The forum is shutting down

[madness]

Actually - if you're willing to share, this is the thing that would nag me most to not have known once the Yesterweb's community shuts down. You say you wanted for this to be a counter-culture rather than a hobby: but how?

Yes! Thank you for asking these questions! (the socratic method comes to mind)

How would you know about all the arguments I ended up not having on reddit? Of all the times I ended up not posting a vent post and reaching out to a friend instead? Of all the kind words I said and the friends I've made by embracing honesty and engaging in good faith? Of the fact my inner mologue has gotten kinder since I got off social media? Of the good hearted fun and shivers of inspiration I felt when surfing through half-made personal or niche websites where the creator's passion shone through?

Only through dialogue. Through dialogue, we discover our reality and transform the world. For example:

...in the "about" section, the first "Objective/Mission" you list still is To advocate for a no (or low) cost self-expressive and creative hobby (building websites).
I understand that stance has been revised, but - shouldn't a movement that aims to be a counter-culture have some sort of more clearly defined scope, then? In a "here's who we are, this is what we want, this is how we go about it and what we do" way.

The About section on the website is completely outdated. We didn't know this until you pointed it out. You investigated us and found an inconsistency, and now we are conscious of it and must fix it.

Actually I completely forgot there even was an About page. I believe this is because I have been too busy and too burnt out which made it difficult to have the necessary concentration. After all, you are not supposed to operate heavy machinery when you are tired, because it increases the risk of making serious mistakes.

I understand that stance has been revised, but - shouldn't a movement that aims to be a counter-culture have some sort of more clearly defined scope, then? In a "here's who we are, this is what we want, this is how we go about it and what we do" way.
...
What is it that was expected of your members? Of us?
...
What did you envision for this community, instead?

I think there is a misunderstanding being made by a lot of people about our intentions, and it might come from a pre-conceived notion of what an organization is supposed to look like. It is being assumed that we are the stereotypical "activists" and it is because nobody has bothered to ask these targeted questions, until you did (we will get more into this later).

We operate as a completely different type of organization with an uncommon methodology. The core organizers are trained to follow a rigorous democratic method. We are supposed to be representing the progressive desires of our community, and carrying them out to fruition to the best of our ability. We are not supposed to expect anything from our members. If we are doing our work correctly then our community should recognize it and thus support the organization, and a small fraction of those supporters will decide to become organizers.

Thus, through social investigation we discover the real needs of our community and we try our best not only to meet those needs but to explain why they exist and to teach people the necessary knowledge to address those needs themselves. Once they have grasped that knowledge, they can share it with others, thus eventually extending and advancing the organization.

If it isn't happening as intended then we have to investigate why and fix it, but it is always the mistake of the organization, not the community. There are no expectations on you, only on those who have committed to follow the democratic process. Which is only three of us, by the way. We grew from 1 to 2 to 3 and we have a 4th person that has expressed interest. Increasing the amount of organizers is a much slower process than how ridiculously quickly the community has expanded, but I won't go into the analysis of why in this post.

(I also hope it is understood that we have been overwhelmed by how big the community is, and it has significantly reduced our ability to expand our organization.)

I thought I understood that the decision to close down the Discord was that it was unmoderable, and ended up contradicting the core commitments of what a meaningful community should be like. I thought when you mentioned about not wanting to become just a hub for Old Web enthusiasts, that you didn't want nostalgics lying around reminiscing but, rather, people full of energy to actually build what they wanted to see: websites, art, groups of friends, alternative social hubs.
But later realized that maybe, you would have liked for the community to do something altogether different. What, then?
In the same way, I thought when you said you'd hoped that "smaller communities would form", you meant it as in "likeminded people doing small hobby projects together and finding friends and peers instead of orbiting around and not joining in". But you meant something else, didn't you?

Unless I'm forgetting something, that sounds like pretty much what we were aiming for. It should also be made clear that different people have different desires and needs, and sometimes those desires and needs are diametrically opposed to each other, so it is impossible to make decisions that make everyone happy, and it inevitable that at least a couple of people will dislike the decisions that are made. Especially in a discord server containing 2500 people.

We then have to make careful decisions on who to help, because it will most likely hurt another.

The discord server had to close to preserve the physical and mental health of the moderators. It was also becoming a negative experience for possibly the majority of the members and many of them were leaving and not returning, largely because the quality of discussion had gone to shit and there was too much activity.

It was only after we made the announcement that the discord server was closing that we discovered its correctness by judging the reactions of the members. The same may be true about announcing the closure of the forum, at least the mods seem to think so. We don't know if what we are doing is correct or not until after we try it and analyze its results. This is what I meant when I previously said "creative experimentation" in an older post. The suggestion to make smaller communities is also an untested hypothesis and probably very risky of us to suggest, but it was done out of desperation because we ran out of other options. But it was just a suggestion, and if they never materialize, it's not the community's fault, because maybe we don't know enough, and maybe they know better than we do. Our biggest mistake was never properly handling our growth. It is a very serious mistake with serious consequences and it is why we are making serious sacrifices.

Our approach is scientific in the sense that we work to advance the community through a series of experimental changes, some successful and others unsuccessful, and over time we discover what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately that also means a lot of mistakes that we have to fix so that they don't become larger problems in the future.

I really liked what I read on the Yesterweb.org hub! I made changes to my online life according to what I thought I'd read there, and am much happier for it. So - I don't want to insinuate that your work was useless or anything of that sort, I don't want to sound hostile at all. I am super grateful I found you guys!
But also: you will never really know how much I've taken of your Manifesto and Etiquette to heart, because those are often guidelines that ask you to rethink the way you, yourself, behave and approach others.

...

I've found great joy in following the vague guidelines you people laid down for us - but with no clear direction ahead, I just felt I could help by doing the same thing that had inspired me and helped me feel better: create a site (or try to, haha), learn a bit of code here and there, share my passion, send people your way, passionately rant about this to my friends.

Then the Manifesto and the Etiquette are working as intended.

The manifesto does not clearly state the counter-cultural aspect, but it is implied. After all, what ultimately matters is how you put the manifesto into practice and not what the words in the manifesto actually say. If these writings are transforming you and your relationships with others, and you are in turn transforming others, then the counter-cultural transformation is happening even if you are not conscious of it in name-and-concept when it is happening.

This is far better than for us to preach about counter-culture and yet have nothing change. This happens a lot since a lot of people can't distinguish sub-culture from counter-culture and are ineffective in changing anything, or sometimes even counter-productive. It's not necessary to have a "here's who we are, this is what we want, this is how we go about it and what we do" if it's having the correct effect.

The manifesto was intended for people like you. You are living proof that the manifesto works. We were trying to find you, and we found you. This was a completely unexpected surprise, and a very nice one. So I appreciate you opening this dialogue and transforming the world with us.

If you were to try and re-build again, what would you encourage your community to do, practically?

Basically everything in the manifesto and the etiquette. These are fairly new documents so they haven't really been absorbed into the core of the community yet. Sorry I am getting tired and this is getting long, so I'll list some ideas:

Firstly instead of having 2500 members in 1 server we could have something like 50 members in 50 servers and then 1 server with 1 representative from each server, and then we would decide how to "load-balance" our members and such.

Another thing I think would be cool is if we worked on collective websites rather than personal websites. Wouldn't it be really nice if you met people that you trusted enough and were comfortable enough with that you could share an account and build a website together?

I still thinking encouraging each of us to get to know less people but more genuinely is a great start. Having projects to work on with your friends is also a great idea.

Also, instead of existing in spaces away from traditional social media, I would encourage people to integrate with normal people on those platforms and try to put the manifesto and etiquette into practice.

