Current Activity Level, Feedback & Suggestions

[Thorburn]

Sadly, the forum is just as silent as Skadi is...

Thanks everyone for the interesting input, although I didn't have time yet to read all of them.

As to lack of activity, this is a vicious circle. A forum needs a core group of at least 5-10 highly active contributors and another bunch of maybe 10-20 regular contributors. At some stage, we have fallen clearly below this threshold due to a multitude of reasons (closure for a longer period of time being the most important), and since then it has become gradually more and more silent.

There is not really much reason at the moment why many people would like to go regularly to Skadi (not to mention to hang out there for a longer period of time), because nobody posts and discusses interesting news, must-see videos, recommends cool music, or shares gems from the Internet, etc.; and due to lack of active members, little discussion on such issues happens. In addition, there has been nobody in the last years who invites suitable people over from other forums and from social networks (and at the moment, this wouldn't even make much sense, because nothing is happening here).

This vicious circle can only be broken by a group of dedicated members who actively and consciously recreate activity. We have gone through such a phase already at least once in summer/autumn 2003 (and probably a few other times, when I wasn't around).

Bringing the forum software up to standards is a first and necessary step to create the necessary prerequisites that enable us to rekindle activity. Because a forum must feel good and be easy to use by today's standards. In Skadi's case, we can still be fortunate because its huge database pulls in thousands of people from Google every day. Until recently, more than half of our database wasn't even re-spidered by Google, and the process is still not complete.

But it will need a core group of dedicated members that consciously recreates activity for a period of two, three months; once a certain threshold is reached, people will automatically return more often because they always find interesting gems when going to Skadi; because they began to post in one of the discussions themselves and are now curious whether someone replied; because they have met new people and need to check their PMs; etc.

Lots of people (including myself) are going primarily to alternative YouTube channels now for news, because the video format is highly attractive, and because one can easily reach tens of thousands of people on YouTube with a decent video. But watching videos isn't interaction either; many people would still love to get in contact with like-minded individuals and to discuss the issues at hand, and the YouTube comment section is very ill-suited to make this happen; after 24 hours, the 'discussions' there are irrelevant, nobody replies anymore, and one can't learn anyone to know there either.

So one could, for example, direct people here from the discussion section of suited new videos, once there is again more activity on Skadi. This would be even more effective if a corresponding discussion thread has already been created. One has to be aware that most people do not even know that something like Skadi exists.

So there will be a whole package of measures that are needed to make the forum active again; some are of a technical nature, some concern the moderation of the forum, and others need to be implemented by dedicated regulars and funding members. We will discuss many of these measures and ideas in more detail here and, when applicable, in the open sections, once the upgrades have been finalized and Skadi looks like Skadi again. And we would love to hear your input and ideas. We would definitely appreciate the active support of everyone who happens to have a bit of free time within the next six to twelve months.

Once a certain threshold will have been reached, the forum will be absolutely self-sustaining again and continue to grow, without that staff and regulars need to create activity consciously each and every day.

[Blod og Jord]

I think we could all try to contribute a bit more to change activity levels. As Thorburn say, forums always have phases of struggle with activity. My issue is that my English isn't that good and confident for me to join complex debates but I'll try to post more and add articles. If everyone contribute a little bit, the activity would change. Let's try to set goals, even if we don't do it daily.

I think it's also a good idea to have feedback from regular and funding member. But of course if we want activity we should also ourselves participate. Let's try to make improvements.

[Siebenbürgerin]

Skadi has been dear to me as well so I'll try to give some feedback from a user's point of view. Unfortunately, I think the activity levels but also the quantity-quality ratio and friendliness ratio of the site has stagnated a little bit. For me, when I think back at my favorite moments on Skadi, I remember the Althing era and the time after the Althing was merged into Skadi, when we had an active and quite diverse membership and a rich debate topic. Sadly, much of that has been lost today and Skadi sometimes seems sometime indeed like a ghost town.

