New forum domains taken by UKHippy admin

Two months ago, we renamed our CultureShock discussion forum to “Pickled Hippy” and redesigned the site to better reflect our nature. Our new domain is: www.pickledhippy.net

Recently, it has come to our attention that the domains pickledhippy.com and pickledhippy.co.uk have been registered, without our knowledge or consent, and are pointing towards UKHippy.com. After a brief examination it became apparent that Paul, admin at UKHippy, was behind the registration of these domains. We have contacted him and asked him politely to release the domains. He replied that he would only release the domains if we removed certain posts from our site that he felt were libellous and defamatory, and if we would refrain from allowing such posts in the future.

As you can read in previous posts on this blog, the CultureShock / Pickled Hippy forum was founded because we wanted to freely discuss things we were unable to discuss on UKHippy. Amongst the things we wanted to discuss was forum moderation policy in general and specifically the forum moderation policy at UKHippy. We have experienced ourselves that the way a forum is run by the moderators deeply affects the community and we think a free and open discussion is absolutely vital. Ideally, UKHippy’s moderation policy would be discussed at UKHippy, but since such a discussion is not allowed there, it has partly taken place here, at Pickled Hippy, as well as other places. It is this discussion that Paul seeks to censor.

We deplore Paul’s course of action and, needless to say, we will not allow ourselves to be censored. As Paul has indicated that he intends to stand by his demands, the mentioned domains will presumably remain under his hostage indefinitely. We hope, however, that he will one day take a more constructive attitude and perhaps join us in our discussion, to share his own point of view.

Until then, the one and only Pickled Hippy forum can be reached through:
www.pickledhippy.net