The mystery of DT's new owner - SOLVED

[VR20X6]

This is a silly conversation. First people worry Deskthority might be shut down. Yeah right according to the same principle I guess when you lose interest in a keyboard, you don't pass it on for value but destroy it and trash it. Why? Then people complain about boilerplate terms and conditions like they are surprised with hands thrown up in the air that when ownership changes, ownership changes.

shit analogy. when you lose interest in a keyboard and sell it with no regard to who you sell it to, it's entirely possible you sell it to (or it ends up with) some weenie who then later destroys it for switches and puts them in some generic traycase 60%, thereby achieving the "just destroy it and trash it" by proxy.

the only difference is that in one of those cases you end up with some money in your pocket.

Good analogy, actually. Just a really bad analogy for webwit to have used, which is obvious when you actually extend it to its logical conclusion as you have. If you don't care what happens to it after you're done with it, there's a good chance it gets trashed either by the next party or by someone else down the line. Take a wild guess who sold their "keyboard" to someone with a priority on how much money they could get for it rather than what would happen to it under its new owner.

people complain about boilerplate terms and conditions like they are surprised with hands thrown up in the air that when ownership changes, ownership changes.

I was going to leave this alone, but since you brought it up again and I'm already taking the time to post, I may as well. Your argument was that the terms of the agreement weren't violated by transferring the data to OneCommerce because you consider them to be the "new first party" rather than a third party. But the terms were also updated to add "other than through a transfer of ownership of Deskthority", so clearly even OneCommerce doesn't agree with your assessment since this was added as a CYA maneuver after the fact. I'm sure they hoped nobody would notice, either, which is why this was done fly-by-night in a way that implies it applies retroactively to folks that never agreed to the change in the terms.

That all aside, there's something more important here: Even if you were right about this, did you really think that playing legal games with wording to argue that you technically didn't violate the terms of the agreement was going to make you look good?

[webwit]

You sound very entitled for someone who joined in 2021. DT was community owned, I put 10 years in it, but almost no one gave a fuck to help out and those who did all ran off ghosting me. Except matt3o. After that, no one helped matt3o out. I only care about his opinion regarding this sale. If you don't like the current owner, complain to them. The community had its chance and they didn't take it. Enjoy your free hosting.

[photekq]

How much did web hosting cost for deskthority at its peak? I've been curious about that.

[soyuz]

I've run communities in thankless tasks before. I even offered to help matt3o but was never taken up on it. (I recycled a previous account after ragequitting in the past)

Even when I've left communities that have been outright hostile to me, I always tried to do the right thing and transferred services I'd been running at significant cost to myself to others in the community for free, so lol, miss me with this "you coulda bought it and you didn't" bs.

[VR20X6]

You sound very entitled for someone who joined in 2021. DT was community owned, I put 10 years in it, but almost no one gave a fuck to help out and those who did all ran off ghosting me. Except matt3o. After that, no one helped matt3o out. I only care about his opinion regarding this sale. If you don't like the current owner, complain to them. The community had its chance and they didn't take it. Enjoy your free hosting.

And you sound very presumptuous to assume that this is my first and only account, or that I couldn't have been lurking before 2021. I'm also well aware of the waxes and wanes of this community. No amount of twisting words will change that getting more money out of the sale was prioritised over giving this community the best possible chance at a healthy future. I know you had at least one earnest offer from a community member that I strongly suspect most likely exceeded the lifetime hosting costs of DT (not even including DT club or other donations), which severely diminishes the weight of your words. I guess I'll know for sure if/when you give an honest answer to photekq's question about hosting costs.

[webwit]

How much did web hosting cost for deskthority at its peak? I've been curious about that.

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14804

[webwit]

miss me with this "you coulda bought it and you didn't" bs.

It's worse, I gave DT to the community but no one cared to run it.

[TheInverseKey]

miss me with this "you coulda bought it and you didn't" bs.

It's worse, I gave DT to the community but no one cared to run it.

I think that I put in a reasonable offer however it seemed like other offers were just too enticing apparently for monetary gain.

[soyuz]

miss me with this "you coulda bought it and you didn't" bs.

It's worse, I gave DT to the community but no one cared to run it.

And? I've lost passion for previous passion projects, the right answer in these situations is to just get out of the way, rather than adopting some kind of maladaptive permanently aggrieved mindset. Thankless jobs are thankless, people often won't take action until legitimately put in a position where they have to.

