Abuse Contacts at Absolute Write's Hoster

Below is the hoster for Absolute Write. We are encouraging a write-in campaign on the part of everyone who believes they have been libeled, smeared, or unfairly humiliated by the owners of Absolute Write and their moderators, or members, including but not limited to James D. Macdonald (aka Congenial Sage or Uncle Jim), Debra Doyle (aka Old Hack), Teresa Nielsen Hayden (aka Hapisofi), Melodi Sherman (aka Macallister Stone), Lisa Spangenberg (aka Medievalist), and Stacia Kane.

If you or your press or organization have been the victims of these people or their associates on Absolute Write forums, please write the contact below and note your case succcinctly and why you believe Name.Com should take action to rectify the ongoing defamation and cyber-bullying on the part of identifiable iPredators extant on a forum board they host.

Please refer them to the google search phrase, "Absolute Write reviews" or "Absolute Write complaints" or both.

We need to work together, people.

Domain Name ABSOLUTEWRITE.COM
Registrar WHOIS Server whois.name.com
Registrar URL
http://www.name.com
Registrar Name.com, Inc.
Registrar IANA ID 625
Registrar Abuse Contact Email
abuse@name.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone +1.17202492374




Old Hack Doyle's Cat Avatar
"Crazy Mean" 
Over 16,000 Posts

Trashy "sponsored articles" That Produce Income for Absolute Write. Keep the smears coming!


Teresa Nielsen Hayden, aka Hapisofi, Shreds The New Guy

Case Study #1 Teresa Nielsen Hayden Baits A Naive Editor


 
Teresa Nielsen-Hayden in Her Element
The new guy to the Absolute Write boards never saw it coming. And that's exactly how they like it at AW. An Australian editor joined AW and at first, began having friendly conversations with his fellow writers. Teresa Nielsen Hayden got wind of his editor status and the hackles went up. With Teresa, remember, it's all about ego. Anytime she encounters an editor or an agent on her turf, she sniffs her or him out, analyzing whether or not credentials and writing skills on the boards are up to her own standards (which is funny considering she is neither an editor or a fiction writer). Her words:
Me personally? I have decades of experience in newspapers, magazines, and reference and trade book publishing. That's as opposed to working for a toy distributor that took a fling at printing books. /Source

So, what does she do? Teresa Nielsen Hayden spends an inordinate amount of time (as if she's some kind of legitimate journalist) and "researches" the Australian  by doxing him. She cherry picks what she wants to find out about him online to build her thesis on why he should be be discredited in front of the whole world by one of her self-righteous diatribes. She didn't contact him by phone to get a fair and balanced interview, because a faux journalist is not interested in being fair and balanced.

Here's how this ongoing saga started with the Australian and Hapisofi (Teresa's psuedo):


After doxing him, she defines for the AW community what her perceptions of his qualifications are: (her words in italics)

As for you? I went from notes like

* doesn't know a query letter from a cover letter
* hasn't seen much slush
* has a shaky notion of what book editors do, and a shakier notion of what agents do

to

* hasn't worked in the editorial department of a general-interest trade book publisher
* hasn't worked in sales and distribution
* has no in-depth acquisition experience in adult trade nonfiction
* in adult trade publishing, period
* hasn't done marketing or promotion for a mainstream publisher
* is emphatically not a professional proofreader or copy editor.


#105 post he replies:

HapiSofi said I had not worked at a trade publisher. She didn't ask me. She didn't read where I mentioned Pearson in the thread (although I admit it was small and in passing). She didn't try to verify anything at all. She blurted out that I hadn't worked for a trade publisher. She did this because she assumed. She assumed that every single person I've worked for is listed on my About page. She was wrong. And what is really frustrating is that no one bothers to point it out to her.

This Australian editor was gobsmacked that Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Melodi "Macillster Stone" Sherman would take a swing at him. What he didn't understand (as most newbies to AW do not) that this brand of trashing and insult is an established pattern of the AW mods.

A little back story: Many of the AW mods and cronies have acted as "publishing industry watchdogs" for years. During the old Jenna Glatzner days they worked together to expose agents and bigger publishers for defrauding hopeful authors. But over the years, their successes have turned to an ugly form of self-congratulatory, shoot-from-the-hip vigilantism. Their modus operandi is to assume most people they don't personally know who come to the AW boards and claim to be part of the publishing industry are frauds unless proven innocent....and this is where it gets interesting. Because when you are up against them, you cannot be proven innocent. And what's worse? Google ranks their rantings so high in search results that within days your friends, customers, business associates, and so forth, are reading pages of vehement and ill-informed attacks made by AW posters who behave as it they are authorities.

