I've made a huge mistake
The discussion to move evolt.org to a new platform and host started about 2 years ago. There were rumblings beforehand but the first post, I think, to galvanize things was from Martin.
I think that the major reasons for moving evolt.org to a different host and platform were:
1) We didn't want to rely on the charity of our host. In the past, evolt.org had always been hosted by a member of the evolt.org community. This lead to evolt.org moving several times when the host couldn't do it anymore.
2) Because we had informal hosting, there weren't any service level agreements in place. I don't think that it was ever a problem but the perception that we could be left out in the cold by our host was there.
3) We didn't want to remain on proprietary/commercial software for philosophical reasons. evolt.org was run on CF+Access, CF+Oracle, CF+SQL Server in the past. The community thought that it was best to move to a free and open source platform. I think that evolt.org also wanted to be an open source community and not just representing a Web worker's community. A more open community was supposed to lead to better, faster progress.
4) There was the "hit by a bus" scenario. The main code for the original evolt.org CMS was created by a small number of people. Just before the move, it seemed like there was only one person maintaining the code--bug fixes and new features. The community felt that if this one person dropped out of the evolt.org community, we'd be in trouble. As it was, getting new features or changes into the codebase was slower than the community would have liked. This was understandable it was a volunteer effort and evolt.org always seemed to fall to the lowest priority by everyone.
We decided to buy hosting, funded through donations and Google ads on the browser archive. We decided to move to Drupal as our CMS.
And so after one and half years later, where are we? Are we in any better shape than before? Are we moving forward and making any sort of progress? Arguably not. Here's what I think the problems are:
1) Day-to-day running of the site and the mailing lists are still done by one or two people. "Opening" the community didn't really result in much happening. In fact, it's lead to the closing or invalidating of some of the services that evolt.org used to maintain. Our directory is pretty much dead. It's riddled with broken links and submissions have been shut off because of the spamming. The browser archive is dying. No one is adding new things to the archive, the site revision hasn't happened, and the mirrors are all dead. I don't even think that b.e.o servers browsers to end users any more. The wiki had to be closed because no one was watching it and it got filled with spam. members.evolt.org died because we couldn't support the service with the amount of free-loading that was happening. evolters.org, which was supposed to replace m.e.o, didn't even get off the ground. The IRC channel isn't really about evolt.org anymore. It's just a place to hang out. The same is true of planet.evolt.org (usually a problem with planets). There's not much that is "on topic".
2) Drupal is slow. I don't know how other sites running Drupal do it, but our implementation is dog slow. Most of the Drupal people at evolt.org insisted that this would get better once caching was turned on or once tuning was performed. Either that hasn't happened or evolt.org's content breaks Drupal.
3) You think one developer is a problem, try no developers. When Drupal was suggested, a handful of people presented themselves in theforum saying that they had experience and were able to help. One and a half years later, we're still on the 4.6 version and I don't know of any improvements that have been going into the code. I don't know of any extra features that we've added since the Cold Fusion days. (We've probably lost some.) We were supposed to get customized stylesheets. We were supposed to get new templates (see design contest). But I haven't really seen any progress. The UI for comments is horrendous. The "Recent comments" block doesn't work on articles that spill over onto multiple pages. We still have broken links in articles and content that breaks the design. And I don't think that we even have all of the search engine friendly URLs mapped over from the previous CMS.
4) New articles are not being reviewed and approved and nothing is being done to drum up new content. The content list isn't even discussing articles in the queue.
5) A general lack of passion. No one is really passionate about the community any longer. I don't know anyone willing to step up to push evolt.org to the next level or even to get us on an even playing field with some of the other sites out there. In short, nobody cares.
Some would say that the passion comes and goes with any community and that we're doing fine the way we are now. Some would say that everyone has a day job and a life outside evolt.org and that they can't make the time to help out. That's understandble. But this has been a problem for a long time in the evolt.org community.
Five years ago, I was in Toronto and meeting with some of the long-time evolt.org community (Mishka, Rudy, Tara, Aardvark, and by phone, Dan). At that time, aardvark asked me how I thought things were going with evolt.org. I responded that I thought that things were going okay and that things would work out in the end. aardvark looked at me like I was crazy. evolt.org was having problems even then. It was mainly political problems then, and that's probably why I chose to ignore them. I'm a developer. I just want to see things get done. I don't want to deal with the management. But in looking back, if only I could have done something differently, and if evolt.org could have continued on an upward path, I don't think that we would be in the sorry state that we are now.
Once upon a time there was a survey sent out to the evolt.org community, back when we all cared. There were a bunch of suggestions and things that we needed to fix but the majority of those things were dropped along the way. Some people believe that everything has a lifespan. Perhaps evolt.org has reached the end of its.
I think that the major reasons for moving evolt.org to a different host and platform were:
1) We didn't want to rely on the charity of our host. In the past, evolt.org had always been hosted by a member of the evolt.org community. This lead to evolt.org moving several times when the host couldn't do it anymore.
