An open letter to Thayne

[didyoumythme]

Who is this Thayne? I have only seen the current NOM board. He must be fairly well known is there are rumors going around Reddit about him.

[Hagoth]

Good to hear from you, Oxi!

You know what I really regret? A year or two before NOM 1.0 went dark I met with Thayne and told me he wanted out and was looking for someone to take over. Why didn't I immediately take him up on it? My bad. His reasons were that he had moved on and he was tired of people hanging around bashing the LDS church. After the death of NOM 1.0 we were communicating with him through his daughter about getting access to the old stuff and it seemed promising until he just stopped responding.

As for rumors about his religious situation, he told me that he was active in a Christian faith, and he mentioned the name but I never heard the word Baptist. I would be very surprised if he reconverted to Mormonism, but if anyone hears more about this please keep us updated. That's a story I would love to hear.

[Hagoth]

Who is this Thayne? I have only seen the current NOM board. He must be fairly well known is there are rumors going around Reddit about him.

The original NOM board was started by a man who called himself LDSMan. LDSMan passed away sometime before many of us joined NOM and our friend Thayne stepped in to run the board. There was a lot of wonderful discussion there but it was quite different from the current NOM, at least in the beginning, and it was heavily moderated compared to the current incarnation. LDSMan's goal was to help people find a middle-way, still active in the church but substituting their own spiritual path for the needs of the institution. Over time most members came to to realize that very few of us could, or even wanted to, follow that elusive middle-way and NOM evolved into a community of support and sharing.

One day we woke up and NOM just wasn't there anymore, and it was very traumatic for a lot of members. Thayne receded into the shadows of the DAMU and, despite attempts to revive NOM, he more or less covered over the grave and laid some flowers on top. Finally, a few of us decided to turn the crank again and this incarnation of NOM came into being. We got a lot of the members back but some never returned. There was a mixture of anger and sympathy toward Thayne, but he was never heard from again, at least regarding the fate of NOM.

I am just grateful that we have been able to raise NOM from the dead and that we have such a great community of caring people here.

[SeeNoEvil]

I had a few conversations with him too about his wanting to find someone to take over. I know he was getting tired and wanted to move on. What was surprising though was the abruptness of his departure and the demise of the original NOM. I am sure this was not a easy decision for him to make. No matter what the reasons for the ending I am grateful for his time spent there and to those who stepped forward and got it back up and running. At one time I had his email and phone but with a couple new phones and a new computer along with a couple moves somehow I have lost that information. So if anyone here has that information please let him know we still think of him and it would beneficial to many of us to have that information back.

As far as the rumors of him rejoining the church ...... No way in He11 would that happen! Fake news!!!

[Red Ryder]

Oxi, glad to see you pop in and bump this thread. My thoughts have changed somewhat in regards to the old content. I still long for some of my old posts as a form of journal and documentation of my faith journey. I'm still willing to pay for the old content and create an archive. Again, mostly for personal reasons.

However, over time I think less of it and the people who participated. Some great content from Stealth, HIPS, and 100's of more people that was so good and helpful at that point in time but going back reading it again would be like reading past ensigns and GC talks. After awhile it all starts to sound the same.

At what point do we swap out Mormonism for NOMism, or antimormonism? At what point do we ever get to graduate and move on from Mormonism?

[Jeffret]

My only surprise when the old NOM site died was that it had managed to limp along so long during its final months.

Hagoth's history of NOM above, misses a few of the steps along the way. It's been a long time and I no longer remember all of them. I was only involved in helping manage NOM the last few years and I don't know all that went on behind the scenes before that. I first joined in 2002, within a few months of when LDSman (or LDSman 1.0, otherwise known as the Dread Pirate Roberts) created it. He intended it to be a place to discuss and live his idea of The Middle Way, neither TBM mor anti, but accepting both the Church's faults and its benefits. He had advertised it around a number of the online fringe or ex Mormon sites, particularly Recovery from Mormonism, for a little while before that. It was originally hosted on Aimoo. Somewhere around that time, The Folk of the Fringe board also moved onto Aimoo from its old nested form. Even before his untimely death, LDSman had passed management of the site off to his successor, LDSman.

