A Summary Letter for the ES Community

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What about just replacing every point that says "Trevor" with "unfortunate buyer" or "mislead purchaser" or something similar?
 
^---- +1, search and replace. Change Trevor's username to 'unfortunate buyer' as well.

He can sign up as another member if he wants to post. I don't think his forum nick will ever get any respect anyway.
That's a good solution.
 
liveforphysics said:
ptd said:
at first, i thought luke was pretty rude, but after a bit of reflection (and after losing quite a bit of naivety about the advertising industry as a whole), i came to appreciate the early cannonfire.

I had seen this happen with 2 previous fantastic forums. An outsider buys it to make money, 6 months later it's only got newbs left asking and having questions answered by the vendors that pay to get to post there. That makes it about as crooked as possible. I was too gentle in both of the earlier forums when they were taken over. I wasn't going to make that same mistake this time, I was not going to let the wishy-washies and profiteers coax the masses into laying down and letting ES be destroyed. The biggest problem was, I only had my cell phone to work from, and I was racing a car 24hr endurance road-race at Thunder Hill fri/sat/sun. I was pitting for fuel, and requesting my phone be handed to me with the ES view topics page refreshed and waiting over the radio to skim for 30seconds and check on progress and help spur the revolt where possible (by crushing the blind wishy-washies generally), then going back out to race. If I would have been home with my laptop... ohhh man...

I am one of only 2 people I know of that have been banned for life from one of the most important forums in my current life. It is named the GMCNET. http://gmc.mybirdfeeder.net/GMCforum/index.php?t=thread&frm_id=1&rid=0
A second toad has also banned me from the GMCLISTSERVER. I spend $2000+ with major commercial sponsor of both, and he sent me many messed up orders and even sent them to wrong addresses and billed my VISA, when I had a large credit with him. When he refused to correct the problems in private, I took them public. I had also repeatedly ask him to stop answering every post with "We sell those". This is what happens when you let a vendor become the major contributor to a forum. He gets to pretend he is the only source for his overpriced parts, which are commonly available at NAPA or any of many vendors. No one is allowed to criticise him or post an alternative source of parts. The other vendors in the business never pimp their wares on the forum. They, like Justin are men of class.
 
My hats off to Justin, Methods, LFP, the Moose and Pedal - really to all on the inside that fought the gallant fight to preserve ES. And to all on the outside that aided this effort.

What I want to know now is where I can send a check or make a Paypal contribution to offset a bit of the costs involved in rescuing our beloved ES?
 
we are glossing over the most important post in this thread...

ypedal, do you really use IE?

at least get on firefox.

but better yet, get on chrome.

or be like me...use chrome on a macbook pro!

that's all.

RVD.

P.S. Yes, Justin rocks!
 
I say we ask Trevors permission to put all those writings of recent events down in The Biker Bar area. Also I think it would be best if they are all locked. That way only 11719 menbers out of the 6,954,662,786 people in the world would be able to look at it.
World Population numbers from http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

I myself have nothing against Trevor. He had good intentions. I also have nothing against Knightmb, besides some server break downs and loosing all those pictures, he did a fine job as a owner. If someone offered me a pile of money for something I owned. SURE I would sell.
 
Soooo....what is the exact date of liberation? Are we going to have EV rides/events every year on the date to celebrate our Independence day? I think we should be trying to get more rides and events together anyways, this seems to be a great reason to have a get-together. Maybe in the future we can even make a weekend event/race type thing out of it.

As for further discussions of ad revenue, it is basically a non issue according to the accounts.
justin_le said:
Through a flurry of weekend activity, a compromise solution was reached in
which Trevor sold the site to Justin_le at a significant loss, under terms in which
Justin guarantees the content is not to be used for generating advertising revenue.
.
 
Hi Jay and glad you picked up on that detail. Indeed under my own and any future ownership there is never to be advertising associated with the content of forum posts. The terms of service will be amended to include this and hopefully that should help deter this site from ever being valued again based on potential ad revenue. The terms in which people contributed content here will explicitly forbid it.

