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Hi all, since there has been some interest - over the course of this new version of WF - about the story of the old WF, I thought I'd make a post about it for your own info/entertainment/curiosity. Also note, it's actually pretty hard to remember all the details, since it's actually been quite a long time now, and I never thought I'd be the one chronicling WF's history. Also, I'm tired and have an elbow ache, so excuse typos, missed details etc. I may update the thread in the future with more details as and when they come to me. Feel free to ask questions too.
Also just saying, this is written as a story from my perspective - it's the only way I'm actually going to remember shit and have anything to say.
After some time, Crow and I became (what I would call) friends, and at some point, since we were both in Wraith, he asked me about my interest in counter-culture and/or esoteric topics and told me that he was creating a new esoteric forum. At the time, I was really only in Wraith because it was cool, and had to pose super hard combined with a few accolades on that site to eventually get accepted, so obviously, I didn't really express any interest in the occult. It was, however, an opportunity for me to be a part of a cool new community. Wraith used to have (in my mind) several cool and notable (in the early internet) people. Including several hackers, and even some members of the Cult of the Dead Cow. So, as a young, edgy teen who wanted to be cool, I professed my supreme and undying desire to be a part of this new forum Crow was working on, and even bothered him to give me the link to the site before anyone else.
I don't remember too much from this era, as I wasn't really into any occult topics myself, same with almost everyone there at the time. This lead to the forum being overrun with off-topic and hyper sceptical, mostly anti-occult topics. Of course, there were a few people into it, but most of the people were just curious, and actually had no idea about the occult, and as such, there wasn't much actual occult contribution/content on the forum.
After a while, Crow messaged me and told me he was shutting the site down, and would relaunch it later without sharing it with as many people from the other site, and focusing more on building organic, genuine grown with more emphasis on people actually interested in the occult.
(though, that didn't matter, as over time UID 2, 3, and 4 were inactive and eventually their accounts were deleted, leaving me once again the oldest registered account aside from Crow - I bring this up because I remember being ultra pissed about this at the time). This time, initial growth was much slower, and still, at the very beginning, there wasn't all that much occult discussion. However, all credit to him, Crow really put in a lot of effort into organic advertising and SEO (to the extent that it was a thing back then). Back then, SEO was much easier, with far fewer restrictions. There were people on WF who still respected Crow a lot, and offered some dodgy/grey-hat SEO services for free/cheap. This meant Crow was able to build 100s of 1000s of backlinks to WF on other sites, which at the time was a huge boon to ranking high on Google search. Eventually WF was #1 for "occult forum" and "magic forum" and "love spells" etc. Sadly, these methods were later detected by the Google search algorithm, and heavily penalized, and that is something I am having to face to this day. WF will probably never again rank highly on Google.
But, I digress, it worked at the time, and soon we had 1000s of members. At this time I still remember not being that interested in the occult. I would occasionally post some semantic or academic type reply (eg. pointing out the rules, reporting malicious links/spam, criticizing someone's sources, posting about psychology etc) but never really got properly involved. Whenever I would talk to Crow, I would remember WF, log in, make a few posts, and then disappear. I was in University at the time, so I had plenty of other things going on IRL.
Sometime around 2012/13, around about when @The God-King was admin (and Crow was no longer active), I found myself with a bit more time on my hands, and being at the computer a lot more (probably because I got hooked on gaming and being on Skype calls with people). I started talking to people a lot more, and posting a lot more. I remember a guy called Protestant Priest, who actually was a key reason for me to consider financial magick, which is actually the main thing that got me interested in occult topics. I started posting more, and talking to more people for a few months, but after a while, I got into an intimate relationship with someone on WF (lmao) and we switched to talking on Skype instead, so I once again stopped being active on WF.
