[nearly original] Open Letter to Endless Sphere Community

[jonathanm]

so do we have a equal say/vote in what goes on with the new site? or did i misread the above statement?

Looks like some might be voting with their feet, lol.

I don't agree with donating to a forum that has been bought as a commercial concern. And I won't be paying any kind of membership fee either.

Yknow, If I had heard that one of the long time regulars had bought it I wouldn't be that concerned. So why do I feel so uncomfortable with this?

Trevor, or KnightMB, why not tell us what the plans involve, then we can all stop speculating and decide if we want to run with it or not?

 

[Erogo]

imagine if it was Wikipedia had just been bought by an unknown who could not deny plans to charge membership for people to view the content (which they may have written themselves), with ads shown by default unless they go to the effort of switching them off... man, you'd be surprised hey?

Deleting content? Er... this is the future, you can't just rip up your manuscript and burn it, and you've probably lost any control of it (property rights) by posting it. Possibly the best can be done is to take a copy of this whole forum (how??) and rehost it for free, adfree, and not contribute any new content until confident and comfortable with the new model.

But far out you feel stung eh, you'll be much more cautious about what you offer up, when you've been shown that this can happen to you!

Chins up, fellas.

 

[AussieJester]

So JohnRobHomes, your implying there will definitely be ads, its how they are implemented, that's not what people are worried abut, its the fact there will be ads at all. Also, paid advertising for business owners I have seen how well this works for members on motoredbicycle forum, impartial moderation flies out the window, heaven forbid a non advertising member puts down a paid advertisers product, posts are deleted! Can't be upsetting the vendors can we :-s

You can try and sugar coat it all you like JRH, fact is advertising on ANY level whatsoever will see a boat load of long contributing members up and leave, they like myself posted here originally for others in the community to benefit, not to supply endless new content for the forum owner to get rich off, the moment an ad appears, we know the forums betrayed its members in favour of the dollar, simple as that John.

KiM

 

[Erogo]

It's not ads per se that are offensive AJ. Your sig has ads in it. It's that someone's profiting from your contributions, that sucks.

If the ads are as innocuous as those in your sig, say, community-generated ads, advertisement by consensus, then that might be tolerable hey?

 

[JohnC]

.

 

[marty]

trevor,
If its not broke. Don't fix it. The less you do here the better. A few small adds at the bottom or the side won't bother me. PLEASE do not clutter up a wonderful forum with irreverent nonsense. Also please leave the For Sale section exactly as it is. Where else am I going to be able to sell defective batteries?

In 2010 knightmb played around with banner adds see topic:
Banner Ads BE GONE! (or not?)
Don't think anyone got too upset then.

Please - tread lightly

 

[jonescg]

If I recall, Huffington Post had a very similar dilemma. HuffPost was made up of a whole bunch of contributions from thousands of freelancers who put many days worth of work into each contribution. The owner / host decided to then sell it to someone else and walked off with a small fortune (not a large one). Still, the thousands of contributors were rightly pissed off.

But what was the policy on sharing information on the web? Did they have one? Did they need one?

I love the ES. I love the fact that I can learn from other successes and failures, and others can learn from my successes and failures. The self-regulation is what makes it work so well. People can't complain about Facebook taking your information, when people gladly put it up for all and sundry to read.

In any case, I have a half-baked idea of what the F is going on with ES, but until KnightMB and Trevor lay all their cards down, we the members are understandably confused and feeling a little mushroomed.

 

[AussieJester]

If the ads are as innocuous as those in your sig, say, community-generated ads, advertisement by consensus, then that might be tolerable hey?

If individual forum members wish to place a recommendation in their own sig's for another members services i'm fine with that, long as the postee is not gaining financially from it.