As for ebike independence day, that is every day my friend! If people care about exact timelines, it was Saturday Aug 6th that methods et. al. achieved an agreement in principle with Trevor that the site be returned, Sunday Aug 7th that actual terms were hammered out, Monday Aug 8th that the document was signed and official, and just yesterday, Aug9th, that the final ownership transfer of the forum was completed and all keys passed over. That's when YPedal busted out the wine! So perhaps the day to go down.

Jay64 said:
As for further discussions of ad revenue, it is basically a non issue according to the accounts.
justin_le said:
Through a flurry of weekend activity, a compromise solution was reached in
which Trevor sold the site to Justin_le at a significant loss, under terms in which
Justin guarantees the content is not to be used for generating advertising revenue.
.
 
Maybe Miles could add this to his ES Timeline. I know I probably didn't need to say this but I'm trying to get my post count up to 3000 with frivolous posts, so that I will be deemed worthy enough to be added to his list. :wink: :lol:

-- Gary
 
GGoodrum said:
Maybe Miles could add this to his ES Timeline. I know I probably didn't need to say this but I'm trying to get my post count up to 3000 with frivolous posts, so that I will be deemed worthy enough to be added to his list. :wink: :lol:

-- Gary
:lol:

I certainly will!
 
So in true holiday spirit, there are several:

August 4/5th = Declaration of Independence Day

August 5th/6th = Demonstration of Independence

August 7th = Armistice Day

August 8th = Treaty Day

August 9th = Independence Day

;)
 
Justin (future in Hollywood?) needs to be added to the top of Ellen Leventry's Angels list -
(http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiratio...-TV-and-Movie-Angels-1990s-to-Today.aspx?p=13

Paraphrasing:

1996: Michael with John Travolta "He's an angel... not a saint!"
View attachment 4

1998: City of Angels with Nicolas Cage "I would rather have one breath of her... than eternity without it"
View attachment 2

1999: Dogma with Ben Affleck and Matt Daman "I can spot a commandment broken a mile away"
View attachment 3

2003 Angels in America with Emma Thompson "Greetings Prophet, the Great Work Begins! The Messenger has arrived"
View attachment 1

2011 Grin Tech with Justin_le "Justin saved the forum at great personal expense!" - LFP


Thank you Angels!!!
 
neptronix said:
^---- +1, search and replace. Change Trevor's username to 'unfortunate buyer' as well...

Why ? .... how many .."Trevor's " are there in the world ?? ..and how do we know he wont buddy up with "A.R" ..again and try the same trick on some other unsuspecting forum ??
.. certainly A.R ... deserves to be clearly identified.
I feel we have something of a duty to record these events ( open access) in order to help other potential forum "victims" in the future, just as we were able to search and identify those characters to understand what was happening.
Burying the storyline in some members only section, and disguising the names is practically assisting them in future "forum raids" and doing a disservice to the on line community.
But, i dont know the details of Justin's agreement, and as such that has to have an overriding priority.
Thanks again Justin.

HH
Edited at the request of the Forum Management in order not to identify certain parties !!
 
As an "outsider" (this is my second post), this has been fascinating (and edifying) to observe.

Person "A", after years of work on a web site under which an excellent forum has developed is offered a substantial sum by person "B" on the urging of person "C" who makes a commission by promoting the forum as a potential "money-maker". What was wrong with that? Person "A" did indeed own the web site and its contents.

It appears that person "A" has "taken the money" and departed the scene, as has person "C".

Person "B" was left "holding the bag" containing many angry hornets threatening total devaluation of the web site.

Only with the intervention of person (angel) "J" has person "B" escaped with some injury and the web site saved from a tragic ending.

Where was the mistake?

The answer (in hindsight) was simple - person "A" did not and never could "own" the community of dedicated enthusiasts that were the core of the forum and its substance.