Like I said in my previous post (which you conveniently didn't quote), in the past I've just handed the keys to someone that would take over. It sucks, it sucks not to be appreciated but by selling off a community you inherently exclude people that would totally run it if given the keys. I've never treated any of my projects as anything that should have an ROI, if I couldn't find someone to give it to I'd just image the box, stick it on archive.org and let someone else pick it up.

And, given that you had offers from within the community, I can't help but conclude you were looking for ROI - and now the apparently 'safe harbor' the site went to is busy pivoting into period pants, cause that's what get-rich-quick hucksters with daddy money do.

[wobbled]

Just a matter of time now before Deskthority is redesigned into a period underwear e-commerce website for the middle east.
But more importantly, how's retirement webwit?

[Findecanor]

I preferred the old "Deskthority Club" model, being funded by paying members who got some tiny extra perks. But yes, someone has to put up the work to actually run it.
I believe in the forum and would have liked to help, but at the same time I am not sure who I am friends with over here and not, and I have been seriously fed up with drama in a couple previous clubs I've been in.

[Wodan]

miss me with this "you coulda bought it and you didn't" bs.

It's worse, I gave DT to the community but no one cared to run it.

Hahahha I remember that … pretty fucking based move. This is why we can‘t have nice things - no one is willing to actually put in the work when it‘s not in their immediate interest.

[webwit]

It's ok, I understand and it was not necessarily a bad thing. Warning: bad analogy. It was like a tennis club with the members only interested in playing tennis. Unlike a tennis club were the people running it think they are the most important with all their bullshit. But also: anyone interested in running things starting their own thing, like HaaTa or anyone starting their own switch website instead of adding to the DT wiki. It didn't work out. Sorry for selling for market value. Even worse analogy. Yes I could have sold a 1000 euro keyboard for much less because "community" and then seeing it on eBay one or two owners later. I did before. I indeed picked market value this time, because money but also seeing the problems me and matt3o ran into were unlikely to be solved, and the next guy would run out of steam at some point.

[webwit]

But more importantly, how's retirement webwit?

I got into hiking and opened an online dog shop! I still have an idle keyboard collection which I really need to sell on eBay for market price. *ducks*

[ifohancroft]

I don't think it matters whether we are happy with the decision (for webwit to sell Deskthority to OneCommerce) or not, it's done. Also, the reason we are not happy with it (IMHO), is because of the outcome, not so much the decision itself. I'm sure webwit didn't mean for it to end up like that and he did it with good intentions. Also, if he's going to give it to someone else, why not get some money for all his work and time throughout the years. Finally, he did say that because of an NDA he can't disclose why he chose OneCommerce over other offers, so we don't really know his reasons either, so I don't think we can judge him.

I know none of us are happy with what happened, but I think you are judging him too harshly, or even being rude.
Anyway, I just hope OneCommerce doesn't fuck it up, and ideally the forum goes to someone who cares for it and would be present and spend time and do the work to run it well.

[Myoth]

Also, the reason we are not happy with it (IMHO), is because of the outcome, not so much the decision (for webwit to sell Deskthority to OneCommerce) itself.

I don't want to dwell too much on the delusions from webwit, but I thought I'd pop here quickly to say that the decision got flak immediately at the very introduction of the persona of "keyboardjoy". To say that the decision itself was not a source of unhappiness is nothing more than Bargaining, the 3rd stage of Grief. The genesis of this very thread would be the 2nd stage. There was no doubts to how dodgy this seemed at a glance, and I still stand by what I've said back then, just that now I've lost all hope (4th stage wink-wink).

The outcome for now is nothing more than I personally would have hoped actually : DT, unchanged and untampered. The issue is the tough pill to swallow that the owners give absolutely no shit about the website (turnt into asset) and that the sale happened out of sheer greed. Multiple people from the community offered to take it back (and I do put the two entities that bid against each other when GeekHack went through the very same process because even if they are only entities, they at least were a part of the community), but to no avail. Considering how the "intents" of the current owner went, I would say the decision was defintely not taken for the greater good of the community. Keep in mind that there was a single person in charge of making the said decision.

So not only did we get sold out before the current ownership, but the new owner simply decided to "grab a pack of cigarettes" and never looked back. He had the very precious intent of growing up as a parental figure, but couldn't live up to it.

[ifohancroft]

To be fair, I'm not happy either about Deskthority being sold, specially that it was sold outside of the community. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel and was I guess just annoyed by the drama, when we are already worrying that each time we come here may be the last.