We were also looking into building a prototype for a more advanced version of a webring but we haven't had the time and it might not work, though I don't want to give up on that.

~*~

Anyway this was a lot and I probably made a lot of mistakes. I hope I didn't miss anything you asked.

Thank you for reading! <3

[OiStepanka]

@ Madness

The above is a really interesting read. In my previous post when I said that there are certain people you should really keep close because they are the kind of people you are looking for. In my estimate, Ray was definitely one of them. I admire how she reaches out to this community, how she interacts with others and her responses are very valuable and insightful.

This is the first time encountering in a real sense the difference between sub culture and counter culture in a meaningful way as often times in other spaces (in my experience) they are used so interchangeably. Which makes me think about that I really grew up in an era where subcultures/and the alt scene was more dominant than the counter culture community. I wasn't around during the the 1960's ( likewise some other era with similar themes) and someone who was perhaps would have caught that. Or just someone else in general. or if not, questions are important.

Which makes me think how important questions are. I'm glad Ray weighed in because I don't know if I could have asked those questions. I don't think that some people don't bother to ask, it's that they either wouldn't know how to or quite literally cannot for whatever reason. But the attempt should be made. Which is something I need to work on individually. I'm happy to be learning a lot here.

This is why thoughtful discussions matter. I was definitely taking time to gather my thoughts about your previous post in earnest but I'm glad I didn't respond quickly because just so many valuable points were made by the both of you.

I have still a lot to think about but I just want to say. This is utterly fascinating. Can't say I'm not taken a back (not in a bad way but just.. wow.)

I have a lot to ponder on.

That being said. I think your ideas such as community websites is really interesting and would be cool to see.
As well as the 50 member 50 severs idea. Managing numbers of people makes me think how things are working in my country, USA, naturally we have a Representative Democracy. But often times because there are so many people, needs can get underserved in favor of others and who knows this experimentation could be something that helps people better manage the communities in which they live (or wish to create because that is very much possible here) by not having to necessarily get overwhelmed by the government or the powers of the state, or the local city government but what can be done on a smaller level. Which you know.. is a huge endeavor. Lots of moving parts.

Still cool to see that YW's manifesto actually works though, though your methodology as you said is uncommon.. to see that it did produce your intended result without the usual methods is very very impressive and in a real sense makes me happy for humanity.

And excellent questions Ray. I love seeing conversations actually go somewhere! Forward progression in actuality not in concepts that stay in the mind. Talk about being the change you wish to see in the world.

[madness]

I have still a lot to think about but I just want to say. This is utterly fascinating. Can't say I'm not taken a back (not in a bad way but just.. wow.)

Ya same, I'm still processing it myself and I might be too exhausted to make perfect sense of it, but here is what I think has happened:

Ray has provided us with strong evidence of the following:

1. The democratic method we are using works and we have put it into practice reasonably correctly.
2. It works in a social relation that exists purely through the internet.
3. It works with someone we have never met before. In other words, just receiving the message was sufficient.
4. It works internationally, as long as a common language is understood.
5. It can be done by a very small organization, which gives confidence that it can even be applied by individuals (really, anyone) under the right circumstances.

I don't think that some people don't bother to ask, it's that they either wouldn't know how to or quite literally cannot for whatever reason.

You may be correct, but I think what Ocean said has some truth to it as well. There are a lot of people who just don't care. The manifesto was partly written to attract those people who do care. We learned through past experience that it was extremely hard to get people who don't care to start caring. Since that didn't work, we instead worked on a way to attract a new type of person. We weren't certain such people even existed, yet here you are, in the (virtual) flesh.

I wasn't around during the the 1960's ( likewise some other era with similar themes) and someone who was perhaps would have caught that. Or just someone else in general. or if not, questions are important.

We learned it by reading books from the '60s and '70s. The distinction between sub-culture and counter-culture in particular I believe I learned from the reading of a couple of Black Panthers. The knowledge already exists, it just has to be discovered through studying.

and who knows this experimentation could be something that helps people better manage the communities in which they live (or wish to create because that is very much possible here)

Yes that is the goal!

As I said previously, when you make decisions to guide the direction of a community this big, it is inevitable that some will benefit and others will suffer. We have to take sides. Often times we are accused by those we have sided against as being too serious, of not allowing anyone to have fun. But truthfully, honestly, I think this is fun. We all have fun in different ways. Likewise, what I think is important is different than what you think is important. Sometimes, as time and matter evolves, this becomes a serious obstacle, and we are forced to overcome this obstacle with difficult and divisive decisions. There will always be division in democracy and the best thing we can do is be conscious of it so that we can master it and guide it to desired results (which is ultimately the point of the scientific method).

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Even if I do not react or respond, I am always reading them and taking them to heart. It is necessary in a developing democratic process.

[DaGrandDragonn]

Not gonna lie, disappointing and pretty odd, to be honest.
I wish I had something funny or witty to say, but nah, just disappointed.
Oh well poop’s gonna scoop I guess check out this awesome bear I got the other day

[OiStepanka]

You may be correct, but I think what Ocean said has some truth to it as well. There are a lot of people who just don't care. The manifesto was partly written to attract those people who do care. We learned through past experience that it was extremely hard to get people who don't care to start caring. Since that didn't work, we instead worked on a way to attract a new type of person. We weren't certain such people even existed, yet here you are, in the (virtual) flesh.

In regards to Ocean. Yes, I do believe he has a point. Which is why wayy back in a previous post I said there are certain folks that aren't coming back for that exact reason: they don't care. So there are particular people who do care. Clearly lmao.
Happy that I could help in some way.. thats really cool.

We learned it by reading books from the '60s and '70s. The distinction between sub-culture and counter-culture in particular I believe I learned from the reading of a couple of Black Panthers. The knowledge already exists, it just has to be discovered through studying.

That. Makes sense lol. Books. Mankind's forever collective mental bank.

Yes that is the goal!

As I said previously, when you make decisions to guide the direction of a community this big, it is inevitable that some will benefit and others will suffer. We have to take sides. Often times we are accused by those we have sided against as being too serious, of not allowing anyone to have fun. But truthfully, honestly, I think this is fun. We all have fun in different ways. Likewise, what I think is important is different than what you think is important. Sometimes, as time and matter evolves, this becomes a serious obstacle, and we are forced to overcome this obstacle with difficult and divisive decisions. There will always be division in democracy and the best thing we can do is be conscious of it so that we can master it and guide it to desired results (which is ultimately the point of the scientific method).

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Even if I do not react or respond, I am always reading them and taking them to heart. It is necessary in a developing democratic process.

Indeed. And you are most welcome! If there is one thing I am truly thankful for it is that you folks decided to be slow about closing the forum. Really, Thank God we could have these key conversations that certainly will be the foundation for a better tommorrow.

[Grafo]

Not gonna lie, disappointing and pretty odd, to be honest.
I wish I had something funny or witty to say, but nah, just disappointed.
Oh well poop’s gonna scoop I guess check out this awesome bear I got the other day

I'm really curious, disappointed about what exactly?

[Sinclair-Speccy]

Not gonna lie, disappointing and pretty odd, to be honest.
I wish I had something funny or witty to say, but nah, just disappointed.
Oh well poop’s gonna scoop I guess check out this awesome bear I got the other day

Honestly I agree too. This is disappointing and odd to me as well and I wish I could voice my actual thoughts towards this but what’s the mere point?

Btw I love the bear!

[vincent]

Not gonna lie, disappointing and pretty odd, to be honest.
I wish I had something funny or witty to say, but nah, just disappointed.
Oh well poop’s gonna scoop I guess check out this awesome bear I got the other day :P

Honestly I agree too. This is disappointing and odd to me as well and I wish I could voice my actual thoughts towards this but what’s the mere point?

