silentlambs board gets name change & new ...

by wednesday 76 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  onthego

  Thanks, TH.
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  wednesday

  yes TH, ty for what u are doing.
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  RevMalk

  BTW Rev, I'm working on a PSA for TV, and because silentlambs is a 501 3c, they can be aired on TV for free. I'll also work up a Radio spot.

  Excellent TH, that's great news. Now THAT will be doing something. Repetition is the answer. This is all advertising, no matter the topic, and that's what's been lacking so far. I'm proud of you, you really have a place in your heart for this cause don't you?
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  Trauma_Hound

  Yes, I do, however I'm slightly frustrated with Bill at the moment.
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  RevMalk

  Well, I think alot of us are. I don't know what to think, I'm just very confused. I'm not holding anything against the guy, he's got to do what he's got to do. But it seems to me that a link from the silentlambs site to the forums with a disclaimer is not a bad idea. It won't take any work/workers from silentlambs, I was officially 'released' from my duties as Webmaster of silentlambs.org, so I have all the time in the world. So what is it that's now stopping him? I haven't heard from one Abuse Survivor (or anyone for that matter) that wants the forums to go away. So if silentlambs is FOR the Abuse Victims/Survivors, why aren't they getting a say? I just can't answer that question myself, only Bill can. But I don't think we're going to get that answer anytime soon.
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  Trauma_Hound

  Not saying I'm holding anything against him, however, I'm usually an up front type of guy, and well he's frustrating me. :D
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  Simon

  The requests for assistance some time ago was a good idea but it doesn't appear that many of the offers of help sent were followed up. Trauma Hound says he offered to help and so did I but neither of us heard anything further.

  RevMalk has done a lot (most / all ?) of the work on the forums so I don't see that they have taken attention away from other things and like he said, has increased the traffic to the site.

  Forum's are all about community building but it takes a long time to get a good forum established and pulling the plug because it doesn't match our own expectations after a very short period is very short-termism IMHO.

  For example this site, as some of the original posters will tell you, was very slow at first and has had it's ups and downs but we've kept at it and people use it and value it. I'm sure the LambsRoar forum will be the same.
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  wednesday

  I feel confused by all this. i thought the purpose of bill challlenging the WTS was to bring about change and to allow the SL to tell their stories. We are the people he went to bat for.

  . Well who are the abused supposed to talk to? JW? Sure they will help."Worldly" sources? they don't understand the unique plight the abused jw is in.I think i see that bill does not want to align himself with the xjw movement, but who are the lambs supoosed to talk to? Jw will not help them and many are DF.

  So where are the lambs supposed to go-if they go to jw, they will be further silenced and probably DF.

  And i do understand that there a jw that are abused that want to stay jw that were coming to the board. I guess they did not want any xjw influnence.I do understand, i hope jehovah will clean up this mess, and clean up this org.

  Ideally the WTS would have already seen the light and started to help abuse survivors themselfs. Then people would have a choice as to where to go for help.

  Edited by - wednesday on 15 December 2002 8:4:49
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  RevMalk

  Trauma: Not saying I'm holding anything against him, however, I'm usually an up front type of guy, and well he's frustrating me. :D

  I understand completely, and from what I can tell everyone has the same opinion. At least those of us that are not too afraid to speak up. I imagine there are some Bill followers that have been instructed not to give their opinion, or post on LRD. I know for a fact he's instructed his followers to stay away from here, so I imagine it's the same over there. It's a shame that these people have been used, abused, kept quite most of their lives, just to come out here and do it all over again. I'm not proud to say this, but not afraid anymore to say it. He worries me. I don't want to get bashed here, but I am just expressing my feelings I've had for a while now. Is silentlambs REALLY for the lambs? I mean everyone is upset by this and Mr. Bowen isn't flinching a bit, he's not wavering and he's not even giving answering us. At least the WBTS answers us! We may not like the answer, but they ALWAYS give us one. So what's happening here?

  Simon: The requests for assistance some time ago was a good idea but it doesn't appear that many of the offers of help sent were followed up. Trauma Hound says he offered to help and so did I but neither of us heard anything further.

  There are MANY more like you. You're definitely not alone in that.

  RevMalk has done a lot (most / all ?) of the work on the forums so I don't see that they have taken attention away from other things and like he said, has increased the traffic to the site.