The links in my sig are recommendations for people i have dealt with, they make and/or sell outstanding products, they didn't ask me to place links in my sig nor am paid for puting them there, i don't benefit in any way from having them there other than the knowledge it may help other members find quality products and services it took me hours to source when i first joined ES , where as any ads that this new owner puts on the site he WILL beneift finacially from it, people are drawn to this site by its content, content given by members (at the time) knowing it would be open source and nobody would be profiting from it.

I really have nothing more to say on the subject just some deleting to do... :x

KiM

 

[Green Machine]

I dont agree that ES was perfect as is, and it will take a lot more than free hosting to fix. Think money and time.

We had major calamity with back ups and restoration from back up. Nobody but one person knows what happened but as we all know a lot of images and data were lost. For the most part the owner was non existant through this calamity and to this day has not communicated on what really happened. There was lost data in the server migration that took place last night but not as severe. As i understand it ES was based for a long time on a personal computer...a very dangerous proposition.Its very evident from the calamity that happened that there were problems with the data back up system. The old pictures seem to be unrecoverable.

ES is antiquated in terms of back end design. PHPBB is not the ideal solution for this large a forum and we have been paying the price with data problems, inadequate search engine. spammers, etc. Moderators spend many hours killing spam that would be non existent with better back end system.

The forums are in a disarray and need to be reorganized. Its hard to find relevant data and when you do its full of broken images and data.

The front page was a horribly designed page for a server company that made these forums look weird and made us almost irrelevant in terms of google search results. With just an electric bike related page we would be twice as visible and findable to the general public and would continue growing as a userbase.

The former owner was not doing this as a not for profit enterprise, because he just sold the site without warning probably paying himself a descent wage (depending on selling price) for the hours of time he did dedicate for keeping this forum alive.

The back end of the server has not changed much since the conception of the sphere. We have been pretty stagnant in terms of software improvement, making ES a great hang out for geeks...but missing some of the slickness which would attract mass new users. I know a lot of us dont want to attract mass users..but if you want a revolution its got to exist of more than just geeks.

The new owner is offering to put the site on a more robust faster server with professional back up system (3 figures a year) update the phpbb to a more robust vbulletin (250 a year) hire programming team to help him (expensive), dedicate his own time full time. Last night we migrated to new server.

So in short, in terms of profit or non-profit nothing has really changes except that ES has a new owner who is promising to be more of an active presence and dump money and massive time into the forums.

Whether the new owner is better than the old owner is the question that only time will answer. He appeared out of the blue and has that unknown quality about him that is for sure. He did build himself an electric bike with help from ES so we know he is not that much of an alien .

 

[trevor]

I completely understand what those of you who are concerned are saying. You don’t want this place to turn into a link farm of irrelevant garbage. Those aren’t my intentions at all. It would be nice if there were a spot on the site where people could go directly to vendors’ online stores and information areas instead of trying to follow links that are posted in their signatures. There are many vendors on this site that could use a better outlet for reaching their customers. Some of them have online stores that are well advertised and set up and some of them depend heavily on the For Sale section of the community. Most of these vendors are pretty heavy posters and have contributed to the site over the years. They should have a spot where they are more visible to current and potential customers. Each vendor could have their own sub-forum. They could run member only discounts. They could setup more of a storefront than they already had in their own section. There’s a thousand ways to slice this pie and not one has been decided upon. It’s nice to see vendors such as Rob and Justin step forward and provide ideas on how to move forward. Their opinions mean a lot as do the members of this community. They are well respected members who also conduct business here.

It took a long time for me to make the decision to take this on. Lots of time and resources have already been spent that affect my life and those in my family. I knew that this would be controversial with some members. Some would pack up and leave right away. Others would jump to conclusions as to what this place would turn into. Then there would be some that would take a wait and see approach. My point is that I know how important all of you are to this community and anticipated most of these reactions. I also know that by losing some of you, we would be losing some best resources that we have around here. It would be a shame if some of you decided not to participate here anymore and you would really, really be missed.