About a year later, I come back and holy shit. TGK is no longer an admin, or even staff of any capacity. I won't go into to much detail about this drama, as TGK is a member of WF 4.0, and also someone I call a friend. I've always liked him, and I don't want to put him on the spot or tarnish his reputation even slighly by mischaracterizing anything, but to keep it factual, Crow told me it was because TGK's administration style was way too strict, and was not compatible with Crow's vision for an open and forgiving website. Crow didn't like the idea of banning people or deleting posts, and AFAIK, TGK has no patience for trolls and the like, and would instantly ban them along with the other staff at his wing. This lead to him being removed from the Admin role, and put back to Staff role, after which due to some irreconcilable differences and/or argument with Crow, TGK deleted several (of his own? I think, not sure - feel free to clarify if you want to TGK) posts. That, I think pissed Crow off, and he asked TGK to step down. There were new mods who basically ran the show, Crow was almost completely absent at this stage. At this point, I don't talk to Crow regularly, but I still have him on <insert some popular social media network here> so I message him, and ask him what's going on. He tells me about certain events that took place irl that lead to him not being able to focus on WF, for his privacy, I am not going to discuss that. However, we still had a long convo, and he told me about his plans and vision for WF, one of which included the idea of building his own forum software from scratch, completely. This will be important later. However, it wasn't even close to being ready, and he did not have much time to work on it due to aforementioned IRL commitments.
Around this time, I started noticing some lack in moderator effectiveness. There were quite a lot of spam posts getting through, and while I must say the moderators at that time were respectable in terms of their occult knowledge, some of them were technologically illiterate, while others were barely active. I reported back to Crow about this, and he asked me if I was willing to take up a moderator role, as at this point I had also run several large forums, and was completely familiar with the forum software WF was using at the time. After some thought, I accepted. Also, I think one of the other moderators (Anthony Arcanum - we'll hear that name again soon) had already suggested that I become a moderator, as I was helping him understand some of the technical working of moderating a forum using the software that WF ran at the time.
So I became a moderator, and quickly curbed most of the spam issues. There isn't too much to say, really... as far as I remember the only thing I really contributed here was enforcing the rules. Crow had very lax rules, however, and was very adamant that WF be as open, welcoming and forgiving as much as possible. A philosophy that I still (albeit more reservedly) stick to to this day. This is important, because it is the prequel to some drama that comes up soon, as WF 2.0 drew to a close.
As someone close to Crow, who was there mainly to do his bidding, and someone who was not really well known on WF or for any occult contributions, I did my part in ensuring spam was eradicated, but also that the rules were enforced justly and to the tune of Crow's vision of the forum. As such, there was perhaps some friction between me and other staff, as I would often internally ostracize them for handing out lengthy bans for minor rule violations, deleting posts when a merge would have done the job, and using moderator powers to settle personal vendettas.
After a while, I had more ideas and suggestions for WF that could not be accomplished via the Staff/Moderator role, so I brought it up to Crow. Initially, he would just implement my suggestions, but after a while, he just promoted me to Administrator, and asked me to implement them myself. At this point, I had access to everything except the files and the databases. I could make new Staff members, etc etc. So of course, I went about implementing some new features. One of these was a new usergroup for Anthony Arcanum and Wylandriah91. I can't remember for the life of me what the original incarnation was called, but it would eventually evolve into the Court of the Ibis.
Either around this time, or shortly before, there had been some major drama between staff members and some very prominent and active WF members. Sadly, I can't really remember most of their names, except for one. @Mider2009. So yeah, Mider, some other ex-Staff, and other prominent members were getting very frustrated with the newbie posts, and troll posts, they more or less supported TGK's stance on strict moderation, and since he was no longer staff/active, they decided to make one or 2 spinoff forums of their own. A couple hundred WF members ended up joining those forums, but ultimately, due to hardline stance on only accepting/encouraging seasoned occultists, combined with the fact that they were new forums with no renown, they ultimately lost momentum and fizzled out with around 100 members, 1000 posts or something along those lines. I bring it up, though, as there was heavy drama surrounding them trying to advertise their site on WF, being banned by me because it broke the rules, and ultimately causing friction between me and them when I had otherwise had no quarrel with them. I do remember @Fork Nan Pwen and a few others sticking up for me, and saying I was just following Crow's guidelines for running the forum, but a few people still ended up hating me for banning them after they advertised the competing forums and/or for not being more strict on newbies/trolls. Some even threatened me and WF with curses etc.