Btw I love the bear!

You're free to voice your opinions. As you can see, there are people in this thread being very open about their opinions, positive and negative. No one has gotten banned for speaking.

We encourage open dialogue.

[Sinclair-Speccy]

Not gonna lie, disappointing and pretty odd, to be honest.
I wish I had something funny or witty to say, but nah, just disappointed.
Oh well poop’s gonna scoop I guess check out this awesome bear I got the other day

Honestly I agree too. This is disappointing and odd to me as well and I wish I could voice my actual thoughts towards this but what’s the mere point?

Btw I love the bear!

You're free to voice your opinions. As you can see, there are people in this thread being very open about their opinions, positive and negative. No one has gotten banned for speaking.

We encourage open dialogue.

I should clarify that my opinions would not be very nice and are most likely pointing out stuff so I digress

[vincent]

I should clarify that my opinions would not be very nice and are most likely pointing out stuff so I digress

I don't understand the point of going "I have some things I want to say!" and then clamming up when people ask you. If you didn't want people to ask what you thought, then maybe you should've not posted about it?

Even not very nice opinions are welcome here. You can read the other messages. Someone posted a giant rant about us basically being the CIA.

[Sinclair-Speccy]

I should clarify that my opinions would not be very nice and are most likely pointing out stuff so I digress

I don't understand the point of going "I have some things I want to say!" and then clamming up when people ask you. If you didn't want people to ask what you thought, then maybe you should've not posted about it?

Even not very nice opinions are welcome here. You can read the other messages. Someone posted a giant rant about us basically being the CIA.

Well, then. According to what I've observed, the staff appears to be blaming the users. It's also worth noting the comment that "the quality of discussion had gone to shit."

First, we're chastised for discussing topics that aren't easily accessible, so you have us discuss food preferences and other topics to make it simpler for new people to join in. Then they protest that the quality of the debate has deteriorated.

I came here to have fun, not to have the entire building bloody lit on fire. The whole "don't point out what's wrong and just say read the manifesto" thing reminds us of a parent or teacher saying "you know what you did!" when you actually have no idea.

What makes it worth the ongoing effort to stay going? Nothing! There is no such thing as a community space. This is a sequence of unforced, self-inflicted blunders.

It's amusing how YW made something wonderful and then decided to ruin it. I wish the leaders of Yesterweb had informed us what they wanted instead of lashing out at us for failing to reach a standard they never told us about. It appears like a new person has arrived just to demolish everything.

It's the Yesterweb. Not the Vladimir Lenin Web-Union Pioneer Organization, for crying out loud. Checking on the status of the Yesterweb now feels a little like casually saying, "yeah, still burning." I had some trust in this place as an alternative to where I was before, as well as in it as a community and a movement, and it all went to shit because the administration refused to get off their butts and address the issues they saw.

You guys had a brilliant concept, but terrible management caused it to fail...

For those who are interested, here is the Yesterweb burndown chronology.

2022-05-10: yesterweb forum launched as a slower-web alternative to the popular discord server.
2022-11-21: 32-bit café is established as an adults-only offshoot of yesterweb.
2023-01-09: all yesterweb discord invitations cancelled (iirc had 2200 people)
2023-01-25: The yesterweb mod staff goes "on strike", and all channels are shut until 02-01.
2020-02-01: all channels are still shut, however a new unmoderated general chat has been formed.
2023-02-20: yesterweb discord is now officially read-only and will be destroyed on 04-20.
2023-03-25: yesterweb webring terminated, and the software that linked its 815 members was removed on 03-31.
Yesterweb forum registration closed (532 users) on 2023-04-05, moved to read-only on 05-01, then removed on 06-01.

[glacial_pace]

You guys had a brilliant concept, but terrible management caused it to fail...

my guess is sadness just didn't feel like paying for the server space anymore. hope that helps, OP

[Sinclair-Speccy]

You guys had a brilliant concept, but terrible management caused it to fail...

my guess is sadness just didn't feel like paying for the server space anymore. hope that helps, OP

I think it’s a lot more than just that

[madness]

Well, then. According to what I've observed, the staff appears to be blaming the users. It's also worth noting the comment that "the quality of discussion had gone to shit."

Firstly thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I know it's easier to avoid having the conversation directly but it's the only way we can resolve our problems.

The staff is not homogenous in thought as you may be able to infer from this thread and others. In some things I can only speak for myself, other things I can speak for the core organizers, and other things I can speak for the entire moderation team. Moderators wildly differ on their feelings on many things between themselves and between the core organizers.

So speaking for the core organizers, as I said in my last post above, we only blame ourselves, we never blame "the users".

The quality of discussion did go to shit. It has done so multiple times over the growth of the server. This was not just an internal assessment, we were told so by many former regulars and lurkers. We made it a point to reach out to people who had stopped participating and ask them why. If it wasn't related to life events, it was all related to the discussion. We had this problem at 100 members, at 300 members, and 800 members and we worked to resolve it. Somewhere around 1500 members we had the same problem but we were unable to resolve it.

What was the difference that time? Was it that the new members were worse than the old ones? No. There was nothing fundamentally different about you than about our older members. The admins were able to resolve this problem before, so it is our responsibility and ultimately our fault if we can't fix it. We can't blame you.

The difference that time is that the server became too overwhelming and we are already too burnt out to fix it. So out of desperation we were asking you to essentially organize yourselves to fix the problem because we were not able to do so anymore. Of course this did not happen since most members did not want to do this. Once again this is not your fault since you never assumed responsibility. You just wanted to hang out and that's okay. Perhaps then we should have shut it down once we were aware that staff was physically and mentally unable to maintain the server (over a year ago, btw, which I believe was before you joined).

Except I am not a dictator, so when I voiced my opinion to Sadness and Auzzie that we should shut it down, they did not feel the same way as I did (for almost a year). It was at this point that the forum was created, because they believed that a forum would be a much easier space to maintain than a discord server and they would be capable of handling it. It is definitely an order of magnitude easier to maintain, but we are still unable to properly maintain it because we all started transitioning to offline projects i.e. life is getting in the way. The decision to shut things down is made when the staff visibly, obviously, were not interested in continuing (or able to continue) the project, in either words or deeds, and it took a while for the staff to get to that point.

It was our mistake and our responsibility, because you're absolute right when you say:

I came here to have fun, not to have the entire building bloody lit on fire. The whole "don't point out what's wrong and just say read the manifesto" thing reminds us of a parent or teacher saying "you know what you did!" when you actually have no idea.

Telling you to read the manifesto and figure out is lazy and wrong, and we do it because we're tired. The amount of effort it takes to change anything even between individuals is tremendous and I am already sacrificing too much of my health just responding, but it needs to be done because you are upset. Please try to understand that when the teacher gets mad at you it's not always because they have a problem with you or that they hate kids. It's more likely that the classroom is overcrowded and their having problems at home and they are inflicted with compassion fatigue.

It appears like a new person has arrived just to demolish everything.

I have seen this notion more than once now and I hope this isn't about me (because who else could it possibly be). I've been here since the first week of the yesterweb and had been an admin on the server since its second month. These things didn't just suddenly happen for no good reason. We have a whole history, filled with sequences and events that you don't know about (because it was never your responsibility to know them). Such speculation just makes us out to look insane because it comes from an incomplete perspective, which I believe to be the case because:

For those who are interested, here is the Yesterweb burndown chronology.

Your chronology is cherry-picking events and taking them out of context. If you want to take the time to get to know the history in its entirety, we can go into that, just ask and we will do our best to respond. But I have to ask why is it that you were only here to have fun, yet you seem to have put in quite some effort to establish our timeline of events for us.

