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May 5th, 2007 by Sean PsiPog Postmortem

It’s been 9 months since I announced I would be archiving PsiPog.net, and about 4 months since the last PK Party. I figured a postmortem would be appropriate.

The story of PsiPog.net is such a long one, that I could probably write a small book on the subject. So I’m going to break down this postmortem into logical chapters of PsiPog’s life, and go over each.

1. The Beginning

The beginning was a lot of fun. I wish I could go back and just observe it all over again. I was young (15-17), and had no clue what I was doing (don’t worry, I still don’t have a clue :-P). We had a great community at Dimensional-Doorways.com. I think the reason their forum was so popular was because it was one of the first links to come up if you did a search for “psychic forum” or something like that. I rarely spent time surfing the website - 95% of my time was spent on the forum, and that’s how I found the site.

This is where I met Rainsong (RainTurtle) and Nazarak (KMiller). This is also where I eventually met Not_Important (NI). Plus a bunch of other really cool people. Every once in a while I’ll still get e-mails saying, “Hey Peebrain, remember me? It’s X - we met at DD.”

During this time period, I tried everything in psionics. I remember printing out and reading Active Psy (which used to be called Playful Psychic), and trying all the exercises, for months on end. I remember when I first started my training with OBEs. And I remember my first OBE - and afterwards, walking downstairs in complete shock, telling my parents what I experienced - and them probably thinking I was completely nuts :-). I also remember playing GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64, which I had gotten for Christmas :-).

PsiPog grew, mostly I think due to good fun information, an active forum, and our impatience with fluff bunnies.

2. Poor Decisions

It seems like almost overnight PsiPog grew to a much larger community. I was around 18 and 19 years old, and had to deal with some really perplexing situations. With zero experience, I made some really bad decisions.

The worst decision was buying into the mentality of: “This is my website, if you don’t like what we do, then leave.” It’s a legitimate idea - I certainly shouldn’t bend over backwards to try and please everyone. But I took the idea to the extreme. It was basically a free for all. If I didn’t like something, or one of the authors had a complaint… we were right. No matter what. The reason we were right was because it was my website. The logic was simple, but it was insanely unrealistic :-).

This idea - while it pissed a lot of people off - I think a lot of people also liked it. Strangely, it might have added to PsiPog’s popularity, because we were such assholes that people HAD to pay attention to us. We were the cool kids. You could be cool with us, or you could be a loser. Your pick.

It probably played on an emotional level with everyone, including ourselves. Let’s face it - we were talking about creating energy balls, telekinesis, and reading minds. Chances are we, and the people who visited PsiPog, weren’t the most popular kids in high-school. Since the vast majority of everyone was around 14-20 years old, maturity wasn’t in our favor - hey, PsiPog is cool, and you want to be cool, right? As outcasts, we promised other outcasts the opportunity to be cool. Perhaps this is another reason why we grew.

Lots of regrets in this time period. Lots of really bad decisions. Oh well. Live and learn, I suppose. For example, we had formed a couple of secret groups that did psychic combat. Now obviously, psychic combat wasn’t allowed to be discussed on PsiPog.net, but that didn’t stop us from trying it out by ourselves. It was fun until we realized it was real :-P. Then it wasn’t fun for the overwhelming majority of us. A lot of the authors left PsiPog.net, and removed their articles. That sucked.

3. Regroup

With the authors splitting, I decided to try and refocus my attention back towards the good things PsiPog.net had to offer. New articles, created the Q&A section, better chat, seminars, PK Parties, new Media, etc. The good thing about making so many bad decisions, and having them blow up in your face, is that there’s so much to learn from it. It also gives you an opportunity to sit down and rethink what it’s all about.

I tried to make the logical and best decisions at this point. I tried to be fair, and repair the damage that was done by the bad decisions of the past. I think I succeeded for the most part :-). Looking back, I think I did a pretty good job here. Granted, this good job is overshadowed by the extremely piss poor job before it :-P. Nonetheless, I’m happy with it.

There was a lot of development at this time. Probably the most work got done during this time period. At first I wasn’t sure if things would get better, but I just kept working hard, and refused to shut the website down. I figured that the reason we succeeded in the past was because the website simply didn’t shut down - so I decided that no matter what happens, I’ll just keep the website up. If it doesn’t go away, and I continue to work hard on it, then it’ll improve. Simple as that.

4. The Golden Age

I think the Golden Age of PsiPog started after I got out of Basic Training for the Air Force, in May of 2005. This was when we adopted the idea of: fair rules! My goodness what a great idea :-P. We also removed the restriction of using the PsiPog Client for the chat room, which was a huge step.

