Why the E2 server move pissed me off
I am not mad about the down time. Not even about the fact that it took five weeks. I am sure that there was plenty of good reasons for it to take that long, and that the gods were doing everything within their power to get E2 up and running again, as quickly as humanly possible.
Having your provider pull the plug with little warning, is of course something that is impossible to protect against. It happens and I am happy that it was possible to find such a good place to relocate the servers to.
However, one thing about the server move was just totally unacceptable.
I managed to reach the gang through out of band means, and I know I am not alone with this.
The level of information that the general public received about what was going on, was pathetic. Having a single line of completely useless information, accompanied by an equally worthless picture that changes every couple of weeks, shows a complete and utter lack of respect for the users of E2.
Really you are just pissing up and down the backs of people who have put a lot of time and effort into this site. You simply owe it to them to keep them reasonably up to date, about the state of their precious work.
The least you can expect is a brief communication, that is updated a couple of times a week, and that has accurate information about what is going on. Saying that you are going to be up and running in a week and then not keeping that promise, without any explanation, will get people worried and disgruntled.
And don't even mention the livejournal community hideout. I only stumbled upon those bits of information, because I am skilled with a search engine, and I was really trying to dig up more news about this. The E2 main page mentioned that it was difficult to update the everything2.com pages. That is absolutely no excuse, since you obviously managed to do it anyway. It would have been easy to add a link to another website, where information could have been made available on a more regular basis. Lastly when E2 is finally back, all we get is some stupid editor log, which just says "yeah, we are back and things couldn't be better.". Bullshit!
E2 is up again, and having vented my feelings about this, eventually I can get back with the usual noding schedule. But this is definitely an F to the E2 gods for their public relations actions.
February 29th, 2004
After this incident, it has become clear to me how fragile E2 really is. E2 could suddenly lose funding, or the people responsible could one day for whatever reason be unable to care for E2 anymore. Then all your precious work will suddenly be in limbo. In principle there is nothing that either E2s gods or editors can do about it. They can fool around with peoples material, but has nothing to do with the actual running of E2. This privilege and responsibility rests on only a couple of individuals, and we all better hope they take it seriously.