It's the Yesterweb. Not the Vladimir Lenin Web-Union Pioneer Organization, for crying out loud.

Yes, we are aware of this. The core staff are the most intimately familiar with the inner workings of the community we worked night and day on. Nobody here is trying to be Lenin, this isn't a communist party, we're not trying to overthrow the government or establish dual power or anything like that. We may have been overly optimistic about what we would able to accomplish at times, and even in the height of our optimism all we envisioned were highly-organized internet communities that had the power to influence and overtake the mainstream internet culture and make permanent progressive changes. I still think this is possible in the future, but the Yesterweb isn't it.

I had some trust in this place as an alternative to where I was before, as well as in it as a community and a movement, and it all went to shit because the administration refused to get off their butts and address the issues they saw.

I'm sorry. Once again, this is our fault, and I personally don't blame you for feeling that way. But the power is with you, not with us. You are the movement, not us. Please continue on without us.

[TropicalVoxel]

But the community we had shows just how many people realize something is wrong with the internet and capitalism and the exploitation of us all.

At the end of the day we found each other in the vastness of the web and I can't wait to see what you all do next.

I am without a doubt sad to see the forum go. That being sad, I'm grateful for what the yesterweb has done for me. Like you said, it made me realize what was wrong with the internet and that I wasn't alone in how I feel. I realized that the web can be a lot more than whats beyond all the big social media sites, and that I am not constrained to it. I don't think I would have gotten into all this as much as I had without the yesterweb.

I see a lot of people in the replys getting angry or being unhappy, and allthough I understand, I personally admire your guys ability to make the difficult decisions that keep your principles strong.

Whatever initiatives I take in the future, I know it'll be built with the principles I learned here.

Live long, and prosper.

that being said I'm sad the forum itsself is gonna be deleted, the archive obsessed person inside of me is not happy lol, but i understand haha

[madness]

Whatever initiatives I take in the future, I know it'll be built with the principles I learned here.

Live long, and prosper.

Thank you for your words. I am only asking (anyone reading this) that, if you choose to continue on, you continue to go where no one has gone before.

There is a lot of significance and impact in words and we have to be careful when we say things like "old web" and "yesterweb" and "web revival" because it obscures the fundamentally new aspects of what is going on. The fascination with the old ideals and aesthetics had a real effect on our ability to advance towards a new web.

In my opinion we have reached the point where we can safely shed the association with the past, but I suppose if you're going forward then you'll be a better judge of that in the future.

[sixeyes]

Sorry for late response. I've lingered in the thread the past few days and appreciate your posts. There is much for me to learn and think about here, even if it'll have to be practiced in some context. it's a heavy subject too. thank you for taking the time!

I'm sorry, it is unfair to you. we were never meant to be so pushy but it's our personal frustrations coming out.

there are a lot of individuals that get conservative and reach a comfortable place and want to stop there. sometimes (often) they work actively against our desire to push forward to new things because it threatens their comfort.

tbh, i don't think it's too unfair. i knew about the discord and chose not to go there. and to be perfectly honest, i had a good time on the forum. i knew there were supposed to be sharper ideals "out there somewhere" (not speaking about the manifesto - that's how i found the yesterweb in the first place - but like, how to put that in practice). I supposed that they would make themselves apparent in time, and meanwhile this was a great place to hang out and talk about the internet and making websites.

As have been clear from this thread, i could have (should have) been more actively curious...

I don't want to be this type of conservative person. i hope that wasn't my role here. i don't particularly think it was, but it seems like something i could become out of laziness, or ignorance. something to watch out for.

Which makes me think how important questions are. I'm glad Ray weighed in because I don't know if I could have asked those questions. I don't think that some people don't bother to ask, it's that they either wouldn't know how to or quite literally cannot for whatever reason. But the attempt should be made. Which is something I need to work on individually. I'm happy to be learning a lot here.

Yeah, this exactly. Or at least the takeaway, hehe.

It was only after we made the announcement that the discord server was closing that we discovered its correctness by judging the reactions of the members. The same may be true about announcing the closure of the forum, at least the mods seem to think so. We don't know if what we are doing is correct or not until after we try it and analyze its results.

Hehe. Well! It surely made me realize that i do care a lot about this place (values / atmosphere / topics / people), and it will leave a hole. That i will have to actively work to fill somehow.

...

Hm, well, i'm having a hard time expressing myself here (this post took some time to put together). If nothing else, i'm grateful for the forum. This was nice.

[Vencake]

[...]
There are too many opportunists, too many people that used the YW for financial or even just social gain. We thought maybe the issue was the discord server-it wasn't. It was a systemic issue.

I applaud the mature decision you all came to. This quote in particular stands out to me as it's so true. The Yesterweb's large pool of members meant there was always going to be someone (and then eventually a lot of people) who brought over the worst aspects of the modern web. Shaming, virtue signalling, followers, no tolerance...there's a lot more, and of course there was the monetary gain linked prior to this thread.

[Sadness]

First, we're chastised for discussing topics that aren't easily accessible, so you have us discuss food preferences and other topics to make it simpler for new people to join in. Then they protest that the quality of the debate has deteriorated.

It took me a bit to figure out what you're talking about here, but I think I finally did.

This was from the Discord server's days, when a bunch of members would talk about Linux and niche tech topics in the channel that was meant for welcoming new members. I and the other mods asked others to stop talking about highly technical topics in the very first channel that new people joined into. We had received several complaints that there was no space for new (or existing) members to have discussions there, because it was the same handful of people discussing very niche topics like systemd, thus creating the illusion of a very tech-exclusive community that had the unintended effect of isolating anyone else who wasn't familiar with those topics.

We created a channel dedicated to Linux and other tech, so that the very specialized conversations could continue there, but expressed frustration again and again when the same conversations would 'leak' out into the other channels.

I understand that it's frustrating to be asked to move to another space, but the reason we were doing that was to preserve a welcoming space to greet and introduce ourselves to new members.

my guess is sadness just didn't feel like paying for the server space anymore. hope that helps, OP

The server on which this forum is hosted is of no monetary cost to me. The only thing I pay out of pocket for is the domain, which we're keeping around. However I have been paying dearly with my time and my energy, both of which are in short supply nowadays.

[amethyst]

It's starting to feel a little bit like I crawl out from under a rock when a major Yesterweb event happens to make a post, as I've never been a particularly vocal member in the everyday discussions

I'll try keep this initial response somewhat short and then continue digesting everyone's comments on the forum's closure, which will probably lead to me asking some questions and going out in a blaze of posting glory. (Eh, wasn't too successful on that front...)

My feelings now are the same as when the Discord was closed: sad, but understanding; grateful and inspired. I've been around for the latter half of the community's growth, and echo the sentiments of others when I say the Yesterweb has been one of the few places I ever felt at home online. I was able to learn and grow both personally and politically, and I've been working to apply my understanding of the Yesterweb's ethos to my own initiatives. I've learned even more reading through this thread, and am grateful for the moderation team's transparency in the making of these difficult decisions; there have been many public discussions over the direction and goals of the community, and, even though I just did so, I want to once again back up the moderators and organisers in their decisions; it couldn't have been easy, and as has been demonstrated in this thread and a few others recently, it was made after an incredible amount of deliberation.

On the Discord—all the way back in April of 2022!—I said:

...but i've decided/learned/realized that i don't need special mod powers to be a good steward of the community; if i wait until i have status to behave well, or only behave well to get the status, i'm just helping perpetuate societal hierarchies i despise inside my personal circles. and that's no good

While I still believe the sentiment behind that, there's a part of me that believes I used it as an excuse to give in to fears—of a larger community responsibility (since strain on the mods was already being discussed), of being a bad moderator, of rejection if I was told I couldn't be a moderator, and whatever other silly stories we tell ourselves to avoid taking risks and putting effort into something new.

