People are coming and leaving, websites are being created and closed. This
is a natural circle of life of our little online psionics community. Our
community is like a forum – a guest is entering it, he is looking at stats
and he can see that even if there is a lot of members, this forum is not
active – it is dead, because members aren’t posting. As a result, our
guest is living forum, because he see that no one is working for better
future.

There are many people out there who thinks, they can’t change anything,
and their opinion is not important. There are also people, who thinks
managing, moderating and advertising a webiste is up to
administrator/owner only. This way of thinking is wrong.

I’m afraid that many members of our community forget, that our online
psionics community is consist not only of websites, but also of members –
real people, living in different parts of our world. Community can’t exist
without members, therefore you are – as a member – a part of community –
you’re creating it. As a result, ensuring an active psionics community is
your responsibility too!

As a community members, we need to change our way of thinking – websites
owners need to start listen to members opinions, and members need to start
working actively for their websites. „Don’t ask what community can do for
you, ask what you can do for community” – if you can code, maybe you can
help your administrator managing website. If you’re skilled in Photoshop,
you can create some banners or layout. Even if you’re just a normal user,
you can help in advertising your website – in both offline and online ways.

Administrators and websites owners need to start accepting help from their
webistes users – because as website administrator – you can’t do
everything yourself. You need help, and users can help – but users need to
want to help . So start working for websites you’re active on, do this
for our community, for these websites and for yourself – we need to work
hard in order to build a better future – without work, we can’t do
anything.

Tassadar Thion is a large contributor to this blog, and the webmaster of the Tassadar Archive, A State of Mind, and The Psionic Articles Directory.

It seems that it may not be so. It is necessary stage in the development of a psion. Few accomplished psions skip the fluffy stage. I went through it, and every other psion I have asked has gone through their fluffy stage.

Why does everyone go through it? Many times, a psion will make their first psiball, then have something very advanced happen. For example, they are sitting in their room, trying to create another psiball and a piece of paper flies across their room. They ignore the fact that they had the fan on and nothing was pinning it down. They convince themselves that they are geisting and post it all over various forums. Many of these forums won’t think to ask if there were any other causes, assuming that it’s common sense to catch these things, so they reinforce the new psions belief that they were geisting. The psion then begins to convince himself that he has a whole slew of other skills. This type is generally ended by the psion being scanned by someone and them telling them that they don’t have these abilities, or someone bursting their bubble.

The second type of fluffer is a person who knows 100% that they can’t do any of these abilities. They are a type of internet troll, and it is generally because of self-esteem problems. Basically they go, and read as many articles and forum posts as they can, and project this feeling of intelligence around them. They gain status in the psionic community, and even write articles! These are the most troublesome type of fluffy, because they have the whole community wrapped around their little finger.

Then you have the last type of fluffy. They are a hybrid of the first two, basically they start of as the second type but morph into the first. They start by making up their psionic reputation, but these people are actually trying on the side. They make a psiball and go through the steps of the first type of fluff. They convince themselves that this is actually happening, and create articles and methods that they think work. They may work for other people, and this person can relate. This type of fluffer does a lot of front-loading (when you suggest things to force AOL in another psion). It becomes an art.

The first version of fluff is the one that many victims can easily recover from. The last is harder, but still possible. It’s the second one that causes so many problems. If you decide to admit that you have been lying, people will find it hard to forgive you. Most likely you will be totally shunned from the psionic community. This forces people to keep fluffing.

Dealing with fluff is hard as well. Every case is different. Generally the first type of fluffer will be persuaded through proof. The third and second forms of fluff are unfortunately very hard to shake. The only way I have seen someone shaked from this path is by public humiliation. Someone usually finds out in some way, and posts it all over the place. Basically they make the psion’s empire crash down around their ears. This will either shake them, or banish them out of the psionics community.

I know. This got way off of the original topic, but hey, it’s a blog. That’s what happens I guess. This is fun. I’ll definitely keep up with this.

Notice that I am making this post about the OEC, not about the OPC (Online Psionics Community). This includes members of other practises (Ki, magic, etc.) I want to talk about everyone here for a minute, but before we talk about the current state I’d like to talk a bit about the history of the OEC.

Psionics isn’t really that old. It dates back to the ’80s. Maybe earlier. Before that so-called “normal” people didn’t bother themselves with these things. During the ’60s, during the Hippie movement in the USA, alternative spiritualities became popular, but only with the “weirdos.” These people created the basis for the OEC today.

