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Re: SoylentNews founder resigns

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On 2014-03-06, wjwlsn <ibillwilson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Unexpected development at SN just a month after going live.
>
> "I can no longer sustain the level of activity needed to run Soylent news,
> and so I have resigned as leader.
>
> In the end, I was literally begging people to step back and let the site
> "just run" for a few days while I caught up... alas, to no effect. Issues
> must be resolved "right here and right now" continuously throughout my day
> with no end in sight.
>
> NCommander has taken over as project lead - he has access to everything
> from the registrar down. I understand he has a different vision for the
> project, which will soon be revealed.
>
> I'm sorry to leave like this, but there's really nothing for it. I'm going
> back to my AI studies, which happen at a more leisurely pace.
>
> John Barrabas
>
> (And yes, this was an amicable transfer of power. There's no hard feelings
> on my side.)"
>
> http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/03/06/0238207
>

Interesting!  I hadn't seen this.  So, digging into the bag of "wild-ass
guesses":

1. This kind of project takes up more time and energy than he had imagined, and
he burned out.  I mean, the IRC channel and a lot of the comments were full of
users looking for improvement, change, and so on.  It's endless and if he
hadn't been mentally prepared for it, it probably overwhelmed him.

2. He took the project as far as he could get it.  There are 'start up' people
and 'maintenance/management' people, and maybe he was more of a start up
person, who now finds the fun is gone.

3. He realized he was out $1000 of pocket and the community wasn't naturally
going to let him figure out a model that lets him earn it back.  Suddenly it's
not the thrill of a renegade website - it's a thing with expenses and that's
not fun.

I wish him well, anyway, and can certainly appreciate where he's coming from.
I expect the comments to be full of "hey, we're a community, we needed to vote
on the next leader" or some crap.  And I'm a little more than curious to see
what NCommander's new "vision" is going to be (there don't seem to be many
visions to choose from out there these days).  I understand from the IRC
channel and elsewhere NCommander did a lot of the hard coding to get that
crusty perl up and running.  Maybe he was a more natural fit?  Interesting
times.

Meanwhile, Usenet is free, or $10 per month to an NSP - certainly, a far cry
from a website that has to pay for all its own bandwidth. 

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Thread

SoylentNews founder resigns wjwlsn <ibillwilson@gmail.com> - 2014-03-05 21:52 -0500
  Re: SoylentNews founder resigns RS Wood <rswood@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-06 08:52 +0000
    Re: SoylentNews founder resigns Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2014-03-06 10:30 +0000
      Re: SoylentNews founder resigns Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-03-06 14:18 +0100
        Re: SoylentNews founder resigns RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-06 18:41 +0000
          Re: SoylentNews founder resigns Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2014-03-06 22:53 +0000
  Re: SoylentNews founder resigns Koen <koen.lefever@gmail.com> - 2014-03-07 13:20 +0000
    Re: SoylentNews founder resigns RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-07 16:01 +0000

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