  The thing is, I built the entire site. SLC from LRD, and some of her crew did the news section. Some pages I simply brought over from the old site and tried cleaning up a bit, but other than that I received no help from Bill or any of the huge amount of people he was supposed to be getting to help. The original plan was that I would build the 'shell', and give permissions to other people for each section. And I would build the forums. That never happened. No help came, and until Trauma said something I had no idea anyone volunteered, except those that volunteered to me for the news section. Once Trauma said something, people starting coming forward with these stories. Actually wait.....one other person had complained and then said forget it because he was sick of asking....so we lost him, that was about a month ago. I have a business to run, and my business has gone in the dumper, it will take alot of hard work to pull it out. I'll do it but it'll take alot. Bill's known this, but I never asked him for a dime. He knew I needed help, and didn't offer either. Now he tells me I'm all done (WHEW!) and the site is being moved from my server next week, all because I'm keeping the forums open. This is how serious he is about all this. There's no chance of him changing his mind on the forums, he's marked me as no good for silentlambs apparently. Now he's paying someone else to take care of it.....some local guy out there. Nice to see he has the money to pay that guy but couldn't at least get me some help so I could make money in my own business.

  As for the traffic, it's doubled since the forums have been in place, so how about that. And I'm not talking about hits just to the forums, all the pages. You can see by looking at the stats, that the visitors are mixing back and forth between the site pages and the forums. I tried to make sure the web pages and their content was mentioned in the forums, and vice versa, so that what bill is claiming DIDN'T happen. I didn't want to have people get stuck in the forums and not see the rest of the site. That's why we posted stories and news items and such with links to the different sections.

  Also, don't let that counter fool you. There has NOT been 205,000 visitors to that site. That counter does not count unique hits. Every time you log on it counts as a visit. it only received 7671 unique hits in November. In December since the boards have been up, and that's where the hits are coming from for the most part, he's received 9726 unique hits in 15 days. Now, as far as NON-unique hits are concerned, he's received 280717 hits in December to ALL pages, 274996 came from the message boards......The majority of the rest came from Simon's site, and then miscellaneous searches, and direct hits, and silentlambs.com (same counter on silentlambs.org and silentlambs.com). Alot of the hits silentlambs has came from after the dateline program, and then thousands of people hitting the site to see the counter go up......other than that it's an extremely LOW hitting site. It's not promoted well, it's not advertised, nothing. He asked me if my server could handle this traffic, I laughed. I said Bill, I have sites that get this many hits in a week or less (I own over 100 websites), many of which are web traffic exchanges, so yes, I can handle the traffic. Bill has made two major mistakes here:

  1. getting rid of the forums - for a enormous amount of reasons

  2. Firing me - I could have brought him to the top, just like I will LambsRoar.com

  Ok, I don't want to babble on and on here, so I'll move on now:

  Forum's are all about community building but it takes a long time to get a good forum established and pulling the plug because it doesn't match our own expectations after a very short period is very short-termism IMHO.

  Rome wasn't built in a day. Point blank......excellent point Simon.

  For example this site, as some of the original posters will tell you, was very slow at first and has had it's ups and downs but we've kept at it and people use it and value it. I'm sure the LambsRoar forum will be the same.

  Also a good example.....and this is the KING of ex-jw sites (no matter how much I complain, haha)

  WEDNESDAY :) - I feel confused by all this. i thought the purpose of bill challlenging the WTS was to bring about change and to allow the SL to tell their stories. We are the people he went to bat for.

  WEDNESDAY :), That would be the question of the week. I'm not holding my breath for an answer, but if you get one, please share!

  Ok, enough from "Rambling Rev" (G.R.I.T.S.:) I don't know how I ended up in a quote box, but here I am. I guess I'm not finished yet. I need to bring up one other thing. I may get bashed for this, I don't know. The silentlambs web design is my work, was created by me, built by me, etc. I've asked Bill to keep my copyright notices at the bottom of the pages (very small), and in the meta tags. I'm asking for this in writing, and I just want everything out in the open so it doesn't come back at me later. This is just business, and that's all (and Bill and I are still getting along BTW). It's standard procedure in donated work. However, if he completely changes the design, of course he can remove my 'Signature". One reason I'm insistent about this is because LambsRoar uses the same exact design, because I didn't want a total make-over just yet and freak everyone out. I need it known that it IS my work to cover my behind if you know what I mean. I know that's between Bill and I, but I wanted to bring it up because I know what happens when you don't. For instance if he refuses and the site goes back to the same thing it was before, I don't want anyone thinking I caused that to happen. It's not a big deal in my eyes, and he'll probably not have a problem with it, but just in case.

  Edited by - RevMalk on 15 December 2002 11:33:59

  (edited to correct the 'quote-in-quote' formatting only - Simon)

  Edited by - Simon on 15 December 2002 16:6:54
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  RevMalk

  I have to make another note. SLC from LRD has been instrumental in the creation of the site. She helps me every day with everything, she's been a good friend and a great help over at SL. I mentioned the News section, but she's done so much more!