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posted by NCommander on Monday March 10 2014, @11:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the i-am-so-fucking-sick-of-this-drama dept.

Update: 10 March 2014 20:20 UTC. Follow here for the latest.

Update: 10 March 2014 19:10 UTC.

At this point Barrabas reports he is exchanging email with the buyer but refuses to say anything. Until we hear from them, we have to hope for the best but plan for the worst. If this link goes down, please go to the linode site where we will regroup. We will use that link as a fallback if necessary.

Update: 10 March 2014 18:30 UTC.

Barrabas reports in IRC he has received funds for the site and has sold the domain name. The terms of this sale, as well as its buyer, have not been disclosed. We await additional information. If you have information on this, please contact us at admin @ soylentnews . org

Update: 10 March 2014 16:30 UTC.

Due to NCommander's personal involvement with the situation he is recusing himself from negotiations. I (Mattie_p) am currently working with the staff to figure out how to address this incident. We have posted a poll which is available and should show up shortly on the front page.

Original text:

We've been held hostage by John:

Working with NCommander
Am I The Bad Guy

Right now, I can't write a coherent response properly (I'm writing this from a Mac Store right now as some sort of response was necessary). Despite John's offer, we never used the Linode's he purchased for hosting slash, and the two services (forums and wiki) that were hosted on them were migrated. I had hoped that this would have been a private issue between me and John, to be handed by email with a proper agreement, but the site itself is now at risk.

Right now, I'm organizing a response with out staff now, but I won't be home for several hours so MrBluze is currently handling the crisis. He can hand off to mattie_p when he returns, or myself when I have proper net access again. John's offer does not reflect myself or any of the staff here, nor does he have what he says he has. The web server, dev server (fusion forge), and database were always hosted on Linode's on my personal account. John DID have access to the Linode account which was revoked when he left staff, but to my knowledge never had the root password or shell accounts on any of the boxes. That access was revoked. It is possible he has a copy of the database, I do not know for sure. He does not at this moment have access to any of the hardware powering the site. He does however control the DNS register and can possibly yank the site from under us. If that happens, I can send a mass email to every user account to inform them of what happened, and where we are now. We supposedly have until Friday until John drops everything in the trash unless someone pays him $2000 USD. As per the posts, I was willing to pay him, but I had some issue with the expenses as written (my emails are genuine, as is the email I received from John), but I'm currently in Asia, and have no practical way to send him a check until I return to the continental United States on Sunday; I informed John of this on IRC originally.

We're currently in scramble mode to try and organize a new name, and getting migrated as soon as possible. I was serious when I said I was done with the drama but it appears John isn't. I'm personally sorry to have to inflict this on the community, and if you wish to leave us, I shall not blame you in the slightest.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by halcyon1234 on Monday March 10 2014, @01:10PM

    by halcyon1234 (1082) on Monday March 10 2014, @01:10PM (#13910)

    Uhh-- can anyone prove that none of the players involved are actually saboteurs from Dice? A quick investment of ~2k, a few weeks of playing a developer on the Internet, build a community only to smash it up / demoralize the "rebels". Maybe I'm just trying to find a narrative that makes sense, but seriously guys?

    --
    Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Funny=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by lx on Monday March 10 2014, @01:20PM

    by lx (1915) on Monday March 10 2014, @01:20PM (#13918)

    It's just people man. People with fears and dreams and egos. Like you and me.

    • (Score: 1) by halcyon1234 on Monday March 10 2014, @02:09PM

      by halcyon1234 (1082) on Monday March 10 2014, @02:09PM (#13963)

      It's just people man. People with fears and dreams and egos. Like you and me.

      Speak for yourself. *I* am WAY too amazingly awesome and flawless to have an ego.

      --
      Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by mwvdlee on Monday March 10 2014, @05:21PM

      by mwvdlee (169) on Monday March 10 2014, @05:21PM (#14121)

      This.

      The only reason soylentnews exists is because slashdot was determined to go for the beta (which today looks the same as the day they said they'd listened and would change it).

      We're here because we hate Beta.
      But we all have different reasons why we hate Beta.
      And we have even more different ideas of what a soylentnews should be like.

      This site needs a visionary leader and a crew of faithful believers to make it happen.
      I don't think SN has either of those.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:16AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:16AM (#14564)

        slashdot[...]today looks the same as the day they said they'd listened

        You may not fully appreciate exactly how true your statement is.
        With the exception of Dice's ads and the polls, the sidebars[1] there[2] haven't changed since Feb 21.
        In this thread, Leebert confirmed my suspicions about a revolt in the ranks [soylentnews.org].

        [1] For me, those are actually at the bottom of the page, as I don't download their scripts or stylesheets.
        [2] I actually get the page a day later via Google's cache using the &strip=1 parameter so I don't give them any pagehits either.

        -- gewg_

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by kebes on Monday March 10 2014, @02:10PM

    by kebes (1505) on Monday March 10 2014, @02:10PM (#13965)
    That seems unlikely. Such a move on the part of Dice would require them to be extremely aware and dedicated to keeping the 'vocal nerds' at Slashdot. But, if both those things were true, then the disaster that is Beta would never have happened.

    The far simpler explanation is that people are people. Nerds in particular have strong personalities, and so a spontaneous collection of motivated nerds are not guaranteed to get along. In fact, given that all the people involved in this project had (I presume) no working relationship prior to launch, it's amazing that it has worked as well as it has.

    These are the growing pains of a new site/community. I'm not saying that this kind of drama is inevitable; and I certainly would have preferred if we didn't end up where we are. But on the other hand none of this is that surprising; and it certainly doesn't mean the end of the site/community.
  • (Score: 2) by TheloniousToady on Monday March 10 2014, @05:25PM

    by TheloniousToady (820) on Monday March 10 2014, @05:25PM (#14123)

    Don't forget the NSA. If Dice really is involved, you can just bet that NSA is the *true* puppet master. (Ain't conspiracy theories fun? ;-)