Wednesday, June 26, 2013

The evebloggers.com conspiracy

Back in 2009 I created evebloggers.com for the Eve Online blogging community. It was a resource to showcase the latest posts from all the Eve bloggers out there, on one website. With hundreds of hits a day, it was very popular and a much needed resource to keep track of all the Eve blogs and what they were up to.

I managed this from 2009 through to 2012, updating the site with new blogs and removing inactive blogs. However, life has a way of introducing distractions, and in 2012 I had very little time to continue maintaining it.

So I put out a call to the Eve blogging commnity, asking for someone who would be interested in taking it over and managing it. They needed the same passion and commitment to the Eve blogging community as I had, so that I would feel comfortable handing over such a valuable resource to them.

@MarcScaurus approached me and we engaged in a number of discussions before I was satisfied that he would do a great job. We went through the transition process and I passed the mantle on to him. Where he did a few maintenance things for a couple months but then nothing since.

Also at some stage in 2012 (I don't know exactly when) he took up an active role at themittani.com. Remember this, it'll be important later on.

By late 2012, when it was obvious nothing was happening with evebloggers.com, I tried approaching him to discuss taking evebloggers.com back from him, but he failed to respond on all channels. Others told me he was busy working on improvements, which included taking ownership of the Eve Blog Pack and integrating that into evebloggers.com. Eve bloggers were excited about changes coming, and waited to see what would result from it.

But nothing happened. No changes, no upgrades, no maintenance. The last update to the evebloggers portal itself was back in July 2012.

So the main portal for Eve bloggers and the Eve Blog Pack was now owned and operated by @MarcScaurus. Who did nothing with it. And still refused to respond to any attempts I made to communicate with him. And who was a senior editor with themittani.com.

You could probably imagine that themittani.com wanted to compete with the Eve blogging community, and bring across as many participants and readers as they possibly could. And what better way to do it than to take ownership of the Eve blogging community portal, the prime location for Eve bloggers, and make it a useless and no longer important part of the community?

And now, today, we have @MarcScaurus telling the community that he will not be renewing the domain that expires early next month. He's offered the domain and the evebloggers.com site to someone that wants to take it on and look after it. Except he's decreed that anyone who has been involved in the site in the past will not be allowed to take it back.

He would rather evebloggers.com die than give it back to those who have shown commitment to it in the past. He even states quite clearly that he wants the entire blogging community to 'let go' and move on::
I’m personally still of the opinion that we should probably just let these things go. They are a remnant of a time when blogging was the next big thing on the internet
I find it an interesting scenario that, in the context of the past 14 months of my observation of events, it seems that themittani.com (by association with @MarcScaurus) wants to be directly responsible for the death of the Eve blogging community, so that it becomes the primary resource for writers. And brand association. And advertising.

A conspiracy to kill the Eve blogging community? I'll leave it to you to decide for yourselves. I'm sure you can guess what my own feelings on it are.

There are MANY Eve bloggers out there, still blogging about their experiences. They need to be supported, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let this community die out because of the selfish manipulations of others who have something to gain if it does die.

Let me know if you'd like to add your support.

13 comments:

  1. That's fucking bullshit. The site needs to keep living

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  2. by the way, looks like he deleted your comment on his blog. That doesn't surprise me at all. :/

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  3. Yeah he did. What a cunt.

    For anyone interested this was the gist of it: Scaurus is a two faced asshat who would rather see the sites die than hand them over despite repeatedly professing otherwise. I just started a blog and was gutted when I found out that the number 1 google result for "eve blog" hadn't been touched or updated since last year. I would take over the domain myself but for his draconian "rules"

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  4. I'm stepping up, hopefully he'll let me...I would hate to see the site die :(

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  5. http://foo-blogroll.blogspot.com is an implementation of an inclusive eve blogroll.

    Portable device users should view the site as a website as it does not play well in mobile mode. (on my way too long todo list)

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  6. I'm sure not a lot of people are aware of this, you should make it even more public imo, if you still havent, you can start a topic about this matter on eve forums, at the least themittani may lose a lot of its readers...

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  7. Maybe you could find someone to take it from him and then return it to you? I would hope that could happen and become a happy ending for what seems like a horrible fate for something many love.

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  8. To be fair, I hadn't considered any of this prior to reading your post. Now that I have, I still don't buy into it. Is it true? To me, irrelevant.


    Maintaining the Blog Pack requires consistent effort. Some people have good intentions but lousy follow through. Beyond that, life changes and sometimes we have to start trimming the hobbies.


    I don't know Marc's intentions, nor do I claim to. I don't know whether it was a conspiracy. I don't care.


    I believe in the value of traditions. I also believe, as many others have said, that the Blog Pack might be in need of change. Maybe it's about more than blogs? Maybe it's about the community as a whole? Twitter, EN24, Mittani.com, blogs, there is a LOT more to our community in 2013 than simply blogging.


    I've posted my intentions as a caretaker for the Blog Pack. I've let it up to EVE players to vote their support or shoot down my intention.


    I'm not worried. I know that whether or not it ends up being me that cares for the Pack, it will continue on in some form.

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  9. Whatever to http://alexiamorgan.blogspot.ca/ ? Did it just get rolled into this blog? Hasn't been updated since 2011 so was curious.

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  10. yes, I'm active with this blog now :)

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  11. Good luck with getting the Blog Pack!

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