Nearing the end of WF 2.0's story now. I can't remember exactly what was happening, but I think, at one point, it was just me and Anthony Arcanum as Staff members on WF. AA was starting to go a bit crazy with the banning. It started getting worse after I promoted Wylandriah to Staff, and she and I ended up running WF more closely to Crow's vision than AA did. Some friction built up within the CotI group, and between us and AA (who btw was also selling his services on WF). I think it came to a head when I found out that someone claimed AA had scammed them, I.E. took payment for a service, and failed to provide the service. AA at first denied it, then later admitted to it, but said he was homeless and couldn't do the work due to IRL situation etc, which I guess was supported by his Youtube videos.
Note: Doge's library from WF 2.0 is the basis of WF's Grand Library. Massive shout out to that legendary pirate. Also, shout out to PP, Melanie, TGK, @QueenJazz @8Lou1.
Here are some of his videos from the time:
<removed> On second thought, I'm not going to post those videos, as they would break the advertising rules - AA repeatedly advertises his own website selling services in this videos. I don't know if the sites still exist, but I don't wanna bring that much attention to it. I may later summarize the videos here.
Oh shit, yeah, that's what the CotI group was called before Court of the Ibis, it was called 'Sanctum Regnum' - AA's idea. Also these video's reminded me, shortly after or before I was made admin, there was another guy who was made admin The Glass Wizard. Also a member of Wraith originally, and a friend of Crow's and later a member of CotI. Just remembered this and too lazy to go up and edit. TGW (not TGK) was also very anti TGK and AA, and perhaps even more aligned with Crow's vision than even I was. Maybe because he had no vision of his own for WF, preferred the status quo, and didn't want any changes whatsoever.
Shortly after he posted those videos, WF was hacked. Someone messaged me about it, I check the site, and sure enough, it's been defaced, and the site was replaced with a "hacked by some random dipshit hacker group" message, along with a ransom demand of something like $500 in bitcoin. I told Crow about this, and he soon informed me that he would not be paying the ransom, and will restore the site from backup. I go to sleep, and the next day, my inbox is blasted with messages from Crow asking me why I did it, and how I did it. At first, I think he's joking, but soon I realize he's 100% serious. I couldn't fucking believe it. Even all those years ago it was still 10 years of friendship between us, and I did nothing but follow his guidelines and make improvements to WF, always with his permission. I had dedicated so much to WF, but here's my friend accusing me of hacking the site. He claimed that the hacker had "used my account and IP" to hack WF. That was probably just a bluff to get me to admit that I did it, as my password was secure, and my computer had not been compromised at all. I tried for several days to convince him it wasn't me, but he wasn't having any of it. I asked him for the BTC address of the hackers, and said I would even pay the ransom and get it back. He assumed that was me trying to play dumb and act like it wasn't me who hacked the site, so he didn't even give me that. Eventually I gave up, made up my mind that I had lost a friend and a community.
Note: there is some infinitesimally small minutiae of truth to some of the things AA is saying in his videos. Mainly some of the events and chronology. However, almost all the context, backstory, details, and reasons for people's actions have been purposely erased and replaced with a narcissistic, warped version of events, so watch those videos while munching on some salt. I don't think he was a bad person, really. I actually liked him, and he didn't really know Crow and I were friends and talking so it was somewhat fair of him to assume that he was the reason I was made a Staff member. And whatever went wrong with him in the end where he ended up thinking the whole forum was run by him/succeeded because of him, which is nonsense - at the end of the day, he was actually one of the most adept occult practitioners on the site, certainly on the mod team. Despite the egomaniacal and somewhat hurtful words in his videos, he deserves that much credit, I think.
Maybe WF was taken down due to AA's curse, maybe he paid a hacker to hack WF (unlikely considering his homelessness), or maybe it was just really, really coincidental timing, as the actual hacker group did make demands from Crow to pay them in exchange for returning WF and her data. $500 if I remember correctly. Since WF's security was so bad at the time, I personally am more inclined to believe this was a random, for-profit attack by a fledgeling blackhat hacker group to make a quick buck. But you make up your own mind.
