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SoylentNews
Update: The staff is in conversation with the buyer right now. More to follow, but at this point it looks to be a benevolent benefactor from the community. More to follow as we get it.
SoylentNews community:
As you know, there is not a lot of information available right now. Barrabas reports that he has sold the Soylentnews.org and associated domain names, and successfully transferred them, but neither the buyer's name nor the terms of that sale have been disclosed. As spokesperson for the staff of the site during this time, we would like everyone to know the following:
Our current backup plan is to revert to the li694-22.members.linode.com where the site is actually hosted. If we need to go there for any reason, we will try to notify the site in advance. If it has to go down or we are forced down, we'll be there. We will rebuild the database with some downtime and work from there.
We will send out a mass email to all users from the database informing them of this step should we need to do so.
We do not plan to implement this yet. We (the staff) did not advocate the buyout, but will try and work with the buyer if possible. We do not know the terms on which the domain name was sold.
We the staff will still operate the site, in its current condition on linode, until the community can vote on a new name. Depending on the buyer, we hope we can consider keeping the name the same as an option.
Until we know more information, we would like everyone to remain calm, collected, and civil, while we sort through these issues. Thank you
~mattie_p
(Score: 4, Informative) by Barrabas on Monday March 10 2014, @07:52PM
Consider waiting to talk to the new owner. He seems like a nice person.
And the real beef is that I had to get away from these people. The meanness was unbearable.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dast on Monday March 10 2014, @07:53PM
I suppose I can understand. What are you doing from here?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @01:25AM
Writing books. First one up: Domain Squatting for Fun and Profit!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Monday March 10 2014, @07:58PM
Can you at least tell the staff who the new owner is, if not announce it publicly? Was secrecy really a part of the deal you made with him?
That's what I find disturbing -- that you sold the site to somebody without anybody running the place having any clue about the sale before, during, or after. I'd really appreciate if you could, if only as a flavor for the peons who appreciate what you started, lay the suspense to rest.
Thanks,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dast on Monday March 10 2014, @08:00PM
Seriously. That's what I was waiting to hear? Why keep the new owner private? Does said owner want it private, explicitly?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mrbluze on Monday March 10 2014, @10:19PM
I don't trust any of this and I hope I am pleasantly proven wrong.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @08:15PM
So ... someone who gives in to your temper tantrum and pays you money seems like a nice person to you. Good to know.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Skarjak on Monday March 10 2014, @08:17PM
Thanks for starting this whole thing. It's unfortunate your involvement had to end like it did, but I can see why you'd want to bail.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @08:18PM
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
(Score: 1) by dast on Monday March 10 2014, @08:25PM
/me shakes head.
Why can't we just all get along? No need to burn bridges on the way out!
Good luck with whatever you do, B. Keep us informed!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @08:33PM
I actually was being nice. I was warning him about the door.
(Score: 5, Informative) by buswolley on Monday March 10 2014, @08:41PM
+2 for being funny, -3 for being a douche.
subicular junctures
(Score: 5, Funny) by moondrake on Monday March 10 2014, @08:24PM
Does he work for DICE?
(Score: 3, Funny) by cornholed on Monday March 10 2014, @08:48PM
Worse yet, if you're following the conversation in IRC, he's probably a lowly 4 digit!
In 2008 Obama was not in favor of gay marriage and look what they did to him.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @08:25PM
They were so mean that you had to undercut your own 1 week 'deadline'? Sorry chum, I'm not buying. I was just a neutral lurker before you pulled this shit; now I just want to see the community get the hell away from you. Take whatever you got for the domain and go stuff it.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Monday March 10 2014, @08:25PM
Owner of what, exactly? What has been sold? Just the name? The name and the databases and everything? What?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @09:11PM
Apparently just the domain name.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @10:27PM
The way this had played out has proven that the devs and the rest of the people building the site were right in their assessment of barabbas.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sigterm on Monday March 10 2014, @08:40PM
Mr Barrabas,
Regardless of what has happened, I wish you the best for the future. You started a Good Thing here, and I thank you for it. A lot of people have been very happy here, and hopefully will continue to be.
