Technocrat.net Shut Down 326
twitter writes "Bruce Perens has pulled the plug on Technocrat.net. 'The technocrat.net public discussion site is shut down. This has happened because the site never achieved the ability to financially sustain its editorial staff and system expenses with its revenues. When it became evident that Technocrat was un-viable as a business, I found that I did not wish to keep supporting the site as a hobby. Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out. At the end I faced the decision of asking for donations to keep the site running, or letting it die, and it became clear to me that I'd feel better if it would just die. I am very busy building a new software business, with some great new (and yet unannounced) Open Source software in development. I must focus on that for now. Best holiday wishes to you all.'"
Creeping him out? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is?
A shame. (Score:5, Interesting)
I enjoyed technocrat while it lasted. I got to understand a lot about americans and how they think. Especially those who don't share my "european liberal views" have been very interesting to communicate with.
I think that I've learned a lot about human cultures from technocrat. Sad to see it go.
And I hope I'm not one of the ones that creep Bruce out. ;-)
community (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?
Godspeed, man. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been my experience that reading too much into an implied tone in the slashdot summaries just gets me in trouble, so in brief:
Thanks, Bruce, for your efforts and contributions over the years and may your next project(s) be successful and fulfilling.
Really the best way to handle this? (Score:5, Interesting)
i like Bruce, but this is very poorly done. if the primary concern is financial, there's ways to mitigate that. if he wasn't happy asking for donations (which i can certainly respect, even if i wouldn't have that problem myself), you can look at both revenue and expenses independent of that. on expenses: it's never been clear to me what the "professional editorial staff" actually did, besides stick a comment on some stories - a comment which wasn't reliably better than any other on the site. for revenue, using the ad hoc advertising was also probably a poor choice compared to using something like google's service. and if the issues was primarily the creepy community, there's ways to deal with that, too: moderation systems, or even (at the size it's at) just kickban individual users (after talking to and/or warning them).
and if you've given up on all that, the shutdown itself was not well done. no notice? that's kinda disrespectful to the people who've put in work to build what's there. i would've loved a few days to copy some of the comments i've made there, or links others have posted, or discuss where to go from here. and that last one, of course, could have included handing the community - or even the site, wholesale - off to another host. that last part in particular stings; it kinda feels like "if i can't have it - on my terms - nobody can".
Bruce, if you're out there, look: thanks for all the work you've done. it was great. i'd really like to keep it going. let me know if we can talk about options.
How much of a loss was it? (Score:5, Interesting)
There were a few people there that I liked, because they showed that they put thought into their commentary. Their logic was sound, even if I disagreed with them.
One writer seems to have attempted to make the site his personal Blogging page.
I stopped going there around October because Bruce felt the need to put banner adverts up for the Obama campaign. I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.
At least this way, Bruce will be able to focus his energies on more interesting projects.
But looks permanent this time (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi Folks. Well, a lot of you seem to be disappointed about the site shutting down, and several people have offered to keep it going. I've turned down those offers. Technocrat was intended to get technology experts (us) involved in technology policy. It didn't succeed in that, although it was a good discussion site. The goal of getting people involved in tech policy is still a good one.
Thus, Technocrat will be re-launched with a new format. It will not be a discussion site any longer. Instead, it will offer tech stories and legislation alerts to be syndicated by other web sites, including discussion sites. There will also be some other features that I'll keep quiet about until the new site is on the air.
The goal is still to get more technology experts involved in setting technology policy.
Thanks
Bruce
That new format was slashcode, but looking at the most recent archives, he was only getting a couple posts per story (prolly mostly from twitter). Of course, slashcode's moderation system exists to try to separate the cream from the milk, but at the volumes he was getting, it was all just yogurt. To bad, though.
Re:Technorati (Score:3, Interesting)
New rule: confusing shit is not to be posted until mid-afternoon so that we may have a chance to get enough caffeine into our weary bodies that we just might notice the slight difference in the name. Or, if that's too much to ask, pertinent info such as this could be included in the fucking summary.
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I saw in Google Zeitgeist that Slashdot readership is also gradually falling last 12 months). I wonder if it is the case with other forum type sites?