In my view, there have been a few things that could have lead to the current stagnation levels. But it's just a speculation, some user's perspective might not coincide with mine. The general atmosphere of the forum used to be warm, friendly and tolerant, open to other Germanic perspectives and learning. Cliques existed but there was diversity and balance because there was a richer userbase. Now it has changed a little bit and we have less users and the debate level has also dropped. There is more aggressivity, especially towards differing views. I noticed it in the Christianity thread how Christian Germanics were attacked and ridiculed. I've to agree with Norman Pride, the peoples who aren't radicalised towards a certain direction are seen as enemies or unworthy for the goal of Germanic preservation. There are some discussions about race and many news topics about non-Germanic immigrants but less about Germanic cultures. That's one aspect I miss learning about compared to the old Skadi.

As NP mentions, the mass deletion of hundreds of membership's posts from last year was a significant blow and not only because relevant posts were also removed, but because no one was consulted or informed about it. Even other staff members weren't aware of the happenings. I was shocked to see a lack of empathy from the staff member involved. Instead, emotions were seen as an inferiority. But in the end, humans are emotional beings and if the emotional connection to the community severs, peoples are less likely to return and contribute. When peoples feel like their opinions, their contributions and themselves aren't valued, they no longer spend time or donations on the site.

I'm not trying to be overtly negativistic myself, but I miss the old community...

[SpearBrave]

I don't think there is any type of bullying or exclusion between members. Skadi after having been down for several years is on a slow recovery. We as members can change this by posting more and taking just an hour or so a week to search out new topics for new threads. You can also post in a way that invites response in a none hateful manner.

On the issue of Christians seeming like they are outcast or anti-Germanic, I don't see at least on Skadi. In real life the opposite is true especially if you live in the "bible belt" area of the US. All organized religions should be questioned they can be very harmful and overbearing.

[Nachtengel]

Have you read the Apricity? People here express themselves much more respectfully and cordially. Of course sometimes debates get a bit heated, but I've hardly seen any insults or name calling.

That said, I agree about the indiscriminate cleaning and deleting of posts. I actually wanted to mention this before, but then totally forgot about it - I've noticed that the overall thread and post count of the board seems to stagnate or even go down rather than up. At some point, the thread count was over 78.000 and post count over 835.000 (not certain if simultaneously though). Is there a glitch in the software or is someone continuing to delete threads behind the scenes? Understandably some threads need to be deleted (non-Germanics, trolls, spammers, broken links, lost attachments, etc.) but when the growth is negative despite the fact that new threads are posted every day you start to wonder. There are about 2.000-5.000 posts missing. Surely not all of them are junk? It definitely adds to the "ghost town" feeling of inactivity, I'll say...

Maybe we could keep track of the thread and postcount to see if this is just an impression or a fact?

Today, March 8th:

Topics: 76,843 Posts: 830,065

[Bärin]

I do agree with Siebenbürgerin that Skadi has lost its community feeling. I didn't fund Skadi anymore or frequent as usual due to two main reasons:

a) the tolerance for some non- and anti-Germanics (like Catterick), the tolerance for disdain for core Germanic values like nationalism, motherhood, family, monogamy, promotion of class hatred (I've read a lot of disdain towards "commoners")
b) the carelessness, indifference and inactivity of the staff members. Not all obviously, but many.

But I will try to give Skadi another chance and contribute now and then, although I'm not too crazy about the new format.

[Norman Pride]

Where have you seen this? The thread you mentioned was even started by a woman and most everyone here does not agree with it. Furthermore "Anglin" and anything Germanic should not even be mentioned in the same sentence. Not only do I think he is mixed race but he is a worthless inept gimp with psychological issues. Even if we set aside his questionable ancestry, he was also involved with mongoloid and whatever other race females.

