Hello all, At Thursday 30 May 2013 21:59:00 DaB. wrote:
Reason 4 are you, the tool-authors.
after reading some mails here and in my inbox I would like to make this point a little bit more clear. For first I would like to say sorry. It was not my intension to play down the role of the tool-authors for the Toolserver. The Toolserver can not work without you. It happened several times in the past that I was surprised what tools are possible and sometimes I was also surprised that some strange tools really have many users (that’s the reason I was always very liberal of account requests). And yes some of you help other users with problems (sometimes better than I could), some of you have written how-tos in the wiki, some of you are helping the roots with problems and some of you have offer help or asked for root-rights.
The reason I added reason 4 to my mail was disappointment. In my imagination (and I guess that was naive) I thought that when ToolLabs would be ready some day, that 99% of you would just ignore that and continue your work here. I also though that when 2013 ends almost all tools would still be here and only a few tools were moved for experiment (maybe some would even moved back again). I also hoped that the survey would had a bigger participation (>50% and not 10-20%) and that the result would be "stay as long as possible" or "not move at all". With all that I would have travel to the coming general member meeting of WMDE in December to tell the members "The Toolserver has to stay because the tool-authors will not move to ToolLabs, and we need money!". The problem is that something different happened. The result of the survey is that most of you plan to move as soon as possible, some of you writing howtos about moving, and a user told us already how fast ToolLabs is (@Platonides: no, I’m not angry about that). So when I travel to the general member meeting of WMDE (isn’t there a shorter word in English?) and I’m asked "How is the Toolserver? Can you account for more money?" I have to answer "No, the tool- authors have accepted ToolLabs and more money for the toolserver would be wasting.". In German there is the phrase "Mit den Füßen abstimmen" (~to vote with the foots). It means that people show their affection not in a formal election but by using a thing (and not another), or go shopping in a store (and not in another), or visiting a place (and not another) or so on. You have done something similar. Not all of you, maybe not even the majority, but at least a visible minority. You gave me the impression that you think that the Toolserver is dead, that it is not worth the fight, that WMF has already won. You were the last group I had that supported me with the Toolserver. I had already lost the WMDE’s CEO, the general member meeting and also WMDE’s board. Loosing you made it pointless to continue the struggle.
Like I said: It was naive. I can not resent you that you like to move to a place that has a future, may be faster and maybe better administrated. I can not resent WMDE that they don’t see that loosing the Toolserver is another step to become more dependent of the WMF. But it hurts nevertheless, because it makes me think that I did something wrong.
I would like to add another point: It is a long time until the end of 2013 – I’m not gone yet. I will continue to administrate the Toolserver, and also create new accounts if wished (somebody asked about that). I will just not invest the same amount of time; and how further the year becomes the less time I will invest.
Sincerely, DaB.