Nonetheless, I am incredibly proud of the contributions that I did make to this community, and I am grateful to have crossed paths with so many of you in the "vastness of the web", as Auzzie said. My hope now— my goal now, is to make sure this internal fire does not go out, that the energy this community has given me does not go to waste, that I redirect it to other spaces, both personal and communal, taking the risks I didn't take here, in service of larger goals.

The community is the people, not the spaces, so for those of you I've chatted with that maintain a presence in cyberspace, I'll be sure to surf alongside you every now and again.

[OiStepanka]

Nonetheless, I am incredibly proud of the contributions that I did make to this community, and I am grateful to have crossed paths with so many of you in the "vastness of the web", as Auzzie said. My hope now— my goal now, is to make sure this internal fire does not go out, that the energy this community has given me does not go to waste, that I redirect it to other spaces, both personal and communal, taking the risks I didn't take here, in service of larger goals.

The community is the people, not the spaces, so for those of you I've chatted with that maintain a presence in cyberspace, I'll be sure to surf alongside you every now and again.

I just want to say I like your banner! It really sums up the points you've made in your post ^_^

[humanfinny]

I made an account a while ago but haven't posted once, so this is my first and last post. I'm sorry to see the webring and the forum go but it is understandable. Thanks for letting many of us be a part of it while it lasted though!

[Myrmeform]

Very sad to see this, and very disappointed in myself for not being more active. I'm happy to have found this place, and to have found the people and their creations. It inspired me to try to make my own space, and inspires me to improve it. Thank you for existing, even briefly.

[Blog47177]

https://www.proboards.com/


I have some ideas where we can go when this forum is gone. We can set up shop at Proboards but we cannot use the Yesterweb name though one of us has to use a different name though and we have to advertise it here for the move.

[sacrebisous]

Is there any reason that the forum is being deleted in its entirety rather than being saved or archived by the admins? I feel like there is a lot of valuable discussion that has been had here, so having it all wiped away because the platform can no longer be maintained feels like such a waste.

[RogerMexico]

Is there any reason that the forum is being deleted in its entirety rather than being saved or archived by the admins? I feel like there is a lot of valuable discussion that has been had here, so having it all wiped away because the platform can no longer be maintained feels like such a waste.

There’s an overwhelming amount of forum detritus that ultimately isn’t worth saving in any forum shuttering.

Archiving in this way would mean:
A. making everything publicly available without a login
B. continue to require a login and maintain required security updates in perpetuity

The way it’s being approached, it’s up to individual users to retain and archive the individual conversations they deem important enough. Hence the month and a half runway left.

[Starfia]

Poignant to hear so soon after the Discord server was discontinued.

First of all, thank you to Sadness and the moderation team, who have always offered transparency around your evolving perspectives and methods. Conjuring the empathy to maintain a desirable environment for diverse participants must always have taken some effort, and to your credit, you've made it appear closer to effortless in your communication. I'm glad you're taking care of yourselves first, and I want you to know I've spent some time observing those lower-level traits in the hope of eventually adopting whatever it is about them that I originally had more trouble wording.

The Yesterweb Forum has been one of the first social online spaces I've been excited to visit daily since the rise and fall of Facebook and Twitter, and it's so clearly exemplified the value of values on the Internet and the Web. Even with the pseudonomy and short timespan, I'll have come away feeling like I've chatted more than once with at least a handful of thoughtful Internet strangers, if not neighbours, if not friends. I'd looked forward to typing every fortnight or month about newer Web standards, social questions, and so on. I might post my top two or three while there's time.

I understand the forum will be deleted rather than archived, for whatever reason. The forum's topics aside, it served as an especially good crossroads between people's own sites, which is something I'd been seeking. I want everyone to know I plan to peruse the entire member list, make a bookmarks list of every site, and visit them at least once in the future. If you've indicated you want interactivity (with a guestbook, a chat room, a comments section, an e-mail address, et cetera), then I'll try to say hi at some point. Even if you just think it's strange and impersonal and decide to ignore it, no problem. But I'd hope such journeys around the planet are perceived as a form of the personal Web's success, if still a small one to this point. My own site still isn't interactive, but it should eventually be, so please feel free to bookmark similarly.

I've always thought the real world was a good analogy for the Web. The real world has "centralized," "corporate" areas as well, like theme parks, airports, malls, metropolises and megapolopises, and I've always thought that was fine, and has some advantages. But it would be wrong if almost everyone became so entranced by such places that they all decided to live in them, and ultimately forgot residential zones, country roads, and rural areas. Forgot homes, where individuals are fully detached and free to think, imagine, dream, and open their doors for friends and guests now and then, not hurting anyone else, not thinking to care what anyone else thinks, with not much else to it. Even back through the millennia, humanity has had that. The Web gave humans the power to build "homes," those places for thoughts and dreams, much more easily than with nails and wood, and share them not just neighbourhood-wide, but planet-wide.

We're still some of the first humans ever to have this power, whether we remember or forget it. Let's continue to remind ourselves and others.

[IvyMonarch]

I'm sad that this is happening, but thank you for making these forums in the first place. They were cool while they lasted.

[madness]

Is there any reason that the forum is being deleted in its entirety rather than being saved or archived by the admins? I feel like there is a lot of valuable discussion that has been had here, so having it all wiped away because the platform can no longer be maintained feels like such a waste.

Okay, let's discuss it.

The Yesterweb Forum has been one of the first social online spaces I've been excited to visit daily since the rise and fall of Facebook and Twitter, and it's so clearly exemplified the value of values on the Internet and the Web. Even with the pseudonomy and short timespan, I'll have come away feeling like I've chatted more than once with at least a handful of thoughtful Internet strangers, if not neighbours, if not friends. I'd looked forward to typing every fortnight or month about newer Web standards, social questions, and so on.

(thanks for this dank post btw)

We should examine the value of our posts because I believe it has a significant impact on whether we decide data is worth archiving. There is value in who is reading our messages, how they are responding to our messages, and such. There is value in the effort made to transform others and ourselves through dialogue. There is also value in revisiting old messages, or visiting them for the first time a long time away from when they were actually created. I'm sure there are a thousand more things that give it value of varying significance.

There are also things that remove from its value, such as having to maintain it, as RogerMexico said. There's also the responsibility of privacy/security that weighs heavy on us, since our discord data in the past has been used for malicious purposes. When we shut down the discord we even received requests from people to do extra work for them, such as to delete all their messages or to grab them some information or add them back in because they left prematurely. It would be reasonable to assume that the same things will happen in regards to the forum as well. We will likely get many messages in our email inbox about it weeks, months, or possibly years after it has shut down.

What's important is that our overall perception of that value is subjective, but it also isn't permanently fixed. There are events that can happen in the future that can change our valuations. You can change my perspective on the value of something through dialogue. However, up until recently, nobody really put in a genuine effort to change our perspective and just assumed that we see the value of things the same way as they do. Rather than struggle to convince us otherwise, they hold it against us only expressing how they feel and not what they think.

Anyway in short I think I agree with this:

The way it’s being approached, it’s up to individual users to retain and archive the individual conversations they deem important enough. Hence the month and a half runway left.

I'm not sure why it's assumed that it's the mods' responsibility to archive it. It's probably already been archived by some random individual member and we will never know about it, or will find out in the future. Nobody can stop you from archiving what you see.