Some other things to note, at the time, WF was running an EXTREMELY outdated version of the forum software. Essentially, it was not updated since around 2013, so it was extremely unsecured. Also (the only time I'll ever speak poorly of Crow) he made the dipshit move of keeping the site backups in the same server/folder that the forum was on. So obviously the hackers wiped those out. That's the other reason why I don't believe WF was cursed or anything like that. The site was just so completely unsecured that anyone with a college degree in computer security could have hacked it. Not AA of course because he was tech illiterate, but I could have if I wanted to. I asked Crow many times to update to the latest version of the software, or at least the next major version, but he declined every time saying that the plugins would be a pain in the ass to update etc. I offered to do it, but it required access to the server which he didn't trust anyone with, not me, not even TGW. Funny thing is by leaving it so unsecured he actually trusted the general public to not simply hack the site, which turned out to be a fatal mistake for WF 2.0.
The forum was small, and not so public. It was more like a private coven, but it still got a few members due to WF being down and people looking for a place to go. Certainly more active than all those other spinoff WF forums.
Huge thanks to everyone who was active on CotI, as it was a great community, and it kept me interested in the occult space for long enough that I got the opportunity to acquire and revamp WF.
Couple years before I bought WF, though, Grace went completely MIA, and so the actual occult practice of CotI died off, and it ended up being just a social community. Grace has basically completely quit.
Several thousand members joined this site again, but sadly, due to the fact it was so primitive, and especially because it had no anti-spam featured, it ended up being completely overrun with spambots, way more than any staff team could cope with. I think it was only Crow and TGW staffing it. Within 6 months it was completely swamped with spam, and utterly unusable.
Once again, Crow gave up on it. It died.
And that's it. WF 4.0 is the site you're on right now while reading this.
Jesus fuck, this took forever to write. It's like 7AM here. I've been writing for hours. Sorry that the last few sections after 'The Hackening' are quite sparse. Maybe there isn't much to say about those periods, maybe I'm just tired and I can't remember.
Don't ask me questions about before WF, or about me purchasing WF 4.0, but aside from that, if you have any questions, or things to add (if you were around at the time - @The God-King @8Lou1 anyone else) feel free to post below. Hope you enjoy this history lesson.
Huge shoutout to Crow, TGK, Anthony Arcanum, PP, Doge and others. WF would not be where it is today without you guys. Heck, I'll even shout out The Artis Magistra and that stupid dominatrix lady IYKYK.
Once again, apologies if I forgot to mention you, or missed an important detail, or portrayed you poorly. I sincerely have no ill will against anyone from the old WF, I don't hold grudges, I have no hatred in me. I hope we can all come together peacefully on WF 4.0 and have a friendly, open, useful community. All new members are welcome, all old members are welcome, regardless of any past drama. I think most people who were on the old WF will agree I have a more centrist, balanced approach to moderation and the vision of WF. WF 4.0 is also more modern, secure, agile, open to suggestions. I strive to keep the WF flame lit for... well... forever, I guess.
Also just saying, this is written as a story from my perspective - it's the only way I'm actually going to remember shit and have anything to say.
Pre-WF
Before all this, there was a site. It's been mentioned a few times on WF before as 'HF' and I'll refer to it as such, because I don't really want the discussion to be about that site, or break my own rules on advertising. It's almost irrelevant to WF's story anyway. But, in short, it was a (I guess) counter-culture genre type site, which had user groups of various topics. One of these usergroups was more focused on general counter-culture topics, which sometimes included occult/esoteric discussions. This group was called Wraith, and also existed as a usergroup on WF 1.0 and 2.0. So anyway, on this site was Crow (the founder and original creator of WF). And me. And other people, obviously. Crow was in the Wraith usergroup, and so was I. Crow was also a moderator, and for a short period, and administrator of this site. During this time, I had somehow ended up adding Crow on MSN Messenger (woah, blast from the past, huh?) and around the time I was accepted into Wraith, I also started talking to Crow more on MSN. At this stage, I wouldn't really say we were super close friends or anything, but as we all did in those days, we talked a lot with online friends whenever we were online, probably because there were far less people on the internet, and instant messaging was still quite novel and exciting.After some time, Crow and I became (what I would call) friends, and at some point, since we were both in Wraith, he asked me about my interest in counter-culture and/or esoteric topics and told me that he was creating a new esoteric forum. At the time, I was really only in Wraith because it was cool, and had to pose super hard combined with a few accolades on that site to eventually get accepted, so obviously, I didn't really express any interest in the occult. It was, however, an opportunity for me to be a part of a cool new community. Wraith used to have (in my mind) several cool and notable (in the early internet) people. Including several hackers, and even some members of the Cult of the Dead Cow. So, as a young, edgy teen who wanted to be cool, I professed my supreme and undying desire to be a part of this new forum Crow was working on, and even bothered him to give me the link to the site before anyone else.