Somewhere along the way during some of the earlier years some other forums were kind of spawned from NOM. There were Further Light and Knowledge, The View from the Foyer, and others. Given that LDSman had originally advertised on RfM and other ex-mormon sites, the original contributors tended to be pretty critical of the Church, which wasn't exactly LDSman's original vision. When some of us, including myself, wanted to keep it more even-handed, even acknowledging good things in the Church, that led to some of the offshoots. Though not directly, StayLDS is even an off-shoot of NOM. Because of its origins, NOM has always supported a more critical tone towards the Church, though accepting reasons to stay and be involved. Sometimes it was much more critical than others. StayLDS was created to walk the other side of the divide, acknowledging problems in the Church but explicitly encouraging continued involvement and participation. John Dehlin joined NOM back in its early days and over time vacillated between more pro- and anti-church. During one of his more pro- phases he founded StayLDS, to provide a more faithful counterpart to NOM.

After a few years on Aimoo, the service there became terrible. It was unresponsive and frequently down. At that time, solistics migrated NOM, along with several of its offshoots, to servers that he set up. After his untimely passing, ownership transferred to others. At some point, Thayne ended up owning the setup and managing NOM.

During that last year, Thayne was dramatically losing interest in the whole Mormon thing, including continuing to support the NOM forum and infrastructure. Without the continued care and feeding, pieces of it stopped working correctly. Usually Thayne would get around to patching it back up. He never fully understood how solistics had configured everything. At one point, his made a change that broke the forum's abilities to send emails. For the last few months, no one new could join because they couldn't receive the necessary emails to complete registration. He and his daughter said they were going to devote some time to getting it fully back on its feet again. There wasn't much sign of improvements or increased engagement from them and then the whole thing just collapsed.

Though NOM was reborn from the ashes it manages to preserve some of its original tone and intention. It hasn't tried as hard to adhere to The Middle Way or to maintain a conciliatory tone towards the Church as it sometimes, though not always, did.

Many of those other forums have collapsed from their own problems, principally from lack of participation. The Folk of the Fringe kind of faded away, as did several of the others. Recovery from Mormonism still exists, largely as it always has. StayLDS continues strong.

[oliver_denom]

Nevertheless my disappointment is really the loss of some of my own journal posts from a very difficult time, and the loss of such a repository of discussions and information that saved me (and no doubt others) from doing some really, really stupid stuff, it brought me down off the edge.

I know that its slowly gaining all that info here again, but for some of us oldtimers, its not the same.
I still miss some of the old names, wonder where they are, how they are doing......

All of this has happened before and will happen again.....

Oxi.....
(getting more sentimental in my old age....)

I think of it this way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBrYUlOYK0U

[moksha]

I would like to see it preserved simply for historical purposes. A lot of history gets put on the internet and a lot of it disappears. Someday people will wonder why there is so much history missing since 1996. The answer is it was stored on magnetic or optical media that was taken offline. You can't count on that granite vault up Little Cottonwood Canyon to have stored the great works of mankind other than the LDS canon and perhaps an old shopping list by one of Brigham's wives.

[CaptainSalty]

I would like to see it preserved simply for historical purposes. A lot of history gets put on the internet and a lot of it disappears. Someday people will wonder why there is so much history missing since 1996. The answer is it was stored on magnetic or optical media that was taken offline. You can't count on that granite vault up Little Cottonwood Canyon to have stored the great works of mankind other than the LDS canon and perhaps an old shopping list by one of Brigham's wives.

Let me weigh in with an offer on the preservation aspect. I can download the complete archive of discussion threads in a largely readable database format. It preserves every bit of text stored on the site and is only about 30 MB so far. Would there be an interest in an archive copy like this? I could put some work into making it a bit more readable and make it one large text file you could download.

[Not Buying It]

I’ll say it again - Thayne never owed any of us anything. He never promised to keep our posts in perpetuity. He never promised to tell us before shutting NOM down. We should all be grateful that he did what he did for as long as he did, griping that the old board went away is ungrateful. If you wanted to be sure your posts would be saved forever, you should have saved them, Thayne never told any of your he would do that for you, and it was neither fair or reasonable to expect he would.

When someone leaves cake on their front step every day and invites you to come eat it, and you come day after day and have cake, and one day they stop leaving cake for you, it is extremely bad form to complain that you are no longer getting cake you were never owed in the first place.

Thayne, if you ever pop in to see what’s going on, I just want to say thanks. Just thanks. Thanks for all the work you put into it over the years. Gratitude is all you will get from me.

[Hagoth]

Thayne, if you ever pop in to see what’s going on, I just want to say thanks. Just thanks. Thanks for all the work you put into it over the years. Gratitude is all you will get from me.

