Arethinn aTinderel

I gotta agree with them, though, that whoever actually designed the icons that go in that library, I mean, ugh. Changing the default icon was the very first thing I did too (and I think the first/only status update I\'ve ever posted here is to say \"AUGH WHAT IS THAT\", heh).

Generally it looks fine, although I don\'t see any real difference in look and feel compared to Wordpress.

I think you\'ll want to either change the size of the banner, or make the background behind it black or some kind of green, or something. The black rectangle in the middle of blue looks kind of odd.

I have a bogus friend request notification in the top toolbar. It shows a red circled \"1\" but when I click it, the actual Friend Requests page says I have none (as I would expect).

I can\'t upload an avatar. When I click Edit Avatar, the text on the page saying \"Upload a new avatar\" is not a link and there\'s no buttons. (might be as intended for now?)

Not sure about use of the term \"Blogs\". Why not \"Articles\", like on the Wordpress version? \"Blogs\" seems misleading, unless you really want people to start adding personal blog/journal posts, which doesn\'t seem to match what\'s currently in that section. (especially I would not love to see a bunch of twitter-sized posts... although that is probably unlikely given general levels of traffic :P ) Is it possible to have a separate section for the stuff that is really *articles* rather than blending it together?

I would like some more obvious labeling that the Chat link goes to Discord. I was expecting a Javascript chat module or something. (I can see why you want direct traffic to the existing Discord chat rather than having some kind of little Javascript box here, it was just a surprise since it wasn\'t labeled that way.)

I\'m uneasy about the idea of a Leaderboard. I\'m not sure whether it\'s more likely to inspire real content or spam/frivolous posting.

Is Settings > Configure your tools > Activity Tabs supposed to do anything yet? It looks blank. Also, if I try to get there by clicking \"Configure Activity Tabs\" from the Activity page, it attempts to go to testing.dreamhart. org/settings/plugins/arethinn but I just get the base settings page testing.dreamhart. org/settings/user/arethinn. (Should maybe be testing.dreamhart. org/settings/plugins/arethinn/mt_activity_tabs ?)

(sorry for the munged links, but the form kept telling me \"You have posted too many links\")

My browser tells me the security certificate is invalid, I guess because it\'s not good for that specific subdomain?

Hrrrm, well. I don't think you're going to find a lot of acceptance for physical shifting here, either.

I'm not sure what Shiro might have precisely meant by "The country’s laws doesn’t apply to kinmunity". You would need to provide more context. But if it was as regards "free speech", that only means the government is not allowed to restrict you. Most online communities are ultimately private spaces, and whoever owns it can decide what speech is and is not allowed.

What does that mean to you exactly, \"snake mindset\"?

forum.otherkinphenomena.org {otherkin} {boards are mostly private; unknown if active or not}

Not very active. There are occasional posts that are not me announcing meetups.

http://www.embracingmystery.org {otherkin & metaphysical} {seems abandoned}

Not abandoned at all. But again, not very active and a fair amount of the traffic is my meetup announcements.

I don\'t think there really are any anymore. Kinmunity is the one people tell me actually has activity these days (I\'m not a member) so if that\'s out, I dunno what to say. Werelist possibly, but I\'m not a member there either since as fae I figure I would be out of place. Otherkin Community used to be the most active one I personally am a member of, but Clodaus seems to have intent to close it down (though that hasn\'t actually manifested in the, uhh, five or six months since he announced it), and in any case posting there is barely a trickle, a lot of which is me announcing the SF Bay meetups every month. Same story for Embracing Mystery and Otherkin Phenomena, for the Otherkin communities on LJ and DW, Otherkin_haven on DW, any Yahoo group I can think of, and Elfinkind Digest (though it still exists). I fear the days of active online groups that are asynchronous (vs. Discord chats that everyone seems to be into these days) may be over, indeed have been for a while.

I don't know if it's that Wordpress only permits a certain comment thread depth or if it's not possible to reply to comments made by @otherkinnet for some reason, but there isn't a reply link on the post https://www.otherkin.net/2017/01/this-site/#comment-38, so:

Basically he seems to be of the opinion it's no longer useful because it does not have enough activity. He posted about it here https://otherkincommunity.net/topic9767 on November 18th, although that's not visible to non-members, so I'll extract a few key bits:

"As of the past couple of months, the Community has slowed to a halt---where we once had multiple daily registrations, we now have had one over the past couple of months. The forums are all but inactive. ... And so with all things considered, I feel that it's time to lay OKC to rest on December 1st, 2016. At that time, both otherkincommunity.net and otherkincommunity.org will be replaced with this message, and nothing else. The Otherkin Community, Inc. will be dissolved some time thereafter. ... I have considered my options over the years, and I have decided that an archive of OKC will not be made available. ... While many of the conversations on these forums are excellent resources and excellent first-hand accounts, they are also deeply personal experiences that should only be shared by those who experienced them; providing an everlasting archive to OKC would be almost like archiving everyone's family pictures and diaries in a museum. I don't find that to be appropriate. ... I will provide users with the option to export all personal data associated with their account, such as posts and PMs. More information will be provided on December 1st."

It's that last bit that seems to be taking a lot more time than he anticipated, so as of today, at least, everything is still operational. On November 30th he posted "a few more days" and then on January 17th said it had been "ambitious" to think he could get it done that quickly, and that's where we are (no further ETA).

I'm not aware of a move to hand the forum off to Seraphyna, although she has been the active mod for years while Clodaus was frequently absent for months or more at a time. He may have considered the option, but it seems it wasn't his final decision.

Unfortunately, not really. Otherkin email lists, forums, and journal communities have all steeply declined in activity over the past ten to fifteen years. The Otherkin Community forum, https://otherkincommunity.net/forums, for a while had been the most active one I personally was on, but Clodaus (the owner) announced last month he was going to shut it down and it's just sort of in limbo while he works on a way for people who want to to export their content. I hear Kinmunity https://www.kinmunity.com/ gets some activity but I am not a member and I cannot vouch for its goodness.

This incarnation of the site actually is fairly new. The domain was originally registered quite a long time ago now (2000, I think?) but it had been dormant in terms of activity for some years and then offline for a while before Jarandhel took it over from Malcolm. It also didn't used to have much user-to-user interaction like this, so even people that were familiar with it from before and glad to see it back might still be thinking of it more as a static resource.

This was originally written in the summer or fall of 1998 (when presumably I was going by the name Eshari, although I had a few others even then). It's actually not in the otherkin section of my site, but one of the poetry sections: http://eristic.net/poetry/mysticpoetry.php

I had more in mind the message of "Otherkin are here to heal/help the Earth" kind of thing...

I'm not sure whether I directly remember this being posted on one of the lists or whether my recollection of encountering this piece comes from digging around in archives somewhat after the fact (looking for things to add to the handwritten first edition of my Faery Miscellany, so still that would be 16 or 17 years ago), but I think it's interesting how this sort of sentiment would probably not fly (pun intended?) in today's community.