So, how bad of an idea is this?

[jarandhel]

I'm thinking of adding a section to the Links area of my site for Bad otherkin pages.  In other words, pages that I specifically recommend avoiding. Current candidates include:

http://adrastai.com
I would need to write an article to lay out all the problems I have with this site, and I may at some point.

http://grovesofannwyn.tripod.com/Home.html
Pretty fucking nuts.  Just crazy.


http://www.shadowofthefallen.co.uk/1.html
Any site that seriously talks about an ancient enemy that otherkin are going to have to fight against in the near future is one I have to put in this category.  The oncoming war meme has never been a healthy one in the community.


http://www.freewebs.com/otherkinawakening/index.html
One of the most vicious troll-pages I've ever seen, but a lot of people unfamiliar with the situation take it seriously.  I've had to correct people about the facts in the otherkin.com forum already.  Might be worth a mention here.

Not sure yet what others.  I'm halfway tempted to dig up the archive.org versions of HOPE's website, HOPE-CORDE's website, and Paranexus's website and add them to this list for historic purposes as well.

So, is this a bad idea that is just going to stir up drama or could it be a useful way to point out some of the worst "resources" to people who may be less familiar with the community and not know good from bad yet?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

(This is historychick49)

I think this is potentially a very good idea, if it's done extremely carefully. Explain why you're creating this list of sites to avoid, emphasize critical reading/thinking, explain why these sites should be avoided, etc.

On the other hand, I'm afraid this could degenerate into a "he said/she said" battle, at least from the perspective of newbies and outsiders. They wouldn't know whom to trust, especially if they don't know the people involved. (That last link, for instance, is almost rather amusing, in a really-bad-fanfic sort of way.)

Incidentally, I recognize the Adastrai site from when I was still dating my ex-fiance, who is a psivamp. I called BS on it then, too.

If you do go forward with this, you might want to consider whether or not you'd put up links to psi/sang vampire sites, too - some of which are worse than these.

[jarandhel]

Yeah, I was pretty much planning to review each site in the description. They may even get more extensive reviews than the sites in the rest of the links section.

It could potentially degenerate into that, yes. Hopefully I could provide enough info and specifics that they could verify it with a little bit of looking, but ultimately it may generate more drama than it's worth. I'm just not sure.

The last link might be amusing for people who weren't involved, but here's the story behind it. The page was created by Tassadar/Iniach, the worst troll that the Otherkin community ever had to deal with online. He had a history of targeting Otherkin mailing lists and then targeting the moderators. He would post lists of email addresses and in some cases physical addresses to message boards and news groups in fake advertisements for sexual services and sit back and watch as spam bots collected those email addresses and flooded them to the point they were unusable. Even now, I can't use jarindreamsinger@yahoo.com because of how much spam it still gets from that. (Though I do prefer gmail anyway.) Rialian particularly got under his skin, and he created this website as his most vicious attack: creating a fake "memorial page" about Rialian's brother Eyovah, who had committed suicide in April of 2000 which both set Eyovah up as some sort of ridiculous otherkin messiah and created a fake conspiracy theory blaming his death on Rialian. At that time the community was still small enough and close-knit enough that nobody took it seriously, but as things have grown a lot of people think it's a genuine memorial site and that there are otherkin who actually believe it. I had to set the record straight on Otherkin.com, where they were discussing it alongside the other otherkin websites that predict a future war with humanity.

The Adrastai site could be its own article, seriously. I don't even know where to begin. I picked apart some of it in a post a while back (#5&6, and much of the comments). What made you call BS? (Not that there isn't a ton to call BS on.)

I think I am going to include psi/sang vampire sites. I've already started including some in the good resources area, I don't see any reason not to include them here to. I may need some help finding those, though, I'm not as familiar with the vamp community even though I have some friends who are.

[downtide]

omg Tassadar *facepalm* We lost several email addresses because of his crap, but the attack on Eyovah was just beyond belief.

[(Anonymous)]

Historychick49 again... forgot to ask, could I have a Dreamwidth code, please, if you still have one?

[jarandhel]

Sent :)

[aerin]

Joined, thanks!

[jarandhel]

Welcome, welcome! :)

[jarandhel]

And another one for the not recommended list:
http://lord-lore.freeservers.com/index.html

[enotsola]

I think that some basic sense should say "holy crap, anyone with web design this bad is obviously a nutjob" but.. that assumes people aren't idiots.

[jarandhel]

Well, that also assumes that sane otherkin have good web design, and in my experience that is unfortunately rarely the case. ;-)

Good to see you, btw. :)

[aerin]

I'm just going to point and laugh at the '90s-era animated gifs.

[jarandhel]

... I can't do that entirely, I'm still using some '90s-era animated gifs as emoticons in my forums. I'm actually having way, way too much fun with them.

[aerin]

Well, but there's a big difference between animated gifs as emoticons, and animated gifs as graphics on a site.

[jarandhel]

Ok, good point. :)

[arethinn]

I wouldn't, for fear of inciting drama. Perhaps a short list: "I don't recommend these sites; if you want to know precisely why, please contact me privately" or something, without lengthy explanation in the list itself.

[arethinn]

Or, perhaps, explain the ones which are because they are actively dangerous or trolls, but not the ones you simply have personal issues with.

[jarandhel]

I've been thinking of how this would play out, and for the time being I've decided not to create this section. To really explain most of these would take descriptions that would dwarf the descriptions of the positive links. I may end up creating a series of articles reviewing the bad sites and explaining my problems with them instead, but I'll leave that idea for down the road. Right now, I think I want to work more on creating other content and building the forums and link network.

[helen99]

Aieeeeee!!! (I never even knew about half of these until now. My eyes, they burns us!)

[jarandhel]

Yeah, there's a reason this is the hall of shame. ;-)