Several threads and just the atmosphere in general. Several threads in the Men, Women & Relationships forum where a lot is blamed on women. Some men would go as far as dating non-Germanic women because they're more "traditional". Eastern Europeans or Asians were mentioned. The thread about "White Sharia", raping women into submission and taking sex slaves. Another example off the top of my head was the "Norway in WWII" thread, where it was made clear on behalf of a few members that women's perspectives are ignorant and undesirable. If women challenge this trend, they get lumped in with feminists, communists and whatnot. Misogyny is also not limited to men, there are women who share it, nothing new.

A good many of our members are women and they won't post with regularity somewhere they're made to feel second class. The same goes for posters who aren't radical. I contributed financially to Skadi because I wanted to help with raising funds for the upgrade, but shortly after I was accused of "spreading anti-white" or "communist" propaganda and feared for my account being rendered inactive. And if you have to constantly walk on eggshells, you don't really feel like contributing much anymore.

[Bernhard]

I'm not as active lately largely due to issues in my personal and professional life. But whenever I do return I do not find much that would make me return more often, like it was the case in other times. This is partly because of lower activity, but probably more because of the type of discussions and posts I encounter. Of course the activity problem is a vicious circle, but I think we can point to at least one element that is crucial, which I derive purely from my own perspective though.

The difference for me lies in the quality of the posts. Skadi Forum still keeps up with a lot of trends, I can still find links to interesting articles, to news I wouldn't encounter elsewhere. That's not the problem. The problem is mostly the lack of discussion which is the result of a lack of quality in posts. With a lack of quality I mean that posts don't touch upon the essential elements of a certain topic. A lot of topics that might give rise to interesting discussions die because of the commonplace reactions. These are reactions that do not engage with the specific nature of the topic, but draw the topic into a more general domain, making this specific topic redundant. If for example there is a topic about, say, ISIS posing as refugees to enter Europe in order to attack us from the inside (a well known strategy), this could lead to a thread where we discuss this specific phenomenon. People could reply by documenting proof that this strategy is in fact used by ISIS (there are documents), by showing the statistical proof that it already happens (referring to the amount of 'refugees' among perpetrators of terrorist attacks in Europe so far) and pointing out how policy in Europe fails to address this. The discussion could then continue to show how the most fundamental understanding of the state, monopoly of violence, is breaking down, begging the question as to why such a state has a right to exist at all. This thread would provide a lot of data plus theoretical reflection of it and this would be the result of participants of the discussion engaging with this very specific topic. Yet what would rather happen is that the first reply is something along the lines of "this happens because Jews/liberals/marxists want to destroy our culture/white genocide/anti-Germanic/...". And that's it. It's not so much the content that is problematic here, but the fact that this is a commonplace notion that could be a reaction to any article on this website (and often is). It prevents the specific topic from turning into a discussion that actually adds something to what we already know or presume to know.

Perhaps related to this is also the influence of the broader Alt-Right movement. There are many interesting developments in this movement, but I notice that we tend to focus on it too much, resulting in us loosing our specific character. The tone and replies on Skadi slowly started to resemble this broader and perhaps more popular Alt Right movement; logically this would make a forum (which already needs to fight for its existence because it is 'old fashioned') redundant. Part of this is illustrated by a more sloganesque style in which Germanic preservationism starts to resemble a kind of cult. But it's also expressed by the lack of Germanicness. I notice that, in contrast with the past, there is far more 'white nationalist' rhetoric on here and less discussions about what it means to be Germanic. The Germanicness is only formal in nature, in the sense that non-Germanics are not allowed on here. But besides that, politically it becomes harder and harder to see why this board actually is Germanic in the first place. I think this is an Alt Right influence as well, as it generally does not deal with meta-ethnical sub-divisions within the 'white' category.