(Please note that the extra 1.5 months wasn't decided to give people time to archive the forum lmao. The extra time is to give a chance for less-active users to participate or be aware of what's going on in case they've been busy with life or whatever.)

Also isn't it interesting how things change when we become aware that what we are posting will be deleted relatively soon? I find a lot of value in the interactions with the few people who are still coming here and posting. I try not to worry about the future value of things too much, since I consider the present value to already be priceless.

[glacial_pace]

I'm not sure why it's assumed that it's the mods' responsibility to archive it.

perhaps someone wouldn't mind preserving the posts with a database dump, which i'm guessing only the webmaster has access to. i assume all phpBB databases have the same schema, so i wonder how hard it would be to just insert all the database rows into a new site.

[RogerMexico]

so i wonder how hard it would be to just insert all the database rows into a new site.

Not terribly hard tbh.

A friend of mine had, at one point, a running archive of 6 vBulletin boards that folded.

[Ray]

First off, Madness - thank you SO MUCH for sticking around and engaging with us. I'm really sorry if some people percieve you as the one who came and uprooted things. I think most of us clearly see you as just - the bearer of sad news, someone who's taking charge in doing something unpleasant but needed. Thank you so much, both for your work in the Yesterweb, and for keeping it real with us here. I hope you enjoy touching grass in a couple weeks!! ;P

I am going to say some stuff, but - please do keep in mind, I was not there for the Discord Era of the Yesterweb, so I might not have the full picture.

nobody has bothered to ask these targeted questions, until you did (we will get more into this later).

Which by the way. Has this conversation really never been had in the past? Between members and organizers?

I feel like you're being a bit too hard on yourself/the other mods. Like you're giving yourself the blame for not inspiring this community enough. But, by what I could feel, it's less about the community not being inspired, and more about... lack of communication, and divergence of ideals?

I mean - with a name such as the Yesterweb and with it being born initially with the goal of getting people to make websites, people immdiately think your movement is affiliated to that of the Web Revival. So of course, that's a big chunk of people you attracted: artists, hobbyists, nostalgics, misfits. I count myself as one of them after all :'D

And, I am extremely glad that we're finally sitting down to talk. Again, maybe all of this already went down in the Discord and I was simply not there for it. But I had no idea the Yesterweb was supposed to be... this. I had no idea you guys were 3 burned out people who were hoping to inspire a counter-culture. I had no idea this was meant to be bigger than making sites and being a good netizen.

The core organizers are trained to follow a rigorous democratic method. We are supposed to be representing the progressive desires of our community, and carrying them out to fruition to the best of our ability. We are not supposed to expect anything from our members. If we are doing our work correctly then our community should recognize it and thus support the organization, and a small fraction of those supporters will decide to become organizers.

[...]it is always the mistake of the organization, not the community. There are no expectations on you, only on those who have committed to follow the democratic process. Which is only three of us, by the way. We grew from 1 to 2 to 3 and we have a 4th person that has expressed interest. Increasing the amount of organizers is a much slower process than how ridiculously quickly the community has expanded, but I won't go into the analysis of why in this post.

What's the biggest difference between an organizer and a moderator? Was there a shortage of both, or mostly of one kind? Did you actively try to recruit either?
It's funny - in my mind, I had imagined the "yesterweb collective" as a larger organization of close-knit people. Maybe it's just the phrasing on the 'site - I always kind of felt like - there probably was a circle of well-read folks "at the top" doing something really, really cool, that I could just vaguely comprehend, because I was simply not as literate about what was going on.

I don't doubt that I wouldn't have brought up these questions without an announcement like this - simply because I would've felt like it wasn't my place to ask them. I don't think this is a failure of your organization. When you aren't very knowledgeable about a certain thing and join a community that's going in a certain direction, you usually don't have the confidence to butt in and ask why they're doing what they're doing or what they hope to achieve. It feels rude. Like busting in a party and demanding to know why they're putting on that music. Like man, you weren't even invited.

I mean - I def thought that I was a "lesser participant", because I wasn't tech savvy, and was clueless about all the cool tech stuff people talked about all the time. Which btw:

[...] it was the same handful of people discussing very niche topics like systemd, thus creating the illusion of a very tech-exclusive community that had the unintended effect of isolating anyone else who wasn't familiar with those topics.

Yeah, it definitely had that effect! I never interacted with the Discord for two reasons: one, it was way too busy - and two, I felt lesser than. The forums removed one obstacle for me, but I've always felt a bit of shame at not being as knowledgeable about the technical side as most other users. Not being able to understand what was going on. Not having a well put together site. I felt like I could only take and not give back to the community, and it made me less inclined to participate.

Then the Manifesto and the Etiquette are working as intended.

The manifesto does not clearly state the counter-cultural aspect, but it is implied. After all, what ultimately matters is how you put the manifesto into practice and not what the words in the manifesto actually say. If these writings are transforming you and your relationships with others, and you are in turn transforming others, then the counter-cultural transformation is happening even if you are not conscious of it in name-and-concept when it is happening.

This is far better than for us to preach about counter-culture and yet have nothing change. This happens a lot since a lot of people can't distinguish sub-culture from counter-culture and are ineffective in changing anything, or sometimes even counter-productive. It's not necessary to have a "here's who we are, this is what we want, this is how we go about it and what we do" if it's having the correct effect.

The manifesto was intended for people like you. You are living proof that the manifesto works. We were trying to find you, and we found you. This was a completely unexpected surprise, and a very nice one. So I appreciate you opening this dialogue and transforming the world with us.

This makes the goodbye a bit more bittersweet for me! :') Suddenly learning that hey - I wasn't out of place here after all. I could've contributed more, maybe. Goes to show how shyness and anxiety will sabotage you, hah. I'm glad we're having this conversation. It's inspiring and uplifting!

But, I do disagree about keeping the counter-culture aspect implicit being better. Reading the words:

I am very confident that, if we started over with only 5 of our experienced members as core architects, we could build something that went beyond being a sub-culture to becoming a counter-culture. We just need a break, and we would need to plan.

*especially* when coming from a burned-out, perhaps disillusioned organizer, just... They fill me with hope, and motivation, and vigour.

We may have been overly optimistic about what we would able to accomplish at times, and even in the height of our optimism all we envisioned were highly-organized internet communities that had the power to influence and overtake the mainstream internet culture and make permanent progressive changes. I still think this is possible in the future, but the Yesterweb isn't it.

By the way, thank you for updating the About page. The Yesterweb is dead, long live the Yesterweb! ;)

Another thing I think would be cool is if we worked on collective websites rather than personal websites. Wouldn't it be really nice if you met people that you trusted enough and were comfortable enough with that you could share an account and build a website together?

I still thinking encouraging each of us to get to know less people but more genuinely is a great start. Having projects to work on with your friends is also a great idea.

https://www.proboards.com/
I have some ideas where we can go when this forum is gone. We can set up shop at Proboards but we cannot use the Yesterweb name though one of us has to use a different name though and we have to advertise it here for the move.

Well well, no time like the present, is there?
@anyone reading this: if you're interested, feel free to join https://the-web-raft.boards.net/ . It's a simple forum I've set up, with the intent of it being a "base" for us to find eachother, organize, make friends, share communities. I feel like there's a lot of lovely and likeminded people here, but two weeks is little time to get together before the closure. Let this closure be a push forward instead! For once, let's try following the organizers' advice. For science! ;) let's get together, make friends, put the Manifesto in practice. I want to say hello to you guys, and possibly make art and forums together, mkay? If you don't want to join there, do send me an email or two, and I'll get back to you!
If you're afraid of saying hi for any reason whatsoever: I literally have no idea what I'm doing. Just do it. Make up a pseudonym if it helps with confidence! Don't make the same mistake I did. Join in. Ask questions. Be bold. <3

Also, instead of existing in spaces away from traditional social media, I would encourage people to integrate with normal people on those platforms and try to put the manifesto and etiquette into practice.