WF 1.0
One day, Crow messages me the link to WF. Of course, I drop everything and register. I'm UID=2 (as in, my user ID is 2 - the first person to register aside from Crow). Over the coming month, several people from the other site, HF, also joined WF, as Crow used to be quite popular there, and had a bit of a following. Ultimately, I guess this was the reason for the downfall of WF 1.0, as there were so many non and anti occult people there, who just came over because of Crow. Of course, by so many I mean like a few hundred. Which back then, was a huge following.I don't remember too much from this era, as I wasn't really into any occult topics myself, same with almost everyone there at the time. This lead to the forum being overrun with off-topic and hyper sceptical, mostly anti-occult topics. Of course, there were a few people into it, but most of the people were just curious, and actually had no idea about the occult, and as such, there wasn't much actual occult contribution/content on the forum.
After a while, Crow messaged me and told me he was shutting the site down, and would relaunch it later without sharing it with as many people from the other site, and focusing more on building organic, genuine grown with more emphasis on people actually interested in the occult.
WF 2.0
In 2011 (I think) Crow messaged me and a few other people who were genuinely interested in the occult from WF 1.0 + Wraith, and told us that he relaunched WF. I tried to register as fast as I could, but this time I was only UID=5 (though, that didn't matter, as over time UID 2, 3, and 4 were inactive and eventually their accounts were deleted, leaving me once again the oldest registered account aside from Crow - I bring this up because I remember being ultra pissed about this at the time). This time, initial growth was much slower, and still, at the very beginning, there wasn't all that much occult discussion. However, all credit to him, Crow really put in a lot of effort into organic advertising and SEO (to the extent that it was a thing back then). Back then, SEO was much easier, with far fewer restrictions. There were people on WF who still respected Crow a lot, and offered some dodgy/grey-hat SEO services for free/cheap. This meant Crow was able to build 100s of 1000s of backlinks to WF on other sites, which at the time was a huge boon to ranking high on Google search. Eventually WF was #1 for "occult forum" and "magic forum" and "love spells" etc. Sadly, these methods were later detected by the Google search algorithm, and heavily penalized, and that is something I am having to face to this day. WF will probably never again rank highly on Google.But, I digress, it worked at the time, and soon we had 1000s of members. At this time I still remember not being that interested in the occult. I would occasionally post some semantic or academic type reply (eg. pointing out the rules, reporting malicious links/spam, criticizing someone's sources, posting about psychology etc) but never really got properly involved. Whenever I would talk to Crow, I would remember WF, log in, make a few posts, and then disappear. I was in University at the time, so I had plenty of other things going on IRL.
Sometime around 2012/13, around about when @The God-King was admin (and Crow was no longer active), I found myself with a bit more time on my hands, and being at the computer a lot more (probably because I got hooked on gaming and being on Skype calls with people). I started talking to people a lot more, and posting a lot more. I remember a guy called Protestant Priest, who actually was a key reason for me to consider financial magick, which is actually the main thing that got me interested in occult topics. I started posting more, and talking to more people for a few months, but after a while, I got into an intimate relationship with someone on WF (lmao) and we switched to talking on Skype instead, so I once again stopped being active on WF.
