Subject:
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Re: Brickshelf Status
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:43:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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5646 times
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In lugnet.announce.brickshelf, Kevin Loch wrote:
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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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Kevin:
I don’t know about other AFOLs, but right now I have very little trust in
Brickshelf’s continued viability, and certainly not enough to give you $60 a
year.
I don’t expect to get things for free - I just spent $25 to upgrade to a
Flickr Pro account. I do expect
that if I spend money on a service, that it will be there when I need it. How do
we know you aren’t going to shut Brickshelf down again without any
communication?
Marc Nelson Jr.
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Brickshelf Status
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| (...) I have faith in Brickshelf; enough to pay $60/year. So at least now you know about one AFOL.... (...) Really? Looks to me like you never ever bothered to contribute to Brickshelf. Why not? Maybe because it was free? (...) (URL) Flickr Pro (...) (17 years ago, 20-Jul-07, to lugnet.general, FTX)
| | | Re: Brickshelf Status
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| (...) I'm willing to give $60 to help keep Brickshelf going, not only do I enjoy using it to host my images, I think of all the LUGNET post with links to Brickshelf that I reference constantly while building my MOCs. The idea of such valuable (...) (17 years ago, 20-Jul-07, to lugnet.general, FTX)
| | | Re: Brickshelf Status
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| (...) Maybe things could have been handled differently, and it's hard not to have similar concerns, but speaking personally, Brickshelf has been a big part of my online life for a long time. Once I feel like I've made even a dent in paying back for (...) (17 years ago, 20-Jul-07, to lugnet.general, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Brickshelf Status
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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 (...) (17 years ago, 20-Jul-07, to lugnet.announce.brickshelf) !!
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