I feel like this is a great point, and one I will keep taking to heart.
Lately I've been feeling like that I've been precluding myself some opportunities by rejecting social media, I am just really fed up with the culture surrounding it. But maybe, now, I can be able to use it with mindfulness: to connect with peers, to inspire and get inspired. It's a bit hard, when a lot of my peers are using it in ways that make my heart sink. But maybe I can carve out a little bit of space for myself there that's still honest to myself, while being a bit of... a bridge with the people who know me IRL, for example.

Thank you for inspiring me, even more now that the Yesterweb is ending. Wishing you all the best. <3 I'm sorry this is so long, and I hope my english was okay, it's 1 am and I'm so tired but I've been putting off a response forever

(and, last, some more miscellaneous questions born out of curiosity. You're free not no respond of course.
Who's the third core organizer? How did you folk meet? What was your decisional progress like? When thinking about ideas, projects, etc - did you consult other people as well? Did you talk about this movement to people offline who were not in the know?)

[Cobra!]

Also isn't it interesting how things change when we become aware that what we are posting will be deleted relatively soon? I find a lot of value in the interactions with the few people who are still coming here and posting. I try not to worry about the future value of things too much, since I consider the present value to already be priceless.

I don’t see it that way. I think someone will archive this entire forum before it gets deleted, and what we do post here will still be available on the Wayback Machine or something.

Hey future people viewing this forum, by the way!

Also, instead of existing in spaces away from traditional social media, I would encourage people to integrate with normal people on those platforms and try to put the manifesto and etiquette into practice.

I feel like this is a great point, and one I will keep taking to heart.
Lately I've been feeling like that I've been precluding myself some opportunities by rejecting social media, I am just really fed up with the culture surrounding it. But maybe, now, I can be able to use it with mindfulness: to connect with peers, to inspire and get inspired. It's a bit hard, when a lot of my peers are using it in ways that make my heart sink. But maybe I can carve out a little bit of space for myself there that's still honest to myself, while being a bit of... a bridge with the people who know me IRL, for example.

Thank you for inspiring me, even more now that the Yesterweb is ending. Wishing you all the best. <3 I'm sorry this is so long, and I hope my english was okay, it's 1 am and I'm so tired but I've been putting off a response forever

(and, last, some more miscellaneous questions born out of curiosity. You're free not no respond of course.
Who's the third core organizer? How did you folk meet? What was your decisional progress like? When thinking about ideas, projects, etc - did you consult other people as well? Did you talk about this movement to people offline who were not in the know?)

I don’t know if I agree with that part. I think social media even existing goes against the message of the movement, or at least the way I’ve interpreted it. Smaller social medias such as Mastodon or Cohost I can maybe get behind, but I’d still avoid the bigger ones like the plague.

[Squid-Died]

awe this sux, i been away for a while and i was hoping to rejoin

oh well, sorry it turned out this way, good luck for everyone in the future, i hope i can meet up with some of yas again in the future

keep it real

[ch1rx30]

I feel like the rave scene is more than a subculture.. like an irl counter-culture as defined ITT and could bring about world peace if it wasn't so addicted to social media.

[madness]

I hope you enjoy touching grass in a couple weeks!!

I have never desired anything more in my life. We are blessed to have you, Ray.

I'm really sorry if some people percieve you as the one who came and uprooted things. I think most of us clearly see you as just - the bearer of sad news, someone who's taking charge in doing something unpleasant but needed.

Don't be sorry. The hatred of me is well-deserved, not for the reasons believed, but for reasons that I will now reveal publicly.

I am what is known in Latin America as a digital guerrilla. I show up in promising social spaces and attempt to perform a social transformation. Once I have done all I can, I move on and do it again, sometimes online, sometimes offline. I have been popping in and out of existence like this for six (6) years. I do this alone, but I am also not the only one doing this - I learned it partly by studying the methods of others.

This is the first time where it grew into an organizational effort. The Yesterweb was created by Sadness as an aimless hobby server and I joined because I wanted to see if I could help Sadness stop being sad. Sadness did in fact stop being sad. This inspired her to strive for a higher purpose with the Yesterweb, though she had zero experience with ever doing anything like that.

Although I was fairly certain of the limitations of the Yesterweb, you can never truly know what's possible until you try. I also can't impose my beliefs on others, only try to convince them, and sometimes people need to see proof of something before they can be convinced of it. So we worked on the Yesterweb anyway, even if I had (accurately but not precisely) guessed that it would fail in the end. I knew it was doomed from the start but it was worth seeing what we could accomplish along the way.

It was only *after* the Yesterweb was created that we discovered (as in consciously recognized) the social movement which was the precondition for its existence. So in my defense I did not have a premeditated intention of transforming the movement, I just found myself within it because I was also building a personal website at the time.

So we set out with the near-impossible task of trying to transform the pre-existing Web Revival movement into something like a Social Revival. Trying to building new things within old things even if the old weighed heavily on us like a nightmare. Given the unique characteristics of this particular movement - with its romanticization of a better past and technology from an era that was previously only available to the wealthiest 5% of humanity, and its hatred of contemporary "social" media - it should be reasonable to expect that it would be extremely difficult to convince most of the necessity of creating something new, progressive, and social.

If you can imagine this web revival movement on the large-scale, out of every 1001 people interested, 1 will recognize the need for a profound social transformation and act towards it, 100 will be sympathetic and support it at least in thought, and the 900 of the rest will not care (or worse). This is not what is normally expected - in an average social movement, those who are sympathetic are usually in the majority, but this ones' particular hang-up on nostalgia and period-revival shifts the majority of the movement into being unable to see or want anything genuinely progressive. (This is an over-simplification, to keep this post short and readable.)

We were always overwhelmed by the uncaring majority, but we stayed optimistic because of the 10% who did care, so we pushed on anyway. I was teaching Sadness how to organize while we were building the community. This education takes several months or even years for a single individual and requires a lot of study + practice (keep this in mind with our discord server growing by 3 or 4 people daily). Eventually Auzzie joined and was our rare 1 in 1000 who was absolutely committed to our mission, but he also needed to be trained and educated. The server and forum are already practically over and we still have a lot left to study.

What's the biggest difference between an organizer and a moderator? Was there a shortage of both, or mostly of one kind? Did you actively try to recruit either?

There was a shortage of both, but primarily moderators. People become organizers of their own conviction and are not actively recruited. Moderators were invited to moderate based on our evaluation of their community participation. Because of the overwhelming amount of work, we were too desperate for moderators and we failed to properly evaluate them, causing us to remove two moderators who were unfit for the position.

A moderator's only responsibility is to maintain a social space to a certain defined standard. They can do more than this and often do, but not always. An organizer has a much larger responsibility, simply put as carrying out the mission of the organization, but often times that means to moderate the spaces when there is a short supply of moderators. There is overlap between the two positions, but it's pretty easy to tell when one is primarily a moderator or primarily an organizer. The distinction was clear on the discord because we had an administrator role to distinguish the organizers, but on the forum it never existed (which is our mistake).

I never interacted with the Discord for two reasons: one, it was way too busy - and two, I felt lesser than.... I felt like I could only take and not give back to the community, and it made me less inclined to participate.

