SoylentNews is people
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: 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.