The reason getting rid of the PsiPog Client was a good decision was because of something most of you didn’t see. The new banning system. In the past, the banning system was extremely crappy. It was effective, and it worked pretty good, but the way it was used encouraged abuse of power. There was no accountability. Anyone could add a ban, for any reason, and it wasn’t really questioned.

With the new banning system, I wanted to “do it right”. I took the lessons from the old banning system, and created a new system where each mod used their PsiPog.net account to access it. When they added a ban, it recorded WHO added the ban, what time, and left a comment area for mods to post WHY they left the ban - preferably with logs. All this was available to the other mods to check. In effect - we policed each other.

It also had temporary bans programmed into it. This meant, as a mod, you could set whether the ban was permanent or temporary. If it was temporary, then the script would remove the ban automatically. In the past, we had to manually search all the bans, and see which ones we wrote should be temporary, and remove them by hand. Which never happened. So even the temporary bans were permanent in the old system.

Also, an important switch was to make the default ban be temporary. Meaning that if someone pissed a mod off, we shouldn’t ban them permanently right then and there, no matter how stupid they acted. The system was a lot more forgiving.

The only bad thing about the system was that when a ban was removed, it was removed. Meaning that I should have made it so that when a ban was removed, it would still remain in the system - just disabled. That would have allowed us to see whether someone was a repeat offender a lot easier, instead of relying on memory. Oh well. That was my only issue with it.

When the forums came online at PsiPogBB.net, I followed the same idea. Simple fair rules, with accountability. The default action - instead of banning or thread deletion - would be to lock the thread. This made mods accountable to the community. The community could police the mods, and the mods could police each other. I instructed the mods to add a reason at the end of the post, as to why they locked the thread.

Lessons to be Learned

Overall, the best lessons to be learned were mostly explained in the previous paragraphs. If power is unchecked, then bad decisions follow. So: make people with power more accountable for their actions than the average user.

It’s important for everyone to realize that it’s human to abuse power. When you’re sitting on the side lines, it’s easy to look at someone with power, and tell them how they’re abusing it. But when YOU are the one with that power, it’s a completely different story. It takes a lot of self control to use power wisely. And you will make mistakes. Which is why it’s insanely important to set up a system where people police each other.

I’m not perfect. Even in the Golden Age, I made some mistakes on the forums. But since I made a system where I encouraged my mods to police me - it was caught by them.

It’s important to separate the rules from the rulers. Make the rules public. And make the rules above the rulers. Even the leader :-P. This is tough, especially when you work for years and years on something, only to have some pissant tell you you broke your own rules :-P. And then having to admit that they are right, and that you’re sorry. It’s tough. But it’s correct.

It’s also tough to tell your friend that their ban is too harsh, and that they need to step back and rethink it. I’m sure it was very hard for my mods to come to me and say, “Hey Peebrain, what you did was wrong. These are the reasons why:”. It’s hard to take criticism from a friend, and not take it personally. To keep in mind that they are looking out for your best interests, even if that means making you temporarily angry.

Another important lesson was actually seeing how good people could be convinced to do bad things. How a good person can be manipulated by someone else, and also how they manipulate themselves, in order to convince themselves it’s ok to do something immoral. We really mind-fucked ourselves to say it was ok to do psychic combat. I’m glad we overcame our self-delusion, and it stopped before it became too serious. Good lessons.

Sure I have regrets about how I ran PsiPog, but overall - I’d do it again. If I hadn’t have made those mistakes, I couldn’t have grasped these important lessons otherwise. I feel lucky to have learned these lessons early in my life. They will serve me for the remaining time :-).

I recommend everyone put a lot of heart into a project, for a long period of time. Whether it be a website, or band, or politics, or health, or whatever else. Do what interests you, and work hard. You’ll make mistakes, but it’s worth it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 11:11 am and is filed under Random Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

### 14 Responses to “PsiPog Postmortem”

1. ares Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

   sean, you diffinatly learned a lot with psipog, and i feel we are lucky to have you sharing your experience and adding it to the quality ALW,
   keep up the good work…

2. Gumby Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

   Neato. I like reading PsiPog stories.

3. Mad Hatter Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 7:20 pm

   Hey Peebs,

   It’s good to see your new site up, I’ve been looking forward to it! I just posted about your new site acutally. I was waiting for that email from that yahoo group about the opening of the site, but I didn’t get it or it got junked. Either way, I’m glad I stumbled onto this site now!

   Looking forward to discussing OBE’s, Lucid Dreams, and Psi with you again!