2) Because we had informal hosting, there weren't any service level agreements in place. I don't think that it was ever a problem but the perception that we could be left out in the cold by our host was there.
3) We didn't want to remain on proprietary/commercial software for philosophical reasons. evolt.org was run on CF+Access, CF+Oracle, CF+SQL Server in the past. The community thought that it was best to move to a free and open source platform. I think that evolt.org also wanted to be an open source community and not just representing a Web worker's community. A more open community was supposed to lead to better, faster progress.
4) There was the "hit by a bus" scenario. The main code for the original evolt.org CMS was created by a small number of people. Just before the move, it seemed like there was only one person maintaining the code--bug fixes and new features. The community felt that if this one person dropped out of the evolt.org community, we'd be in trouble. As it was, getting new features or changes into the codebase was slower than the community would have liked. This was understandable it was a volunteer effort and evolt.org always seemed to fall to the lowest priority by everyone.
We decided to buy hosting, funded through donations and Google ads on the browser archive. We decided to move to Drupal as our CMS.
And so after one and half years later, where are we? Are we in any better shape than before? Are we moving forward and making any sort of progress? Arguably not. Here's what I think the problems are:
1) Day-to-day running of the site and the mailing lists are still done by one or two people. "Opening" the community didn't really result in much happening. In fact, it's lead to the closing or invalidating of some of the services that evolt.org used to maintain. Our directory is pretty much dead. It's riddled with broken links and submissions have been shut off because of the spamming. The browser archive is dying. No one is adding new things to the archive, the site revision hasn't happened, and the mirrors are all dead. I don't even think that b.e.o servers browsers to end users any more. The wiki had to be closed because no one was watching it and it got filled with spam. members.evolt.org died because we couldn't support the service with the amount of free-loading that was happening. evolters.org, which was supposed to replace m.e.o, didn't even get off the ground. The IRC channel isn't really about evolt.org anymore. It's just a place to hang out. The same is true of planet.evolt.org (usually a problem with planets). There's not much that is "on topic".
2) Drupal is slow. I don't know how other sites running Drupal do it, but our implementation is dog slow. Most of the Drupal people at evolt.org insisted that this would get better once caching was turned on or once tuning was performed. Either that hasn't happened or evolt.org's content breaks Drupal.
3) You think one developer is a problem, try no developers. When Drupal was suggested, a handful of people presented themselves in theforum saying that they had experience and were able to help. One and a half years later, we're still on the 4.6 version and I don't know of any improvements that have been going into the code. I don't know of any extra features that we've added since the Cold Fusion days. (We've probably lost some.) We were supposed to get customized stylesheets. We were supposed to get new templates (see design contest). But I haven't really seen any progress. The UI for comments is horrendous. The "Recent comments" block doesn't work on articles that spill over onto multiple pages. We still have broken links in articles and content that breaks the design. And I don't think that we even have all of the search engine friendly URLs mapped over from the previous CMS.
4) New articles are not being reviewed and approved and nothing is being done to drum up new content. The content list isn't even discussing articles in the queue.
5) A general lack of passion. No one is really passionate about the community any longer. I don't know anyone willing to step up to push evolt.org to the next level or even to get us on an even playing field with some of the other sites out there. In short, nobody cares.
Some would say that the passion comes and goes with any community and that we're doing fine the way we are now. Some would say that everyone has a day job and a life outside evolt.org and that they can't make the time to help out. That's understandble. But this has been a problem for a long time in the evolt.org community.
Five years ago, I was in Toronto and meeting with some of the long-time evolt.org community (Mishka, Rudy, Tara, Aardvark, and by phone, Dan). At that time, aardvark asked me how I thought things were going with evolt.org. I responded that I thought that things were going okay and that things would work out in the end. aardvark looked at me like I was crazy. evolt.org was having problems even then. It was mainly political problems then, and that's probably why I chose to ignore them. I'm a developer. I just want to see things get done. I don't want to deal with the management. But in looking back, if only I could have done something differently, and if evolt.org could have continued on an upward path, I don't think that we would be in the sorry state that we are now.
Once upon a time there was a survey sent out to the evolt.org community, back when we all cared. There were a bunch of suggestions and things that we needed to fix but the majority of those things were dropped along the way. Some people believe that everything has a lifespan. Perhaps evolt.org has reached the end of its.
posted by dmah at 10:59 AM
2 Comments:
what a litany of woe
let me add my voice to all those who have thanked you for your tireless efforts in supporting evolt, dean
and if no one has ever done it, let me be the first
it was a grand experiment, wasn't it? a community site long before community sites became popular
oh, the enthusiasm we had back in those days!!!
perhaps it is time for you, too, to move on
some things should just be allowed to die gracefully
evolt's time is over
Only just found this.
As we used to say, +1.
Glad to have been involved at the time and to have (virtually) met both of you though.
I still think "Rudy and frisbee golf" whenever the clock ticks to 9:37!
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