Amen. I am sincerely grateful for his work, and for the work of Corsair, Red Ryder and/or CaptainSalty for keeping the dream alive, and for all of you for holding to the iron rod and making your way back through the mists of darkness to pluck new fruit from the tree.

[Hagoth]

Hagoth's history of NOM above, misses a few of the steps along the way.

Thanks for filling in the blanks, Jeffret!

[alas]

I’ll say it again - Thayne never owed any of us anything. He never promised to keep our posts in perpetuity. He never promised to tell us before shutting NOM down. We should all be grateful that he did what he did for as long as he did, griping that the old board went away is ungrateful. If you wanted to be sure your posts would be saved forever, you should have saved them, Thayne never told any of your he would do that for you, and it was neither fair or reasonable to expect he would.

When someone leaves cake on their front step every day and invites you to come eat it, and you come day after day and have cake, and one day they stop leaving cake for you, it is extremely bad form to complain that you are no longer getting cake you were never owed in the first place.

Thayne, if you ever pop in to see what’s going on, I just want to say thanks. Just thanks. Thanks for all the work you put into it over the years. Gratitude is all you will get from me.

This. Just thanks.

[Jeffret]

I suspect the data no longer exists.

[Wonderment]

I would not expect Thayne to keep the board running indefinitely, nor promise to archive all the previous messages. I do appreciate the work he did in keeping the old board running for long, except for the glitches at the end.

However, it costs nothing for a site administrator to post a two sentence message saying, "I am moving on how from Mormonism, have joined a new church, and will be discontinuing this message board in ( for example) 10 days. Please make arrangements to continue this fellowship elsewhere, and donations to my PayPal account would be greatly appreciated." (Just give people some warning before pulling down the whole thing).

These boards are an online community, with real people writing real feelings and trying to reach out as best they can. NOM serves a very important purpose in bringing people together. When the old board disappeared suddenly without any notice, I had no idea what happened, and I could not find the people with whom I had dialogued for the past 5 years or so. All my friends disappeared, and I really did miss them. It's as if everyone just folded up the tents and moved away in the middle of the night.

I searched and searched for NOM, with no results. I don't live in Utah, nor do I know people from church who might be able to point me in the right direction. So I took to reading Reddit, even though it provides little intellectual sustenance. ( It's just not for me). One day, someone from Reddit commented on this new NOM board with a link. And, I found you all again ! But, it was just by sheer coincidence.

If anyone can access the old data, I am happy to make a cash donation in order to set up an archives. Thank you, from Wndr.

[alas]

I would not expect Thayne to keep the board running indefinitely, nor promise to archive all the previous messages. I do appreciate the work he did in keeping the old board running for long, except for the glitches at the end.

However, it costs nothing for a site administrator to post a two sentence message saying, "I am moving on how from Mormonism, have joined a new church, and will be discontinuing this message board in ( for example) 10 days. Please make arrangements to continue this fellowship elsewhere, and donations to my PayPal account would be greatly appreciated." (Just give people some warning before pulling down the whole thing).

These boards are an online community, with real people writing real feelings and trying to reach out as best they can. NOM serves a very important purpose in bringing people together. When the old board disappeared suddenly without any notice, I had no idea what happened, and I could not find the people with whom I had dialogued for the past 5 years or so. All my friends disappeared, and I really did miss them. It's as if everyone just folded up the tents and moved away in the middle of the night.

I searched and searched for NOM, with no results. I don't live in Utah, nor do I know people from church who might be able to point me in the right direction. So I took to reading Reddit, even though it provides little intellectual sustenance. ( It's just not for me). One day, someone from Reddit commented on this new NOM board with a link. And, I found you all again ! But, it was just by sheer coincidence.

If anyone can access the old data, I am happy to make a cash donation in order to set up an archives. Thank you, from Wndr.

Thayne did not just close it down. We were limping along for about two years without him, and I suppose he was still paying the bill. But then as best people could tell, the site got hacked. Several LDS themed websites had gotten hacked about that time. So, According to his daughter, Thayne was not able to bring it back up. I suppose he could have hired people to fix it or save the data as happened when the amio board crashed, thanks to a guy named Solistics. But even then, not all the data could be saved. Solistics had access to the website and could go in and do things. Even Thayne would tell you that he was never as good with computers as Solistics. Apparently when we got hacked, no one except Thayne even could access the inner workings of the site.

So, could we all just stop blaming Thayne. The only thing he could have done different was to turn the ownership over to someone else, but no one was willing to take him up on that. And if he couldn't repair it, who says anyone else could have? So, look in the mirror if you want to blame someone.