RampantLion
01-22-2012, 12:33 PM
Odinist.com
An Announcement From the Former Staff at Odinist.com
Posted by: "Steve Anthonijsz" freysblot@verizonmail.com freysblot
Thu May 3, 2007 5:35 pm (PST)
Greetings to all
This is an open letter to the Odinist/Asatru/Heathen community to clarify some recent events about which you may have heard.
Odinist.com was an online forum which started 3 or 4 years ago. After a shaky start with some over aggressive moderating and political debate the forum became quite a community with members from all over the world.
Over time the Admin and moderating team added features such as foreign language sections and the forum flourished. Members of any political persuasion could come and discuss our faith so long as they left their politics at the door.
The owner, Jay (or Irish Jay, a Christian who became Odinist for about a year before becoming atheist) never played any significant role in the running of the forum and so the Admin/Mod team had a free hand to build what they thought the forum should be, politics was out, unless specifically related to faith and party politics was not allowed.
Recently, out of the blue, the staff at the forum were told by the owner to welcome the new owner. The new owner had never even been a member and was also the owner of the neo Nazi record store Micetrap. He assured the staff that he wanted them all to continue and that there would be no changes. However, his ownership raised many concerns and one of the Admins posted some question about his intentions. The reply was that anyone who caused him a headache would be removed.
He said he was going to do some promotion of the site and bring more people in but refused to say where he would be doing this. It was pretty clear to us that he would be recruiting from neo Nazi/Skinhead sites.
The staff could only wait and see what was going to happen. The next day they got their answer. An ad banner had been placed on the forum for Micetrap records, which was bigger and had more prominence than the small banners of the heathen groups which to which the staff belonged.
It was now clear what the intentions for the site were and a hurried discussion amongst the staff concluded with the decision that we would not let the thousands of posts fall into the hands of these people, to be perverted and tainted by the new breed of members that were about to follow. We took the very hard decision to delete the forum and all of its posts.
Unfortunately, we have since found out that the new owner had the site backed up and after acouple of days of Odinist.com redirecting to Micetrap records the forum is now back up and fully under the control of non Odinist neo Nazis.
The new owners have sent out a fake email purporting to be from one of the former Admins, apologizing for deleting the forum and claiming that this admin has left Odinism to follow a gay lifestyle. Unfortunately for them they were too dumb to realise that they used one of their own email addresses to send it.
The former staff felt it important to make these details known as there are many posts left on that forum made by many fine folk from around the world and from many organizations. We are determined that these folk are not tarred with whichever brush now paints that forum. We have no control over events there now so we call on folkish heathens, groups, organizations etc. to help us make the situation known.
Please feel free to post or forward this message wherever you see fit. In fact we urge you to do so.
The former staff of O.com will be back very soon with ************, a forum for folkish heathens who care about the advancement and image of our faith and do not tolerate those who use our faith to further their political agenda.
Thank You
The ************ Team
An Announcement From the Former Staff at Odinist.com
Posted by: "Steve Anthonijsz" freysblot@verizonmail.com freysblot
Thu May 3, 2007 5:35 pm (PST)
Greetings to all
This is an open letter to the Odinist/Asatru/Heathen community to clarify some recent events about which you may have heard.
Odinist.com was an online forum which started 3 or 4 years ago. After a shaky start with some over aggressive moderating and political debate the forum became quite a community with members from all over the world.
Over time the Admin and moderating team added features such as foreign language sections and the forum flourished. Members of any political persuasion could come and discuss our faith so long as they left their politics at the door.
The owner, Jay (or Irish Jay, a Christian who became Odinist for about a year before becoming atheist) never played any significant role in the running of the forum and so the Admin/Mod team had a free hand to build what they thought the forum should be, politics was out, unless specifically related to faith and party politics was not allowed.
Recently, out of the blue, the staff at the forum were told by the owner to welcome the new owner. The new owner had never even been a member and was also the owner of the neo Nazi record store Micetrap. He assured the staff that he wanted them all to continue and that there would be no changes. However, his ownership raised many concerns and one of the Admins posted some question about his intentions. The reply was that anyone who caused him a headache would be removed.
He said he was going to do some promotion of the site and bring more people in but refused to say where he would be doing this. It was pretty clear to us that he would be recruiting from neo Nazi/Skinhead sites.
The staff could only wait and see what was going to happen. The next day they got their answer. An ad banner had been placed on the forum for Micetrap records, which was bigger and had more prominence than the small banners of the heathen groups which to which the staff belonged.
It was now clear what the intentions for the site were and a hurried discussion amongst the staff concluded with the decision that we would not let the thousands of posts fall into the hands of these people, to be perverted and tainted by the new breed of members that were about to follow. We took the very hard decision to delete the forum and all of its posts.
Unfortunately, we have since found out that the new owner had the site backed up and after acouple of days of Odinist.com redirecting to Micetrap records the forum is now back up and fully under the control of non Odinist neo Nazis.
The new owners have sent out a fake email purporting to be from one of the former Admins, apologizing for deleting the forum and claiming that this admin has left Odinism to follow a gay lifestyle. Unfortunately for them they were too dumb to realise that they used one of their own email addresses to send it.
The former staff felt it important to make these details known as there are many posts left on that forum made by many fine folk from around the world and from many organizations. We are determined that these folk are not tarred with whichever brush now paints that forum. We have no control over events there now so we call on folkish heathens, groups, organizations etc. to help us make the situation known.
Please feel free to post or forward this message wherever you see fit. In fact we urge you to do so.
The former staff of O.com will be back very soon with ************, a forum for folkish heathens who care about the advancement and image of our faith and do not tolerate those who use our faith to further their political agenda.
Thank You
The ************ Team