about who is reading their papers, including the "role" (i.e. the rank) of the person looking at their work. Emails even go out to users letting know the percentile (a top 4% scholar!) of the person downloading their work. Are we supposed to somehow value that a full professor looked at our work over, say, an adjunct? The new feature is academic class politics to a new level--and it only promotes the further stratification of the academy.
Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu
And, it gets worse:
Is Academia.edu safe or a scam?
Reputation
On TrustPilot, Academia.edu has received an unsatisfactory rating of 1.5-stars, with 89% of customers reviewing the service as “bad.” The main complaint concerns the extent of the free services offered by Academia.edu. Despite promising free access to research papers and academic journals, many research materials available on the site will only let you view the first page of the paper; the site heavily encourages you to subscribe to membership to access the entire document.
Reputation
Paying members who subscribe to the company seem, for the most part, happy with the service they receive. However, the free services offered are minimal and often a disguise to make customers pay for the service. Many customers comment that Academia.edu “is nothing but a scam,” as the site constantly grabs at customers’ money.
Also, Academia.edu is criticized as being deceptive, using the .edu domain while not belonging to an educationally-affiliated organization. Following a recent report by Forbes, the site has been heavily criticized for this, despite gaining the domain legally at the time.
It makes sense that such a piss-poor prophet who got his diploma from an unaccredited Indian diploma mill would use a site like this to promote his writings.
Poor Bob, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.