About a year later, I come back and holy shit. TGK is no longer an admin, or even staff of any capacity. I won't go into to much detail about this drama, as TGK is a member of WF 4.0, and also someone I call a friend. I've always liked him, and I don't want to put him on the spot or tarnish his reputation even slighly by mischaracterizing anything, but to keep it factual, Crow told me it was because TGK's administration style was way too strict, and was not compatible with Crow's vision for an open and forgiving website. Crow didn't like the idea of banning people or deleting posts, and AFAIK, TGK has no patience for trolls and the like, and would instantly ban them along with the other staff at his wing. This lead to him being removed from the Admin role, and put back to Staff role, after which due to some irreconcilable differences and/or argument with Crow, TGK deleted several (of his own? I think, not sure - feel free to clarify if you want to TGK) posts. That, I think pissed Crow off, and he asked TGK to step down. There were new mods who basically ran the show, Crow was almost completely absent at this stage. At this point, I don't talk to Crow regularly, but I still have him on <insert some popular social media network here> so I message him, and ask him what's going on. He tells me about certain events that took place irl that lead to him not being able to focus on WF, for his privacy, I am not going to discuss that. However, we still had a long convo, and he told me about his plans and vision for WF, one of which included the idea of building his own forum software from scratch, completely. This will be important later. However, it wasn't even close to being ready, and he did not have much time to work on it due to aforementioned IRL commitments.
Around this time, I started noticing some lack in moderator effectiveness. There were quite a lot of spam posts getting through, and while I must say the moderators at that time were respectable in terms of their occult knowledge, some of them were technologically illiterate, while others were barely active. I reported back to Crow about this, and he asked me if I was willing to take up a moderator role, as at this point I had also run several large forums, and was completely familiar with the forum software WF was using at the time. After some thought, I accepted. Also, I think one of the other moderators (Anthony Arcanum - we'll hear that name again soon) had already suggested that I become a moderator, as I was helping him understand some of the technical working of moderating a forum using the software that WF ran at the time.
So I became a moderator, and quickly curbed most of the spam issues. There isn't too much to say, really... as far as I remember the only thing I really contributed here was enforcing the rules. Crow had very lax rules, however, and was very adamant that WF be as open, welcoming and forgiving as much as possible. A philosophy that I still (albeit more reservedly) stick to to this day. This is important, because it is the prequel to some drama that comes up soon, as WF 2.0 drew to a close.
As someone close to Crow, who was there mainly to do his bidding, and someone who was not really well known on WF or for any occult contributions, I did my part in ensuring spam was eradicated, but also that the rules were enforced justly and to the tune of Crow's vision of the forum. As such, there was perhaps some friction between me and other staff, as I would often internally ostracize them for handing out lengthy bans for minor rule violations, deleting posts when a merge would have done the job, and using moderator powers to settle personal vendettas.
After a while, I had more ideas and suggestions for WF that could not be accomplished via the Staff/Moderator role, so I brought it up to Crow. Initially, he would just implement my suggestions, but after a while, he just promoted me to Administrator, and asked me to implement them myself. At this point, I had access to everything except the files and the databases. I could make new Staff members, etc etc. So of course, I went about implementing some new features. One of these was a new usergroup for Anthony Arcanum and Wylandriah91. I can't remember for the life of me what the original incarnation was called, but it would eventually evolve into the Court of the Ibis.
Either around this time, or shortly before, there had been some major drama between staff members and some very prominent and active WF members. Sadly, I can't really remember most of their names, except for one. @Mider2009. So yeah, Mider, some other ex-Staff, and other prominent members were getting very frustrated with the newbie posts, and troll posts, they more or less supported TGK's stance on strict moderation, and since he was no longer staff/active, they decided to make one or 2 spinoff forums of their own. A couple hundred WF members ended up joining those forums, but ultimately, due to hardline stance on only accepting/encouraging seasoned occultists, combined with the fact that they were new forums with no renown, they ultimately lost momentum and fizzled out with around 100 members, 1000 posts or something along those lines. I bring it up, though, as there was heavy drama surrounding them trying to advertise their site on WF, being banned by me because it broke the rules, and ultimately causing friction between me and them when I had otherwise had no quarrel with them. I do remember @Fork Nan Pwen and a few others sticking up for me, and saying I was just following Crow's guidelines for running the forum, but a few people still ended up hating me for banning them after they advertised the competing forums and/or for not being more strict on newbies/trolls. Some even threatened me and WF with curses etc.