They were not for sale.

Somebody should make a movie....
 
parabellum said:
A puppet show will represent it better. :D

You could just get Tom Cruise to star, I'm sure he'd gladly let someone put their hand up his *** :lol:
 
Ok (Justin_le hope you're readin' at some point) this is about the most serious place I could think of to post this idea regarding the future of funding ES. It's not really my idea, just a combination of ideas that clicked in my head a little while ago.

1- A member initiate fee: The sphere allows people to lurk and register as members, post in general discussion areas and view all threads, faqs and wikis for free. IF they want to be allowed to post in the more technical threads (for ex. ebike technical or non-hub motor drives etc) they could pay a modest ($5 I'm thinking) one time to gain access to those areas. This system would provide two advantages that I see: It keeps morons, shillers (sp?), and trolls from clogging up the more "important" threads... and it provides funding for ES.

NOW- Specifically these member fees would be put into a long term CD of some kind (no I'm not a business/accounting major) with a respectable ROR and a low low risk. Withdrawals from this fund only occur for purposes related to site maintenance, upgrades, and the like. All accrued interest on the balance would go to Justin_le for his contributions in saving and maintaining the 'sphere. He could use it for research, helping out low-funded ebikers, or whatever. The main idea is to develop a bulk sum of capital to work with. It doesn't seem like $5 apiece would raise much of a principal, but take a look at the "members" link next time you get a chance. There is currently a pool of 11729 users. I don't know how active all of these are, but even if just 2000 of us pay the member fee of $5 that raises a healthy $10k start.

This 1-time fee could be combined with a yearly membership fee of like a dollar...b/c that helps keep people who are invested and active around. Lazy trolls aren't usually going to pay a dollar let alone $5 just so they can stick around to torment people. They do it where they can do it for free. An account kept current would also be able to update this wiki T****r had the idea of starting up. I REALLY like the wiki idea and I think it could go far to help expand on what this site can do. No he can't sue us for stealing the wiki idea... who doesn't have a wiki these days?

2-Merchandising: Many of you have said it... start selling ES-themed stuff. I don't think an online store would hurt anyone a bit. We'd need someone to take care of that part of the business, and they'd earn a commission for their time. I know you're probably a bit busy to take that on Justin! Another thing is I'd recommend hiring someone (or selecting a qualified volunteer) to design this merchandise. A new logo would be nice...

3-CL the for sale ads. This is an idea Justin had in the "open letter" thread, and I think that vendors should really be paying to sell things on the 'sphere. Doesn't have to an astronomical %, esp. since they throw good deals our way quite often. Just a fair cost-and-then-some covering percentage. Only paid-fee users could post for sale ads (perhaps buy things also...though that should prob. be free), and vendors would have a slightly higher registering fee that would enable them to post in the for-sale new section. Or something along these lines...the idea is flexible and thats what I like about it.


These are some of the ways I think we could make ES independent without going to ads of any kind. This keeps the sphere net-neutral too I think. It might filter out people who sneer at paying a membership fee, but lets face it if they are that cheap then perhaps they wouldn't contribute much anyways... (we could even have a sliding fee scale for members who are not-so-well off on approval).

My 3 cents...sort of ...those of you who contributed to these ideas already know who you are...thanks for them I just compiled them...a little.

Ok 2 am time for bed!!
 
Orlando Bloom will play Dee Jay as the clueless-stoner-wino/DJ/keyboard-comic/dad....

but with his awesome british accent and a touch of scottish...

me love accents :mrgreen:

tee hee hee!
 
I just went to endless-sphere.com. Justin has control of the whole domain name correct? Is this going to be the new logo for the community?

I really like the idea of having some merchandise. I know I want some stickers and shirts. I think Endless-Sphere.Com shirts in general would be good, but I think some Endless-Sphere.Com Revolution shirts would be great. I would like to have some ES decals on my ICE race bike/transporter, and also on all my personal EV builds.
 
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