I know what did it (Score:3, Interesting)
In the interest of living a life a certain good book suggests (turning the other cheek), most of the people who donated to Bruce's site were Novell employees.
Thanks for the information! (Score:3, Interesting)
I, too, was never a user of Technocrat. (As many of us on Slashdot as are saying the same, no wonder it wasn't self-sustaining as a business model!)
But it sounds like I web site I would have enjoyed, actually.
I think you bring up a really interesting point about people tending to become more "vocal and extreme" in their opinions when faced with adversity in their personal lives. If I look in the mirror, I realize I spent more time on the net ranting about political issues while I was going through a divorce. I'm not sure if I was saying more "extreme" things than I really believed though? Possibly ... but I think it was more a matter of wanting to get things off my chest. Ideas of mine I may have "watered down" otherwise, in the interest of promoting a more open discussion, I probably tended to speak "exactly as I felt" instead.
In any case though, you can find plenty of places to voice opinions on the Internet. If you want to be verbal about it, you can podcast or create a series of youtube videos. More often, it's put in writing, anyplace from blogs to Slashdot or ArsTechnica, or even anonymous Craigslist forums.
The problem is, most of those places either let you control the direction of the whole discussion (such as making your own podcast or blog), or the political commentary is secondary to the overall "theme" of the site (such as Technology and Science themed web sites where it always creeps in).
Technocrat sounds like the entire theme WAS political discussion, and let's face it - politics is ugly. So I can see how the site would have some "disturbing qualities" to it. It comes with that territory.
Re:community (Score:2, Interesting)
I also participated in the conversation regularly. Who do you think were the two trolls?
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I think it is I cannot sort stories as highest ranked first anymore with the new discussion system. That makes a bunch of rants and trolls intersperse with the real discussion. I think a bunch of the insightful posters of the past simply stopped posting due to the signal to noise ratio falling.
Also I liked to open a new tab with all the comments under a post and then open them all to read the whole discussion. Now I have to use that slider over and over again or click like I am on Ritalin.
Finally I used to pick my mods from the drop down and then go back and pick the best. Now it takes it immediately, even when I let go of the mouse on the wrong selection.
Re:Why "donations"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think most people will really understand what you mean.
When Free Internet Press (http://freeinternetpress.com) started, I used Slashcode. It ran fine on one server, after I got all the damned mod_perl stuff working for it. That was all fine and dandy, until we were picked up by Yahoo! News and Google News as a news source. If we showed up on the front of either one (Google News is the heaviest), the site would be down within about a minute or two.
I had to grow it to 3 dedicated servers. Two web servers, and one database server. That worked, but even still when it got hit, it was slow.
It didn't take me too long to grow tired of Slashcode. It wasn't only the performance issues, but making serious changes became a nightmare. I switched to PHPNuke for a while, which did much better as far as handling surges in traffic, but grew tired of their security problems. The site was exploited twice. The first time it required a cleanup and software upgrade. The second time, I gave up on it, and rewrote the site from scratch.
With my own code, I had basic functionality working in two days, and all the normal features working not too long after that. I'm a good coder, so there have been no problems with exploits. I validate all my inputs, and the coding style is much simpler so it's much easier to work with. I even have good caching code, so it should be safe from the Slashdot effect. For those who want the code, sorry, it's not available.
Really, needing 3 dedicated servers was a lot for a small site. Now that it's bigger, it runs safely from two (a web and a database server). I could consolidate to one, but I don't need to. I could also grow it to as many servers as necessary without any real headaches.
Even still, I wouldn't want to run it on a $5/mo hosting account. Sure, my site would be fine, but what happens if one of the hundreds or thousands of other sites on that same server are too heavy? Then my site will be slow.
Bandwidth usually isn't a big concern for a mostly text based site, unless you're trying really hard. :)
Badly named and too soap-box-y (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see how a failed discussion site about general technology has anything to do with "failing with Linux." I went to his site a few times, but found that it was missing a sort of critical mass that is necessary to make it an interesting discussion.
Yes, I know I'm feeding the trolls. They just look so cute and I'm still in the holiday spirit, I guess.