So you took the big chair, and it turned out that leading and managing a very demanding project involving strong personalities was a bit more than you had bargained for. You were brutally confronted with your shortcomings as a leader, and like many, you didn't take that too well, did you? Well, better luck next time, because if your life unfolds like that of most people, this will not be the last "vote of no confidence" you'll experience, in one way or another. It's just the way things work out sometimes.
I don't know if you could have done anything differently. I don't know if anybody could in your shoes. I do wish you'd moved on without making such a spectacle, though, because it has done some harm to the project and caused serious, unnecessary damage to your reputation. Your latest actions have served to portray you as a petty and vindictive person, and I don't think that's accurate at all.
I find it very difficult to believe that this last skirmish was all about getting your $2000 back, or that you were all that angry and upset over Michael asking (quite reasonable) questions about your expenses. My guess is it really hurt to be deposed as leader of what you considered *your* project, right? And that you believe you've been treated extremely unfairly, considering the enormous effort you've undoubtedly put into this site. That's understandable.
But really, if you wanted SoylentNews to be your personal pet project, you should have hired people to do all the moderation and the technical work. Because you see, everybody else considered this a community project, with the "Soylent News is People" tagline and all. And in a community project, one person doesn't get to call the shots, and sometimes the peasants revolt. That is their right, and they may have reason to do so in may cases.
Anyway, I believe the site will live on. I really hope they remove the posts about this conflict once it's all over, because in retrospect it will just look petty, unprofessional and generally ridiculous, although I must say I've appreciated the openness while it was going on.
By the way, unless there are some e-mails, chat logs or phone calls which contents have not yet been made public, your comment about "meanness" seems unwarranted and, well, a bit mean, actually. Do you really thing the others involved in this project are acting out of malice? Honestly?
But I refuse to end this post with a negative remark. Again, thanks a lot for your efforts in making this place a reality, and the best of luck to you in your future endeavors!
(Score: 2) by snick on Monday March 10 2014, @09:25PM
The "spectacle?" [soylentnews.org]
Proper decorum? [soylentnews.org]
Yeah, yeah ... from there it turned into a proper food fight, and in the end everyone has managed to befoul themselves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @11:05PM
I hope it stays. people are not pretty, plastic, idealised versions of people. this site should reflect everything back at us; warts and all.
if we remove the rough edges, we should also be willing to remove the reason why the site was formed in the first place, and anything negative said about dice and slashdot.
however, without knowing our history we will likely repeat it. what happened may be distasteful, but this is who we are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:24AM
I agree with the wise AC. Removing posts surrounding an internal conflict would tell us that the management is willing to censor... today this, tomorrow who knows what? And that's contrary to the spirit of the community.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:13PM
That was a great post, but I wanted to chime in on the question of removing these posts for appearance's sake. I think it's valuable for all of us, young and old, to have windows into the chaos that attends the birth of great projects, and also projects that failed. Not one person's memoir of what happened, written after the fact, but the actual transcript of what was actually said. Then we as a community can take a deeper look at the process and come up with best practices.
As it is, most people in the world who have never started anything and who grouse about what has already been started, have no clue how hard it is. They only regard the technical issues and say, aha, if only they did this, or changed that! They have no idea that the minute you need to work with others to accomplish a project 99% of the difficulty becomes managing the human element, not only in others but also in yourself.