I will be spending many hours and putting more resources into this community just like so many of you have in the past. I strongly believe that ES will benefit from these efforts and continue to be the Internet’s preeminent source for information on electric technology. If I wanted to just make a quick buck by turning this place into a link farm I would have done it by now or would have done it months ago. Instead I have spent months researching and implementing infrastructure changes that benefit our community. I strongly believe that ES will grow significantly while benefiting from these efforts and continue to be the Internet’s preeminent source for information on electric technology.

 

[slayer]

8)

 

[methods]

:?

 

[neptronix]

I don't think you're winning any minds over by saying that this is a pie that can be sliced....
Vendor-specific forums aren't a bad idea, but the language i'm hearing overall is concerning.

It doesn't help that this forum has seen some major data loss, a good amount of outages, neglect, etc. for some time.

 

[trevor]

Sorry, neptronix. I didn't mean anything negative by the slice this pie comment. I just meant addressing the issues, that's all.

 

[liveforphysics]

It seems the main concern is how ads would be implemented.

No. Fail.


It's that my work is used as the bait for ads. My work was not done and contributed to be ad-bait. It will all be gone. My phone is pinging me every 2 minutes with a new email from folks (and the core 5% that does 99% of all that is useful on this forum) that are pissed at the thought of their work being ad-bait, and ranging from asking when, to begging it right now to start a new forum and that they will delete all posts today if we have something new ready.

The feedback I've had from the core members who won't stand for having their time and effort turned into ad-bait would leave the site a gutted shell structure built of newbs asking what hub to buy and if they can power it with some AA cells.

And then the new forum would have an amazing content jump-start, everyone copying/pasting the best more resource intensive parts of each post as they delete them from ES. The core members all take a few hours to go through the posts, culling bad stuff, categorizing the good stuff into different sections, perhaps chargers, motors, motor theory, batteries by chemistry, chassis setup, mounting methods, etc etc. Then we use this to jumpstart the new forum.

I think the keys to the new forum should be given to somebody who we know will never sell out our thousands of hours of contributions. Somebody that can not be financially lured into selling out our years of work. Someone infallibly rock-solid and not commercially involved, like Amberwolf, Miles, Bigmoose, Tiberius, etc.

With the annoying huge amount of response I've got, it would just take a single reply-all email and the core is gone from here and shifted to a place where our work isn't turned into ad-bait.

 

[gensem]

+1 if aint broken, dont fix it.

You clearly wanna make money from the forums, otherwise your 1st phrase would say NO ADS. There is no such a thing as ebike love coming to save our threads.
The site is not perfect, but it the best one available by a far margin and everyone knows it.
This is smeeling....
Im not a core member but im with ya luke.

 

[mrzed]

Trevor,

With all due respect, I think you are using too much business language and not providing enough real information. You have to know that there are a few dozen contributors that provide 90%+ of the valuable content here, and therefore the value of the asset you just bought. Most of them are engineers or at least think like them, which means that they have spent too much time listening to non-technical managers using weaselly business speak. They would all rather you cut to the chase and explain exactly how you plan to profit from this site without breaking what makes it worth posting to.

I'd be inclined to break free of the usual business plan, which is to keep the real plan close to your chest. If you'd played this a little more carefully, you would have been able to roll out the plan slower, but now the most valuable members are stirred up and want direct answers fast.

I'm a total newb technically, but I keep reading here because I feel like it's the equivalent of hanging out with Karl Benz and the Wright brothers in the garage 100 years later. I would never join or read a forum that required membership fees, but I'd happily give money to keep something like ES going if it needed it.

Interesting times. Markets drop 3+% in one day and this drops on the forums here at the same time. I wonder if the community that formed here can be kept in one place (here or elsewhere) or if it will be as ephemeral as so much other Internet content and community. I hope it is the first, because I may not be driving the revolution like some folks here, but I believe in it, and to be able to watch it take place in front of my very eyes like this has been a great thing.