Btw, would you please ellaborate about Deskthority being sold out before the current ownership? I'm not sure I got that.

Hahahhaha! I fucking loved the "decided to grab a pack of cigarettes analogy". That was a good one!

[ifohancroft]

Hi All

I can't remember if we ever got tagging, but quoting is supposed to work - Can you please come back and tell us honestly what we can expect from the future of Deskthority? Is there a way for us (the community) to get it back from OneCommerce? I don't want to speak for everyone, but even if we have to buy it back.

[webwit]

It is a little bit more complicated than deciding to grab a pack of cigarettes of course. This was my love and I put 10 years into it. You don't even. I could mention I didn't sell for optimal price between high bidders and I gifted part of the price money. So yes it was about money but no it wasn't about money. But you are much too reactionary to even bother starting an adult discussion about it. And it's not a public discussion anyway.

[pandrew]

the reason we are not happy with it (IMHO), is because of the outcome, not so much the decision itself

We're rehashing things because of the outcome, but I think I'm speaking for many people saying that the dissatisfaction was there as soon as this thread started, if not sooner. I have not really voiced my own dissatisfaction earlier, but I definitely made the choice multiple times to not interact with content here and on DT discord because of this decision.

I suppose the only reason we're commenting now is because it's somewhat cathartic, we were right to feel disappointed after all, and also because it did expose important gaps in the licensing of the content that we consider ours, that makes it hard for us to just make our own theme-park (with vingt-un and fun people).

The only thing we can really do that is productive is to think about how to make a new place we can meet, and collect information, that is designed from the ground up to be community owned, easily portable, properly licensed, and try to find a way to make it impossible to sell, or really inconvenient, and if anything happens to it, it should be really easy to spin up a fork. I don't know if the technology exists to satisfy all of these, but we could definitely fix many of these problems. Say for example we could set up the same phpBB & mediawiki, with the licensing terms for all content made absolutely clear, exposing a way to efficiently, and perhaps incrementally export the database and uploads for both, implement example scripts that show how to clone and spin up the whole thing on a different server, or to set up a copy to browse offline, and with periodic backups going automatically to archive.org. Yes, there will always be an owner for any specific instance, be it is a raspberry pi running under my bed, or a VM they're renting in the cloud, but the community and our content should not be sell-able, and the ease at which we could move to a new domain name would make buying it be much less valuable to a OneCommerce type entity, so less likely that we actually have to move in the future.

[pandrew]

I guess one particular reason for feeling disgusted, is that the sale happened, because the active community had value, OneCommerce said as much on their website. It didn't get bought for the domain name, brand, trademark, existing links pointing back to the website, which are all fair game to sell. It got bought because we the users were the product.

[ifohancroft]

It is a little bit more complicated than deciding to grab a pack of cigarettes of course. This was my love and I put 10 years into it. You don't even. I could mention I didn't sell for optimal price between high bidders and I gifted part of the price money. So yes it was about money but no it wasn't about money. But you are much too reactionary to even bother starting an adult discussion about it. And it's not a public discussion anyway.

I could be totally wrong, but the way I understood it, was that the buying a pack of cigarettes line wasn't about you, but about Oliver/keyboardjoy. That he meant to take care of the forum, but ended up just disappearing.

The only thing we can really do that is productive is to think about how to make a new place we can meet, and collect information, that is designed from the ground up to be community owned, easily portable, properly licensed, and try to find a way to make it impossible to sell, or really inconvenient, and if anything happens to it, it should be really easy to spin up a fork. I don't know if the technology exists to satisfy all of these, but we could definitely fix many of these problems. Say for example we could set up the same phpBB & mediawiki, with the licensing terms for all content made absolutely clear, exposing a way to efficiently, and perhaps incrementally export the database and uploads for both, implement example scripts that show how to clone and spin up the whole thing on a different server, or to set up a copy to browse offline, and with periodic backups going automatically to archive.org. Yes, there will always be an owner for any specific instance, be it is a raspberry pi running under my bed, or a VM they're renting in the cloud, but the community and our content should not be sell-able, and the ease at which we could move to a new domain name would make buying it be much less valuable to a OneCommerce type entity, so less likely that we actually have to move in the future.