And the much smaller subset of people who actually take the plunge and start something mostly have no idea or reasonable expectation of what they're in for. They mostly focus on operations and building structures, and that is itself so all-consuming that the human element of managing a team can destroy you if you don't have a thick skin. Nobody will want to do it the way you want (this is a hobgoblin of volunteer projects, nonprofits, anything where nobody's getting paid to do it your way), and there will always be that one guy who's an insufferable pain in your ass, always tearing you down to your face in front of others, and you think, if only I could push that guy out everything can spring forward; except, it doesn't, because the minute you succeed in doing that, you upset everyone else and somebody steps in to fill his shoes. So defensively you start to turn off your emotions because they're draining you dry. You take actions that are unilateral or treat people brusquely because you just want to get. something. done. for. once. without infinite bickering. Then you either start down the dark path of turning into a Machiavellian dick or you get out.
Then you get the peanut gallery of people who are third party to the bickering chiming in with, "Can't we all just get along?" as though it's a simple matter of sitting down, holding hands, and singing kumbaya.
And man, it's not. It's really not. So it is valuable to have this stuff remain in the historical record so this amazing community of geeks, nerds, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and really smart people can examine the dynamic itself and hack it.
Let's hack it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dcollins on Monday March 10 2014, @09:38PM
"And the real beef is that I had to get away from these people."
The even more-real beef is that you demanded getting paid off first. Getting away from these people came in a distant second to that priority, eh? (Hint: I have walked away from groups and investments like this by saying "keep everything you've got, I want nothing but a clean break".)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @10:02PM
I don't think that's a fair way to put it. The payment is a reimbursement for Barrabas' startup expenses (server rental, etc.). Supposedly he paid 1 year ahead, and I expect he has the receipts. He made the 1 year commitment, but obviously doesn't need the servers without the website. IRC logs were posted where the new leader agreed to take over "the startup costs" together with the leadership position. Afterwards the new boss realized that he doesn't need the particular server configuration that was rented. Seems like buyer's remorse, and he decided not honor the agreement, claiming that the old boss was holding the site hostage. Technically that's true, but also understandable given that the agreement was to transfer leadership and expenses together.
It's amusing that the expenses include an mp3 player that was a "gift" from the old to the new boss.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @10:38PM
He wasn't going to be "not paid" but was queried because things were unclear and there needs to be accountability, but this provoked an escalation and this cynical sale at a profit. This is not about the money, this is about ensuring the project doesn't succeed without a yoke around its neck. Bad bad.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cwix on Monday March 10 2014, @11:32PM
While I agree that this has turned into one giant clusterfuck, you certainly could have waited a bit before you upped the crazy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:21AM
I'm hoping for a smooth transition that goes well with what we've already built here. But I do have to ask why you didn't offer it to the other folks working on the site before selling it to an outsider?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:25AM
I think it's worse than that:
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/03/04/061 7219&tid=8 [soylentnews.org]
> Barrabas
> I could easily walk away from the project with no regrets. Before SoylentNews, I liked my life *a lot* and would go back to it in a heartbeat. I wouldn't be like Hitler: a sad, broken man living out the rest of his life in South America, brooding over broken dreams.
> If the crowd is *absolutely sure* they want to rush the machine guns, I'll quietly hand over the keys and retire. Nooooooo problem!
I'm sorry, but after saying that, I don't think asking for reimbursement can be justified.
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:21PM
Yeah, after reading a whole bunch more of the soap opera, I think "worse than that" is indeed the case. I've seen this sort of "take my toys and go home" before, and there's no cure for it but to eject the hoarder. :(
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:33AM
So from where I'm sitting you're mean too. You would have eventually got your $2000 bucks (maybe even more if you could justify it) from the current bunch one way or another but you didn't wait and sold the domain to someone else, knowing very well what that means.
NCommander is no angel (taking over like that) but you talking about meanness is pot and kettle, and merely trying justify your revenge.
(Score: 1) by Khyber on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:42AM
"The meanness was unbearable."
So was your selling us out.
But that's what I get for trying to trust a man with the name of a legendary THIEF AND MURDERER.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 1) by Eunuchswear on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:44PM
And your name is a reference to a place known for massacre and treachery?
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Thursday March 13 2014, @04:43AM
Actually, I took it from the knife made to pierce armor.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.