So some more concrete suggestions. I think we should focus less on general Alt-Right topics (unless to contribute to our own mission) and start to rediscover the type of discussions that made Skadi great in the first place. Second, we should in each thread try to uncover what the specific thread adds to the board and focus on that, instead of repeating the same phrases in every thread, making all of them redundant and boring. Third, this also means, as a way of stimulating interesting discussions, not to be 'narrow minded' (without any of the liberal connotation this phrase has). There are a lot of interesting topics that could lead to a better understanding of what it really means to be Germanic, yet tend to be seen as taboos because of this narrow and formalistic understanding of Germanicness.
I think in all of these instances, Staff members should take the first steps and improve the board by setting an example. Staff members are a factor of continuity for a board and some self criticism in this regard would be very welcome; probably the rest will follow.

All of this post I've written from the desire to see in Skadi Forum again the uniqueness that drew me here in the first place, about ten years ago.

[Jäger]

Most people here are already long time Skadi visitors. I dare to say that many feel most things have already been talked to death.
New ideas which add to older bigger discussions are scarce, usually it's the same old opinions you can read by going back a few pages.

In essence, it really is just the absence of people who want to convince you of something, and do so by actually formulating reasoned arguments, and are able to actually understand counter arguments. That makes an interesting discussion.
Those people are always scarce, in real life and here. But somehow the old Skadi manged to attract quite a few of them, so I could learn a lot and I am thankful for that.
Sadly, most of them are gone, or at least very inactive.

[Norman Pride]

I also think that it may have to do with wanting to echo the alt right movement and taking a more white nationalist/ultra right-wing direction than a Germanic one. The new Skadi is much more politicized, and then you get reactions like this one:

I'm Germanic and Proud of My Heritage, but I'm Unsure About the Far Right. Is This Site for Me Too?

To an outsider, Skadi may look like just another alt right news site. Many threads about immigration, "the Jews", "rapefugees", "anti-white racism", "communism" and the like. Some members have even adopted the (((them))) nomenclature. I'm not necessarily against the alt right, but I do think they have some things to work on and I don't think their direction is above criticism. Sadly, nowadays if you aren't right wing or traditionalist on Skadi, you get scrutinized and placed in a suspicious category. Skadi has one left-wing member for example, Bärin but she's the exception. The membership consists of mostly old school members who have already discussed many topics, we are hardly attracting any new people. Germanic preservation is more than politics and is more than right wing. Someone can be left-wing and pro-Germanic, non-traditional and pro-Germanic, non-nationalist and pro-Germanic, etc. and that's where debates come from. For example, some Germanic heathens I know support a tribal form of anarchism. No state, no intrusion, each does according to their own will. Other Germanics like the Swiss support direct democracy etc. But such concepts and values would immediately be frown upon here and the person viewed as an "enemy". Already if one has a different opinion about WWII for example, even if it is pro-Germanic (as it happened in the "Norway in WWII" thread, where Scandinavian nationalists were disputing the nazi invasion), one is likely to be labeled a troll.

The standards are even stricter for newbies since they aren't known and established in the community. If they happen to have a politically incorrect opinion they are labeled trolls or even undesirables. It's not a surprise that we gain no new members since many of them have been banned.

Not everyone who comes on Skadi, especially the younger members know everything about nationalism, immigration and what (((they))) means. But in my opinion such people shouldn't be judged as "guilty unless proven innocent". That's not a very user friendly strategy. For example, the American user who wrote his own view on the obsession wit Hitlerism and NS got labeled a troll, as did the Englishman who was in favor of civic nationalism, controlled immigration and quotas. Or the American poster who participated in debates recently and was banned for some This kind of aggressive, exclusive and discriminate strategy won't bring about new members. You also have to take into account that the standard for contemporary generations have changed since 2012. Most youngsters are indoctrinated and have a knee-jerk reaction against racism, and the like. But that doesn't mean they're the enemy. We could have a dialog with the and explain the why and hows of Germanic preservation instead.

Boards like Apricity, ABF and the like are successful because they are apolitical. But there is still interest in racial topics. Of course I am not saying to lose the Germanic character but we need more than preaching to the coir and complaining about immigration/non-whites.