We reached out to many people mentioned in the History of HEMA article, but unfortunately we got few replies back. We think this is partly because of the false accusations made against our website of stealing photos and content, when in fact all photos have been licensed from royalty free photo databases and all of the articles are original works that might reference other people's work, and usually mention the sources information came from. Citing other people's research in an article isn't plagiarism, but that is what they have claimed. And when people don't actually read the articles we wrote, they don't see the truth for themselves.
As you point out in your post, there is unfortunately a group of people in HEMA that seek to discredit others if they are not part of their group. This is why the site authors are anonymous, so that those efforts are less impactful. They can't use the normal tactic of bullying people into removing information with threats of being blacklisted from clubs, events and vendors if they don't know who the authors are. This is probably what is most upsetting to them about the HEMA Resources website and why they chose to lie about it.
They also don't like that we created an
alternative club finder, despite that the group that runs the other club finder does not keep the listings updated for accuracy and has many listings of clubs that no longer exist, whose website domains have been purchased by phishing websites. Since that group only makes excuses for why they cannot keep the club finder updated, we created our own. They didn't like this however, since many of the people who seek to discredit others are part of the same group that runs the other club finder.
Running the website anonymously isn't so desirable but in our opinion, it's necessary if HEMA is going to grow beyond this current phase it has been stuck in for years. There are people who don't want it to grow outside of their control and so their behavior is hindering its growth. This website demonstrates that their control can be loosened. While Google is inconsistent in our placement for the search phrase 'HEMA' (likely because most people searching for 'HEMA' are searching for a department store, not historical fencing) we rank in the top search query positions for most other popular keyword phrases related to historical fencing and swordsmanship. This website receives around 10,000 views a month to its pages and is helping spread awareness and information to newcomers, which was our goal. So although you might not like the anonymous nature of the admins, there is a purpose to this.