Well, okay, psionics has been around even longer than that. Scientists have been messing around with this sort of thing for years. In fact, psi is a term that was coined by B.P. Wiesner and Robert H. Thouless in 1942. Once again, these aren’t “normal” people. They are scientists.

Many practitioners of psionics started off from watching Star Wars, and other sci-fi films. The hero’s had amazing abilities that no one else could comprehend. Then the to-be psion has some experience that is like in the movies. They then find other people interested in this sort of stuff, and start communities, like Psipog. That is why there was such a boom in psionics from the Star Wars movies.

The other big boom? Psipog’s closing. When they closed 2836 psions had to find new homes, on various sites. The problem was, there were few sites out there. Excuse me, few good sites out there. There were plenty of crap ones. A few people just gave up and got lives…how silly (R.I.P. NI), and everyone else searched for another site to join. This forced the creation of many new sites. The best sites were made when someone made a site, and people from the pog flocked to it. By doing this it forced upgrades and made great sites. Then the newbies came there. Boom…new communities everywhere.

«Ooops…I just spent half the post in an introduction. lol»

Currently the psionic community has forced to believe that we are in a crisis. You hear about it everywhere! The problem is, there isn’t a problem! We are just coming of the high (can’t believe it took us years, that says something in itself) of Psipog closing.

It feels like a crisis because few psions were around before Star Wars. The ones that were have left the community (the psionics community is filled with mostly teenagers anyway). Before Star Wars we were right where we are now. There was just much more pioneering in the field than there is now. Star Wars brought in many new people, then the closing of Psipog, and the three new Star Wars movies. It was all piled on top of one another.

As I said in my previous post, EVERYONE want’s a p.site. Not everyone can have one, sadly enough. The currently well established sites were the result of hard work, and really great luck. Struggling webmasters, just wait. There will be another site closing soon enough. Just wait for a site to get as big as Psipog. Soon afterwards it will close. Then we’ll be able to do this all again!

I can hear the argument already, “no site is going to get as big as them, all the sites are getting smaller!” Yes, that’s true. All the current sites are smaller. This is for the same reason I have previously stressed. There is no hugely popular sci-fi series or books or films out yet. Just wait. There will be something eventually.

So what do you guys think about the length of my posts? I’m trying to make sure that they are around 600 words.

To begin with, create a “main idea” of your site. It needs a focus. General p.sites never do well. Want to know why? Because it is totally IMPOSSIBLE to create that much content on one site. You’d need 2-3 articles per subject, and that’s just more subjects than one person can handle.

Next, you need content. It generally looks better if you (the owner) create most of the content. If other people contribute an article or two, that’s okay, just don’t totally rely on someone else to control your content. Everyone wants a forum where people can give feedback etc. but they skip ahead. You can’t do that! You have GOT to come up with content first. When writing your content, please be careful. Don’t use txt talk, or leet. You need to write as if you will be graded. The goal is to edit it to the point where you get an A, don’t settle for a B. Put spaces between your paragraphs, not indentions. Indentions are fine in a book, but when writing for the internet, it makes it look like a long block of text. No one wants to decipher that, believe me.

The next most important thing is colours/font. Make your p.site aesthetically pleasing. Don’t make me want to run screaming, in the other direction. If I can’t read your content I will leave. It’s as simple as that. If no one will read your articles, it doesn’t matter how many you have, your site will fail.

Put your forum in a good place. Don’t try to code your own forum. For the most part they turn out ugly, or complicated to use. Don’t create your own template. This will either take you hours (which is time taken away from writing valuable content) or turn out disgusting. Believe me. This is why I discourage beginners from using Proboards. It forces you to make your own layout. Chose something easier, like Takeforum or BoardZero. When making the boards, limit yourself to about 25. Over that, you will have an endless wall of boards that will never get posted in. Sub-boards are your friend. That way you can have your 25 boards but it will look like you only have 15. Each board needs a post telling what is to be posted in the board, and at least one post to start conversation.

Down to the hardest thing for most people; advertising. There are two basic ways to advertise: spam as many boards as possible, or become an active member of as many boards as possible then add the site’s link to your signature and make ONE post in the APPROPRIATE board. The first one seems easier, but it’s not. Spammers are discouraged (as I’m sure you know). Most people are members of more than one forum, so if they see your spam, they’ll warn all their other communities that you might be coming with spam. So it will get instantly deleted.

Oh wow. This post went really fast! I hope I helped a little. :p