   -Hatter

4. Dreaming to Infinity Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

   The New Psipog Is Up and Running…

   I have just now become aware that Peebrain, the administrator of the now archived PsiPog has finally started putting content up on his new site, a little weird. He decided to put up a wordpress blog and start blogging until he gets the rest of the site…

5. NeoPsychic Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 7:30 pm

   Wow, I really didn’t know psipog was that bad in the beginning. Well, psipog was fun, and alittle weird works perfect as an “after site”. Once you read the articles and try just about everything there really isn’t much to turn to.

6. Eldibs Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 8:14 pm

   Personally, I wasn’t around for the whole “agree, shut up, or leave the site” attitude. By the time I had joined, it was closer to “if you disagree, you had better have a good reason. Otherwise shut up or leave.”

   It’s nice to see you’ve got your new site running, though.

7. Sean Says:
   May 5th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

   Hey Mad Hatter :-),
   I sent out a notice on the mailing list:

   http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/alittleweird/message/1

   Not sure why you didn’t get it. Oh well, good to see you :-).

   ~Sean

8. Daemon Says:
   May 6th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

   A nice read, but doesn’t mean much to me as I never got involved (like a week to late

9. JediKaren Says:
   May 6th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

   There were some rules that definitly bugged me, but you know what? I’m glad you had that “If you don’t like the way my site is run, make your own”. I made my own, swearing to someday make my site worth something and I did. I guess I thought I could get close to competing, and while I still haven’t, I’ve come a long way. So, in a strange turn around way, I thank you. Plus, I completely understand some of the mistakes you made. I’ve made a few myself.

10. dominator691 Says:
    May 6th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

    wow I have to say that reference to goldeneye 007 made my day haha. Even though I was only at psipog for a year until it was archived I think that I learned a lot about psionics and also many life lessons as well. Psipog helped me to understand that the world is a much more mysterious place then people have lead on. It was also great to hear about the beginnings of psipog before I even found it.

11. stony1205 Says:
    May 7th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

    Nice post, Sean. Its great to see ALW up and running, and I plan on resuming my mod-ness if you ever need it.

    I had just a few notes on what you posted today. I would have to agree with a quote Anniesocks gave just before she left when she was asked what she would say when she left PsiPog:

    “It was a hell of a ride. Bye.” After which she proceeded to say “now shut up and leave me alone”. In any case, I had an awesome time at Pog. Though, I do have to disagree with you in some aspects.

    I personally think the “downfall” of the community actually occurred during your “Golden Age”. I personally thought that the amount of intelligent content actually dropped during this time. Sure, the forums were propagated with questions and conversation, but how much of it was actually really, really interesting? I felt that the “stupid noob” questions were actually proliferating at very fast rates. It was after you started the “fair rules” thing that I felt the community shift, even more so perhaps than after PsiSoldier.

    The “oldies” left and every week a flock of new people came in, usually one just as stupid as the other. All the friends I had made over the years either grew up or got tired of the new feel of the community. I’m not saying you did a poor job, I’m just saying the bond that the community shared ended up being kaput.

    But despite the fact that I felt the community was lacking near the end, I really think PsiPog did its job. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. PsiPog taught me how to start and run my own website, and now PsiOnline is actually becoming a well known name. I actually owe you a very large thanks, Sean. You’ve helped me out a lot, and I’m not sure how I could pay you back.

    I’ll be visiting ALW, lets hope this place is just as great a sucess, and its community just as warm and welcoming as I saw PsiPog’s in the “good old days”.

    ~ Stony1205, Webmaster of PsiOnline.org

12. hotfoot982 Says:
    May 14th, 2007 at 10:21 pm

    Well PB/Sean.

    I meant to write this to you on your old blog:

    Aw man:(.
    You were and still are such a great guy and I think that everyone could agree on that.
    I am still young and want to experiment more with everything. I guess you have matured and found your place. Maybe thats what happens to all of us sooner or later.
    I believe you are amazing at all parapsychology.
    You have helped tons of people achieve the goal that you wanted to, I’d just wish you would stick around with psipog.
    Well good luck!

    Don’t let psipog go!

    - hotfoot982

13. Renodin Says:
    May 17th, 2007 at 9:48 pm

    I never heard of psipog until it was already archived. It was late 2006. I read a lot of the articles and learned a lot of cool stuff. I just feel really uncomfortable going to old web sites(and old places)that are no longer ever visited. Maybe psipog is still visited, but how would I know? Anyway, I was bored and I thought “Maybe A little weird is open now” and so I came here, expecting to see just the homepage and nothings else. I was suprised to see all this already done.

14. psionicstorm Says:
    June 20th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    what the heck? dude, there were older articles that were removed? O.o :*(

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