Nearing the end of WF 2.0's story now. I can't remember exactly what was happening, but I think, at one point, it was just me and Anthony Arcanum as Staff members on WF. AA was starting to go a bit crazy with the banning. It started getting worse after I promoted Wylandriah to Staff, and she and I ended up running WF more closely to Crow's vision than AA did. Some friction built up within the CotI group, and between us and AA (who btw was also selling his services on WF). I think it came to a head when I found out that someone claimed AA had scammed them, I.E. took payment for a service, and failed to provide the service. AA at first denied it, then later admitted to it, but said he was homeless and couldn't do the work due to IRL situation etc, which I guess was supported by his Youtube videos.
Note: Doge's library from WF 2.0 is the basis of WF's Grand Library. Massive shout out to that legendary pirate. Also, shout out to PP, Melanie, TGK, @QueenJazz @8Lou1.
The Hackening
I can't remember EXACTLY how this all happened - I may be wrong on some of these details - anyone who was involved here is free to correct me, but I think due to AA's scamming drama + the crazy bans by AA and going off the rails a bit, Crow asked me to demote him from Staff. And so I did that. To say that he didn't take this kindly would be an understatement. He ended up joining one of those other spinoff forums (that would soon fizzle out) - or actually was it his own forum, can't remember - and started advertising them on WF, while making some deranged posts about the situation as well. Same activities for which he and I banned people together just a few months prior. This lead to me banning him as well. After which, he made a video claiming to curse/hex WF, and that it would be gone soon.Here are some of his videos from the time:
<removed> On second thought, I'm not going to post those videos, as they would break the advertising rules - AA repeatedly advertises his own website selling services in this videos. I don't know if the sites still exist, but I don't wanna bring that much attention to it. I may later summarize the videos here.
Oh shit, yeah, that's what the CotI group was called before Court of the Ibis, it was called 'Sanctum Regnum' - AA's idea. Also these video's reminded me, shortly after or before I was made admin, there was another guy who was made admin The Glass Wizard. Also a member of Wraith originally, and a friend of Crow's and later a member of CotI. Just remembered this and too lazy to go up and edit. TGW (not TGK) was also very anti TGK and AA, and perhaps even more aligned with Crow's vision than even I was. Maybe because he had no vision of his own for WF, preferred the status quo, and didn't want any changes whatsoever.
Shortly after he posted those videos, WF was hacked. Someone messaged me about it, I check the site, and sure enough, it's been defaced, and the site was replaced with a "hacked by some random dipshit hacker group" message, along with a ransom demand of something like $500 in bitcoin. I told Crow about this, and he soon informed me that he would not be paying the ransom, and will restore the site from backup. I go to sleep, and the next day, my inbox is blasted with messages from Crow asking me why I did it, and how I did it. At first, I think he's joking, but soon I realize he's 100% serious. I couldn't fucking believe it. Even all those years ago it was still 10 years of friendship between us, and I did nothing but follow his guidelines and make improvements to WF, always with his permission. I had dedicated so much to WF, but here's my friend accusing me of hacking the site. He claimed that the hacker had "used my account and IP" to hack WF. That was probably just a bluff to get me to admit that I did it, as my password was secure, and my computer had not been compromised at all. I tried for several days to convince him it wasn't me, but he wasn't having any of it. I asked him for the BTC address of the hackers, and said I would even pay the ransom and get it back. He assumed that was me trying to play dumb and act like it wasn't me who hacked the site, so he didn't even give me that. Eventually I gave up, made up my mind that I had lost a friend and a community.
Note: there is some infinitesimally small minutiae of truth to some of the things AA is saying in his videos. Mainly some of the events and chronology. However, almost all the context, backstory, details, and reasons for people's actions have been purposely erased and replaced with a narcissistic, warped version of events, so watch those videos while munching on some salt. I don't think he was a bad person, really. I actually liked him, and he didn't really know Crow and I were friends and talking so it was somewhat fair of him to assume that he was the reason I was made a Staff member. And whatever went wrong with him in the end where he ended up thinking the whole forum was run by him/succeeded because of him, which is nonsense - at the end of the day, he was actually one of the most adept occult practitioners on the site, certainly on the mod team. Despite the egomaniacal and somewhat hurtful words in his videos, he deserves that much credit, I think.
