SoylentNews.org Temporarily Offline?
SoylentNews.org (including li694-22.members.linode.com) is offline at the moment. The site currently returns the following:
Error 503 Service UnavailableThere has been a lot of drama going on with SoylentNews lately. The nominal founder, Barrabas, wanted to create a for-profit business, but the majority of volunteers wanted to avoid the potential for another sell-out which lead to the Slashcott in the first place. Due to conflicts with those volunteers, Barrabas has sold the domain to a new and unknown owner. If a deal between the mystery domain owner and NCommander and his volunteer 'Overlords' cannot be reached, the Site Formerly Known as SoylentNews can be found on the default Linode address.
Service Unavailable
Guru Meditation:
XID: 1060599780
Varnish cache server
NCommander's extremely petty and vindictive blog post where he attacked the previous owner was drama no one needed. He started the post by saying this was an "amicable" change of ownership, but as I read on, it was clear that if it was amicable before, then it would no longer be the case afterwards. Honestly, you should probably wait until you have full ownership of a site before you start trash-talking the previous owner. I'd say John's behaviour is very understandable. I'd be angry too if I had decided to take risks to start a site like that, and then everyone was turning on me. This wasn't part of a "transparent process". It was just mudslinging. There was no purpose to this other than to make John look bad.
I don't understand why the volunteers complained. John made if very clear from the start that this was a business for him. It was *his* business. If you still volunteer after that, then you have to accept the terms.
He also spent more than 1000$. Some of the stuff he spent money on ended up not being used, but that's completely irrelevant. He's selling his business, he's entitled to ask to be completely refunded for all expenses.
All I can say is that, from a user's point of view, the site was better under John. There was no drama that we could see, and there were frequent posts asking the community for input. I think if people had let the site just run for a while, as John wanted, it'd probably be better off.