I love the idea. I still hope that we can somehow get Deskthority back, but even if that happens, we can still implement it.
With server access the database for either the forum or the wiki can be exported with a single line of bash script, and after we've clearly defined the licenses for everything, to avoid needing server access in-case of an admin going rogue, we perhaps put the backup script as a daily cronjob, that exposes the archive via the web server so there's always a fresh backup, or even push it directly to archive.org or somewhere. I mean I'm basically reciting what you said, it's just I realized we can use a cron and make the backup publicly accessible so I got excited

P.S. At least we are not owned by Andrew Lee (if you've been using IRC on the Freenode and now Libera Chat networks, you'd know what I mean)

[Myoth]

Btw, would you please ellaborate about Deskthority being sold out before the current ownership? I'm not sure I got that.

I simply meant that the ownership only began once the deal was sealed, sealing the deal was already selling us out since it wasn't for the good of the community.

It is a little bit more complicated than deciding to grab a pack of cigarettes of course. This was my love and I put 10 years into it. You don't even. I could mention I didn't sell for optimal price between high bidders and I gifted part of the price money. So yes it was about money but no it wasn't about money. But you are much too reactionary to even bother starting an adult discussion about it. And it's not a public discussion anyway.

You could've called me radical because you may think I expected you to give away DT to a reputable and founded member of the community and I'd have loved to wholly expect this or even just sell to whatever to said reputable and founded member of the community, but please don't call me a reactionnary because I'm giving you flak for selling the site to some literal nobody.
Reactionnary would imply that I dislike change/am only here to react. The former is only true insofar that I am happy that, so far, nothing happened to the site and especially not some kind of incorporation of the forum I once held dear. It's good that change was proposed, and I didn't necessarily hated it. But whether you need to change something that ain't broken, I.E. a forum that is enjoyed by its userbase, then I'm indeed all about keeping it as it stands. In france we say "You don't change a team that wins". (In the case you possibly mean straight up a change in ownership, I hope you know I've been alive long enough to understand that all things come to a renew, in one way or in another, doing anything but imbracing this is utter nonsense.) The latter is ridiculous considering I didn't react to the new information that came out, I was merely nuancing a comment I happen to read.

And even regardless of what I am, no discussion can be started since your answer is "I've signed an NDA, but do trust me" to what I'd like to discuss (as even shown by your very next sentence). To put it bluntly, the following statement from you is what I would like to discuss :

it's almost like selling out a community to a bunch of dweeby get rich quick blockchain man asset strippers was a terrible idea webwit

I can't comment yet on the details of how the sale happened and my motivations why I picked them over others because of a non-disclosure agreement still in effect.

If there was something to discuss I would, for now I disagree with your decision making. I think I've made this clear and I don't wish to elaborate further.

[webwit]

I could be totally wrong, but the way I understood it, was that the buying a pack of cigarettes line wasn't about you, but about Oliver/keyboardjoy.

Rereading that you might be right. In any case they also didn't buy it like a pack of cigarettes like it's nothing, it doesn't work that way outside the Silicon Valley tv series because real people pay for it who don't like to burn it.

[ifohancroft]

I could be totally wrong, but the way I understood it, was that the buying a pack of cigarettes line wasn't about you, but about Oliver/keyboardjoy.

Rereading that you might be right. In any case they also didn't buy it like a pack of cigarettes like it's nothing, it doesn't work that way outside the Silicon Valley tv series.

Again, I could be misinterpreting it, but it wasn't meant he bought it like it was nothing. In America, when a father leaves his family, it's at least a common joke that they said they went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never came back. The analogy being that Oliver meant to be like a father to the forum and take care of it, but instead he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and was never heard from again.

[webwit]

In that case you have to take your opinion to the new owners as I should not attempt to rule from the grave.

[VR20X6]

I guess one particular reason for feeling disgusted, is that the sale happened, because the active community had value, OneCommerce said as much on their website. It didn't get bought for the domain name, brand, trademark, existing links pointing back to the website, which are all fair game to sell. It got bought because we the users were the product.

I agree with you, and probably most others do as well. Seems like showrunners in hobby communities too easily forget that they don't own the community. They own a parking spot the community likes to use.

[webwit]

Said the man who liked the free parking spot without doing anything for it while talking entitled poison. Enjoy your free parking!

[VR20X6]

You've got this backwards. The entitlement is in thinking everyone owes you respect.

[TheInverseKey]

Said the man who liked the free parking spot without doing anything for it while talking entitled poison. Enjoy your free parking!

This is why I made my own Wiki with blackjack and hookers.