Maybe WF was taken down due to AA's curse, maybe he paid a hacker to hack WF (unlikely considering his homelessness), or maybe it was just really, really coincidental timing, as the actual hacker group did make demands from Crow to pay them in exchange for returning WF and her data. $500 if I remember correctly. Since WF's security was so bad at the time, I personally am more inclined to believe this was a random, for-profit attack by a fledgeling blackhat hacker group to make a quick buck. But you make up your own mind.
Some other things to note, at the time, WF was running an EXTREMELY outdated version of the forum software. Essentially, it was not updated since around 2013, so it was extremely unsecured. Also (the only time I'll ever speak poorly of Crow) he made the dipshit move of keeping the site backups in the same server/folder that the forum was on. So obviously the hackers wiped those out. That's the other reason why I don't believe WF was cursed or anything like that. The site was just so completely unsecured that anyone with a college degree in computer security could have hacked it. Not AA of course because he was tech illiterate, but I could have if I wanted to. I asked Crow many times to update to the latest version of the software, or at least the next major version, but he declined every time saying that the plugins would be a pain in the ass to update etc. I offered to do it, but it required access to the server which he didn't trust anyone with, not me, not even TGW. Funny thing is by leaving it so unsecured he actually trusted the general public to not simply hack the site, which turned out to be a fatal mistake for WF 2.0.
Court of the Ibis
Around the time WF 2.0. was hacked, CotI was going pretty strong, so we made our own website. Wylandriah (now called Grace) was the High Priestess of the Coven, and @Alfher was the High Priest. Many members you know and love currently on WF are CotI alumni. Shout out to @Scottish_Pride @Anziel_Merkaba @Mart @Eeveepony @MotherHen @madcarbon and many more.The forum was small, and not so public. It was more like a private coven, but it still got a few members due to WF being down and people looking for a place to go. Certainly more active than all those other spinoff WF forums.
Huge thanks to everyone who was active on CotI, as it was a great community, and it kept me interested in the occult space for long enough that I got the opportunity to acquire and revamp WF.
Couple years before I bought WF, though, Grace went completely MIA, and so the actual occult practice of CotI died off, and it ended up being just a social community. Grace has basically completely quit.
WF 3.0
A few months after WF 2.0 went down, Crow decided to make his previous dream of creating a custom forum software a reality now that WF 2.0 was dead anyway, and he would be starting from scratch. So he restarted WF, as WF 3.0, with his own (extremely rudimentary) forum software. It lacked all features except the ability to register, log in, make threads and reply to threads.Several thousand members joined this site again, but sadly, due to the fact it was so primitive, and especially because it had no anti-spam featured, it ended up being completely overrun with spambots, way more than any staff team could cope with. I think it was only Crow and TGW staffing it. Within 6 months it was completely swamped with spam, and utterly unusable.
Once again, Crow gave up on it. It died.
WF 4.0
After a while, I was able to buy the domain. I took some time, remade the site from scratch using a much newer, more polished, more secure forum software. Added all the features from the old WF and then some - except user groups. Added the library and marketplace sections, but otherwise the sections are almost the same.And that's it. WF 4.0 is the site you're on right now while reading this.
Jesus fuck, this took forever to write. It's like 7AM here. I've been writing for hours. Sorry that the last few sections after 'The Hackening' are quite sparse. Maybe there isn't much to say about those periods, maybe I'm just tired and I can't remember.
Don't ask me questions about before WF, or about me purchasing WF 4.0, but aside from that, if you have any questions, or things to add (if you were around at the time - @The God-King @8Lou1 anyone else) feel free to post below. Hope you enjoy this history lesson.
Huge shoutout to Crow, TGK, Anthony Arcanum, PP, Doge and others. WF would not be where it is today without you guys. Heck, I'll even shout out The Artis Magistra and that stupid dominatrix lady IYKYK.
Once again, apologies if I forgot to mention you, or missed an important detail, or portrayed you poorly. I sincerely have no ill will against anyone from the old WF, I don't hold grudges, I have no hatred in me. I hope we can all come together peacefully on WF 4.0 and have a friendly, open, useful community. All new members are welcome, all old members are welcome, regardless of any past drama. I think most people who were on the old WF will agree I have a more centrist, balanced approach to moderation and the vision of WF. WF 4.0 is also more modern, secure, agile, open to suggestions. I strive to keep the WF flame lit for... well... forever, I guess.
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