 

[slayer]

Trevor,

I'd be inclined to break free of the usual business plan, which is to keep the real plan close to your chest. If you'd played this a little more carefully, you would have been able to roll out the plan slower, but now the most valuable members are stirred up and want direct answers fast.

.

i Guess we can t be too carefull after reading what luke just said and this we never know the changes could be dramatic and we loose all of the base of ES

 

[adrian_sm]

I completely understand what those of you who are concerned are saying. You don’t want this place to turn into a link farm of irrelevant garbage. Those aren’t my intentions at all.

That is not the main concern. This is:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30462&start=60#p440480

It's that my work is used as the bait for ads. My work was not done and contributed to be ad-bait.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30462&start=15#p440299

countless people contributed in the spirit of free and open knowledge sharing to make the ES site into what it is now.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30462&start=15#p440359

Let me clarify that for me the issue isn't whether or not I see ads myself, or if the core/paying members of ES see them. It's the principle that I or others would be contributing information for free and for the general benefit of the community, only have that information 'cashed in' by a forum owner or add click recipient for their own monetary gain, even though they weren't the ones to produce the valuable information in the first place.
...
It's completely against the spirit in which this was published in the first place

Trevor, How do we plan to address these concerns, if we go to an Ad supported website?

- Adrian

 

[jonathanm]

So, a quick perusual of the "for sale - new" section....leaves me wondering what your definition of a vendor actually is.

How much are you gonna charge Icecube to sell his harnesses? Or shinyballs selling some nord locks? Are these the "vendors" you're talking about?

No you might turn round and say, oh no of course not....because it's quite clear they are not vendors, just people making literally a few extra bucks.

So where do you draw the line? How many sales does someone have to make before they have to pay you, Trevor?? If someone gets some boards made, can they sell 5? 20? 50?

Do vendors get a post count based discount? Or does Docbass pay the same price to sell his stuff as Golden Motor and Currie?

And regarding ads - did you stop to consider that a lot of the companies that might pay you for ad space are selling stuff that no-one on here would recommend? What are you gonna do when XYZ prebuilt bike company with the nice shiny banner ad at the top of the page is getting a slagging off in the forum?

Or are you gonna run each ad by the membership for approval first?

 

[fizzit]

I have yet to make any sort of useful contribution to the forum, so I probably have no say here. But it shows the maturity of the endless-sphere forum-goers that no one has been compared to hitler yet in this discussion. No where else on the internets could this occur! It does seem early to be deleting posts though, the only thing that's happened so far is the publishing of a cool mobile app.

 

[Green Machine]

Most exciting ES thread ever IMO

 

[liveforphysics]

Reading between the lines of corporate BS that answers nothing but says plenty, it looks like confirmation our work has been sold out.

**Note to core folks who give this place it's value**

Begin taking some time to manually go through your posts (your user history, view all posts by user tab).

Do it anyway you like, I'm doing separate text doc's with batt-info, charger-info, controller-info, motor-info, and copy/pasting the gem's that I spent a lot of effort on, sometimes an hour for a single post.

Once this happens, we the members collectively own ES (the only part that has any value).

If Trevor doesn't wise-up and see that what he is trying to do is as absurd as trying to market the rights to wikipedia or some other massive open-source project/collection, and realizes the instant it happens its the end of all contributions, then we have a nice smooth prepared transition into the next forum.

 

[bigmoose]

Perhaps an organization such as this would prove useful for the future as we follow Lukes lead:

1) General discussion
2) Battery and BMS Technology
3) Controller Technology
4) Motor Technology
4.1 Hub Motor Tech
4.2 Non Hub Motor Tech
5) Electric Bikes
6) Electric Motorcycles
7) Electric Cars
8 ) Alternate Energy
9) For Sale Wanted to Buy
9.1 For Sale New
9.2 For Sale Used
9.3 Wanted to Buy
10) The Cesspool

 

[Stevil_Knevil]

I feel confused, sad and upset for our little ebike community.

Wake me up when we get to heaven..
..let me sleep if we go to hell.