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I have not posted until now because there was too much uncertainty about
how (or if) this was going to work out.
Due to financial reasons, Brickshelf was no longer in a viable position to
continue operating. As our costs are billed monthly, any shutdown would occur
at the end of a calendar month. I decided that 15 days was enough time for
everyone to copy their files. Turning it off completely for a few days was
intended to send the message that this is serious and get everyones attention so
they could use the remaining time wisely. It also gave everyone an opportunity
to see what would break when it did finally shut down.
In hindsight I should have handled this differently but it's too late for that
now.
I had long ago written off various ides for charging recurring fees because
AFOLs and geeks in general expect everything on the web to be free.
What turned this around is the totally unexpected volume of email I received
from what appear to be regular people. Many of these people expressed an
interest in paying some modest fee to keep the site running, if only there was
a way to do that.
In addition, I had underestimated the extent to which things would break
on other sites with Brickshelf gone. It was clear after the "test" shutdown
that some long lasting solution would be needed to at least keep old content
available in some way or I would not be able to sleep at night.
So we are going to try something new and see if it works. The site will
continue to work as it does now for free users. Paying users will have
the opportunity to have greater visibility of their folders (that pass
moderation and are not junk/avatars). Of course paying users would
also not see ads nor have ads on their folders.
To those wondering why maj.com was unaffected: It has
a tiny fraction (< 10%) of the traffic that Brickshelf gets While many
of you are aware of it, many more brickshelf users are not and it is possible
for me to run that site out of pocket at it's current size. This is one
reason there were no instructions posted to simply move over there.
For those wondering if this was some elaborate stunt: I have a very
full time job and this distraction is the last thing I needed to deal
with right now. I did what I thought was necessary given the financial
circumstances. I am still taking a risk in continuing this but the
tremendous show of support has convinced me it is the right thing to do.
Final note:
It has come to my attention that some people have been impersonating me
on various forums. LUGNET is the only LEGO related forum I have ever posted
on (other than r.t.l in the old days) and it's user authentication system
should give you reasonable assurance that it really is me.
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I am happy to announce that the Brickshelf Instuction Library will be coming
back online soon. Kevin Loch has asked us, and we agreed, to host it at
Peeron.com. Since we have to write a new interface for the library, it is not
ready yet to go live, but we hope it will be available soon.
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Brickshelf.com now has a paypal account for accepting donations!
paypal@brickshelf.com.
Donations will help keep brickshelf running smoothly and ensure we have enough
bandwidth. In addition, Jake has indicated that Brickshelf needs to be self
supporting by the end of the year.
We have begun implementing some new icons to show which users are helping to
keep Brickshelf online. The icon is similar to a 1x1 brick just like the one
used in the Brickshelf logo. The color of the icon shows the users contribution
level this year.
The details (including color table) are here:
http://www.brickshelf.com/contrib.html
At the moment the icons show only on the folder and file views. The icons will
soon show in the recent, search and other views. We will also modify the recent
views to show contributor folders before non-contributor folders. Other
benefits will be added as they are developed.
Kevin Loch
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The gallery is currently unavailable while we do some emergency maintenance.
It should be back up sometime Thursday afternoon or early evening. Deep
links will continue to work. The instruction library is currently operational.
While none of the above is related to Hurricane Isabel, the datacenter that
Brickshelf is in is directly in her projected path. The datacenter is
in a solid building and has generator backup backup so I don't expect any
interruptions due to the storm (except for possible upstream internet/telco
outages).
I have set up a webcam looking out an office window. It is not on generator
backup so stop updating if power is lost. In that case I may move it to the
datacenter which doesn't have as good a view of the outside.
http://www.kl.net/webcam/
Thank you for your patience.
KL
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