Bob,
Words fail me as well.
I paid for my lifetime SI membership several years ago now. I have watched, mostly silently, as many of the good things that attracted me to SI were slowly changing or disappearing altogether.
The first disappointment was in losing the Dryers as consultants, or whatever their capacity was after SI was sold. Losing Jill from the community hurt as well, but not as badly because she was moving on with her life and things were looking up for her. When it became known that Classic SI would be replaced, the handwriting was on the wall as far as I was concerned. I noticed that we started to lose many good posters, people that I didn't really know, but somehow seemed to know them via their virtual personalties. People like Kevin Watson or Josef Svejk are hard to find. While Kevin has recently started posting again on SI, Josef has not.
And now we lose you, at least in the capacity of an administrator. The powers that be at Infospace are destroying our little community. And that's a shame. A pox on them for their insensitive actions and utter stupidity. Executives such as they are the primary reason most of the dot coms have failed. They have no sense of pride, no sense of community, and are completely without the scruples that most folks are born with. If I could get a borrow, I'd institute a terminal short tomorrow.
Business and chat boards apparently don't mix. The powers that be haven't figured out yet how to tap their posting community for enough dollars to keep the sites operational. They definitely haven't figured out yet how to keep their posters happy. I think that this action by INSP is a predictor of the inevitable. Some day soon I suspect that SI will become a part of Internet history. The fine ideas that have been fostered here, the many cyber-friendships that have evolved, the sense of belonging to a community will cease.
It didn't have to end this way.
Kerry |