In the Australian's case, watching him publicly try to prove his legitimacy over and over is exactly the game they so love to play. Teresa Nielsen Hayden sets the stage by taking a swing. The unsuspecting newbie defends himself. The rest of AW mods lay in wait to peck, peck peck, trolling the newbie to continue to lay out more evidence. The AW suckups want to join the game. "Let me in coach, let me in." The real dogpile begin.

If you don't have the time it takes to wade through  hundreds of posts on this thread to see how this all turned out, we'll summarize it for you.
The Australian has his professional reputation trashed. The more he fights back, the more they pounce. Meanwhile, search engines aggregate everything and the Australian has learned a very important lesson.

Do not go onto the AW boards if you are expecting a civilized, fair and balanced community. And do engage when getting dogpiled online.

Teresa's response post #106

I think you need to read the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. Seriously. It's all about what life is like in the vicinity of authors. If you want the short version of that description, it's only occasionally like spending a week getting roasted on AW, but it's a lot more like that than any kind of "normal life." It's a terrible thing to say, but we really are a representative sample.

In other words:
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
A little bullying builds character.

It's a terrible thing to say, but we really are a representative sample. 

Absolute Write Cheerleader Defends The Dirt Factory

"You can search thousands of threads, and it is really the best source for finding out the dirt on the agents/agencies that you’re thinking of querying. Writers can talk about their experiences, and the moderators of the site have lots of experience in the industry and really do their research."
The above is a June '14 blog snippet from one of the Absolute Write Water Cooler followers attempting to defend that board. It's done in subtle fashion. Nevertheless, the single statement above is like a sales pitch made by the owner Lisa Spangenberg--or let's just say, if Lisa had decided to write a boilerplate description of the AW Water Cooler, this would be part of it.

Two major false statements here, as anyone will see who really understands Absolute Write and its violent arena of competitive blathering: "best source for finding out the dirt" and "the moderators of the site have lots of experience in the industry and really do their research." When we read this, especially the last statement, we fell out of our chairs laughing. Even our interns were giddy. The only "moderator" with any "experience" at all is Teresa Nielsen-Hayden, known as Hapisofi, and she's a fraud of a former stafff editor pretending to be a current editor and an acquisition editor at that. Then a step down is Old Hack, a mediocre SF writer who pens bad to mediocre stories and self-publishes them with her husband, The Congenial Sage (both infamous bullies on Absolute Write Water Cooler).

The bigger point, however, is that this blog writer, obviously an amateur beginner writer, has been led to believe the marketing fiction (spun by Lisa Spangenberg and AW mods) that the Absolute Write Water Cooler is a place that will serve her/him well. Or is this all just a lie arranged to help AW defeat the rising tide of "hate sites" crawling up the Google search page like vengeful warriors climbing the wall of a burning castle? It's hard to tell. Suffice to say, the observation is false, absurdly and comically false.

Next, we have "the dirt" issue. Well, dear readers of W.A.R., as we all know, if the "dirt" doesn't exist, the moderators and sycophants of Absolute Write will make it. Matter of fact, the place is an ongoing dirt factory, and the owners are the corporate bosses of dirt production. We have examples of this synthetic dirt right here at W.A.R. It's everywhere. Not a day goes by that we don't have to cleanse ourselves.

Help us, dear reader. Spread the truth about this dirt factory. We have an ethical obligation to warn fellow writers who might stumble in and soil themselves. Let all smeared presses, "hate sites," and humiliated writers unite. We have nothing to lose but our pain.

The "iPredator" Nature of Abusers on Absolute Write

iPredator definition as follows:

"A person, group, or nation who, directly or indirectly, engages in exploitation, victimization, coercion, stalking, theft, or disparagement of others using Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

iPredators are driven by deviant fantasies, desires for power and control, retribution, religious fanaticism, political reprisal, psychiatric illness, perceptual distortions, peer acceptance or personal and financial gain.

iPredators can be any age or gender and are not bound by economic status, race, religion, or national heritage.

Whether the offender is a cyberbully, cyberstalker, cyber harasser, cybercriminal, online sexual predator, cyber terrorist, and internet troll or engaged in cyber deception, they fall within the scope of iPredator.