It's funny you should say that Trauma. I told him the same thing (hope that wasn't crossing the line). But I've heard you mention that in public before so I assumed it was ok......
RevMalk
JoinedPosts by RevMalk
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silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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RevMalk
He's paying someone to do the silentlambs website?!
So many people who give of their time and energy for free ...
Ya, wild eh?
What are you going to do with good ol' Bill? I gotta watch myself here. I don't want to become too outspoken, but he's now claiming that no-one has disagreed with him, and 3 people have thanked him. Was SLD that bad??
Anyway, I want to agree with TJ, it is nice of you to allow this discussion with no complaints, and I appreciate it, and I'm certain others do as well. You and I have been through some shaky (SP?) times (as you know), and this does prove what some claim, you are definitely a forgiving guy. Every Brit like this? What's a flat go for in London?? haha.
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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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RevMalk
Oh, sorry, I will edit that
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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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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!
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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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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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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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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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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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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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76
silentlambs board gets name change & new ...
by wednesday injust got an info e-mail from bill, board is going down dunday mn.
due to too much ngeative talk.
possible he says the rev may open another formum not associated with sl.bill says the effort needs to be concentrated on the coming court cases.
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RevMalk
Waiting,
I agree. Bill does have alot on his plate, and I didn't meant o make it appear like a statement 'against' him. My only point was that he had volunteers from everywhere, but no-one was given anything to do. Not saying that's his fault either, as his schedule probably didn't allow all this.
We definitley need major TV exposure.
I agree that the TV exposure is needed, and Bill is doing a great job in that department. I think the general public needs to be informaed on a local level as well though. I was talking with my wife, and she's a former Catholic. Her opinion is that these TV broadcasts go in one ear and out the other. She asked what I thought about the Catholic abuse cases, and what I've done for that. Nothing, my son will never be an altar boy. I think it sucks, but I'm not marching against them. So it's the same with most people in the general public. Oh, JW abuse....oh well, I'm not a JW. What they fail to realize is that this differs from the Catholics. These people are knocking on OUR doors.....you have to pound this into their heads. I own an advertsing agency, and the key rule in advertising is it takes, on average, 6-8 REPEATED times of hearing an ad before someone makes a move on it, even if they were interested in the first place! That's why running a newspaper ad once a month in the Sunday paper does absolutely nothing. It's also why Mcdonald's pays billions of dollars to have 1/3 of the commercial spots you see on TV. You never know when this is going to click in their heads. It might when they see dateline, or it might not. You had a shot and hope you get a ton of people interested, but it's all a gamble.
So, as much as I'm in agreement on the TV exposure, short of having regular repeated commercials, I really don't see it doing alot towards the ultimate goal (As far as public knowledge is concerned). The general public needs to be aware, and taught on a regular basis, and there's a million and one ways to accomplish that, but who's going to do it?
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* silentlambs discussion forums: NEWS!! *
by Focus inplease see: http://www.lambsroar.com/board/viewtopic.php?p=1387#1387.
posted: fri dec 13, 2002 1:54 pm post subject: silentlambs forums to be terminated .
i am sad to announce the silentlambs discussion forums will be terminated as of midnight sunday.
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RevMalk
Well thank you Dana, but I'd like to stress that I am not looking to take anything on. I merely did what I could do to keep the boards from being closed. It's up to all of us who care now to do what we can do. I'm not looking to be any sort of.......well, anything.....I had 14 minutes to stop this and to make a split second decision, and that's what I did. Now I'm hoping that people will care enough to keep it going. If they don't, then perhaps it didn't need to be at all. The boards will remain no matter what, even if it's there as an archive of the hard work some have put into it over the past 5 weeks or so. Alot of people posted information I feel is valuable to those Abuse Survivors and those that support the cause. We'll just have to see where it goes from here.
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* silentlambs discussion forums: NEWS!! *
by Focus inplease see: http://www.lambsroar.com/board/viewtopic.php?p=1387#1387.
posted: fri dec 13, 2002 1:54 pm post subject: silentlambs forums to be terminated .
i am sad to announce the silentlambs discussion forums will be terminated as of midnight sunday.
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RevMalk
I agree.