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.