We were never able to give everyone the time that they deserved, even on this forum. We never expected to grow this big and we didn't know how to handle it. We often think about what could really have been done different. Maybe we should have had a vetting process, or periodically closed registrations, something like that. It's hard to know without seeing the long-term consequences. But at the same time, only by growing this big did we get to where we are today, chatting on this forum right now, so we can't be certain we could have done any better. I am no longer disillusioned because I now believe that we have fulfilled our mission, even if on a very small scale.

But, I do disagree about keeping the counter-culture aspect implicit being better.

I will reflect on this and bring it up with others, and see if maybe we can make it more explicit in the future. But if you have ideas on how to make it so, I would love to hear them. The website is not going down, so the message will stay up.

Which by the way. Has this conversation really never been had in the past? Between members and organizers?

No. There is a saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. We can only inspire curiosity in others, we cannot force them to care. Only when one genuinely seeks knowledge can we know that they are truly listening, and we've learned from experience to not waste energy talking to people who are not listening.

What was your decisional progress like?

Almost every decision can be reduced to a series of deciding between two opposing actions. Once that analysis is done, we reach consensus through discussion, but if ever there is a point where we cannot agree and a decision has to be made, we carry out the majority opinion (2 out of 3 in this case). Even if I am in the minority opinion (1 out of 3), I still agree to carry out the decision that was made. This is why I had to continue with the Yesterweb for so long, even if I didn't want to and knew it would end terribly but that's democracy.

~*~

I hope I didn't miss anything important. I love that you are taking initiative to start a project, and I wish you best of luck with it!

[madness]

I feel like the rave scene is more than a subculture.. like an irl counter-culture as defined ITT and could bring about world peace if it wasn't so addicted to social media.

If this is true then you should be able to organize it. Who wouldn't a world based on peace, love, unity, and respect?

[lime360]

why the hell should anyone care about the yesterweb movement when you guys just give up.

woah that's literally me

I also like giving up for no reason cause I'm stupid

[vincent]

why the hell should anyone care about the yesterweb movement when you guys just give up.

woah that's literally me

I also like giving up for no reason cause I'm stupid

:,(

[amethyst]

why the hell should anyone care about the yesterweb movement when you guys just give up.

woah that's literally me

I also like giving up for no reason cause I'm stupid

This pretty harsh considering the organisers are being incredibly transparent about the reasoning and motivation behind the decision to close up shop, even giving us time to openly discuss it with them.

There's not enough bandwidth on the admin side to work toward bigger things while continuing to moderate a community that is largely content with the oasis that's already been created. If you want to keep the parts of the Yesterweb that you liked around, start your own community or join one of the many other boards, servers, or webrings that are being shared around here; that's been advised since January, and it's time that it actually happened.

[Starfia]

From the Manifesto on the site, none of this is made clear. In fact, in the "about" section, the first "Objective/Mission" you list still is To advocate for a no (or low) cost self-expressive and creative hobby (building websites).

I understand that stance has been revised, but - shouldn't a movement that aims to be a counter-culture have some sort of more clearly defined scope, then?

The About section on the website is completely outdated. We didn't know this until you pointed it out. You investigated us and found an inconsistency, and now we are conscious of it and must fix it… Actually I completely forgot there even was an About page.

Ray and Madness,

It's been illuminating to read what's been said since then. I was among the (I think many) people wondering the same. Anyone wondering along with me has benefitted from Ray's succinctness and candour in asking, and Madness's succinctness and candour in answering.

I was also among the (I also assumed, many) people who joined the Yesterweb discussions after, and only after, I'd made a point to read the whole "about" page and decided that's what I was up for. I was astonished to read that any moderator was surprised a member had joined based on the "about" material. (How many people here didn't?)

Of course, I'd have thought, the Yesterweb was about something associated with nostalgia but not defined by it, but certainly based on the indivualism and the person-centrism of the Web. I came in through Neocities, I browsed Sadness's material, I've listened to her talk for 90 minutes on the podcast, I've read the Zine, I've browsed the links, and I've read plenty of the network of sites that have come to reference it. Nowhere did I recall anything about subcultures versus counter-cultures or anything that felt like a conceptual retaking or replacement of any dominant culture. And, Madness, it sounds like you're now suggesting that not even the enthusiasm for the Web that brought us together here, and which you certainly do share, was not necessarily essential to your own highest priorities as a moderator here.

There is an organicness about your described approach to leadership, a kind of wisdom in the adage that some things can't be forced, and some things happen most naturally if barely guided, though I'm a little confused about how far you've seemed to take that. All together, I'm left with the impression that you – perhaps personally, not even the other mods – had a social goal in mind that was never centrally stated, and which you perhaps thought unproductive to state, yet your satisfaction in your position hinged on its realization. That would also explain the popularity of the sentiment from members which was approximately: "it felt like there was some purpose to the community that I was aware of, but never fully understood."

I apologize if I'm being too speculative or too personal or anything. If even a portion of that is correct, then I can start to understand the stress and frustration that's been invisible to the average member lately.

If it's worth anything, I can tell you I think it would not have been harmful, would not have amounted to "forcing" anything, and would have been helpful, to state your goals early and clearly. (In every place that anyone might have considered an "about" page, for example.) If anything, it might have resolved more expediently what you and the team hope will be resolved by closing the forum. And I have absolutely no idea why you think the contents of your last reply should garner "well-deserved hatred," as you put it. I think it's great you have such a broad and far-sighted ambition, have done so much personally to follow it, and are so open and resilient to trial and error, as so many ultimate successes have required, and I wish you the best on whatever next step you take.

And even if my impression about all this is only partly correct, the understanding that something fundamental is being resolved by the forum's termination helps allay the disappointment and helps me – as a mere forum member – share in some of the relief you and the team are awaiting after having made the call to terminate it. Roles aside, all here are people who presumably care about each other's well-being and freedom from prolonged interpersonal tension more than about having any particular cool forum.

And Ray, I've appreciated your conversational attributes so much, including your solicitation about other online spaces, that I had it in mind to ask "I mean, have you ever considered starting one?" I was too reserved to ask that, but of course, your own initiative triumphed over such reservations and I'm so delighted to see you went ahead and started one. A "raft" is an excellent metaphor to express the spirit in which you made it.

[madness]

And, Madness, it sounds like you're now suggesting that not even the enthusiasm for the Web that brought us together here, and which you certainly do share, was not necessarily essential to your own highest priorities as a moderator here.

It's hard to put this in simpler words than "combining the general with the particular" or "making the universal specific" as these are very abstract concepts. I have abstract priorities that take concrete form depending on the specific particularities of the situation in which they materialize.

Ah okay, but why am I talking like a nerd? To make the next point.

Nowhere did I recall anything about subcultures versus counter-cultures or anything that felt like a conceptual retaking or replacement of any dominant culture.

...

I'm left with the impression that you... had a social goal in mind that was never centrally stated, and which you perhaps thought unproductive to state, yet your satisfaction in your position hinged on its realization.

...

I can tell you I think it would not have been harmful, would not have amounted to "forcing" anything, and would have been helpful, to state your goals early and clearly.

There is a problem of incommensurability, or, the inability to understand each other because our perspectives and concepts and worldviews may be too different. We first have to find a common language in order to understand each other, otherwise I get responses like "what the hell are you even going on about?" Or, more often, we think we understand each other but then later - when it comes time to make decisions for example - we realize that we misunderstood each other.

If I want to communicate something to you, I have to find the correct way to do so in the language that you will understand. This can already be very difficult in 1-on-1 conversations, it gets much harder when you're trying to reach an entire community of people. I could state my goals early and clearly and nobody would understand them, but they might nod their head in agreement anyway. After all, it makes perfect sense and is so simple to me, there's no way it could be misunderstood by others, right?

The correct message also has to be discovered through trial-and-error, which means that there is no shortcut to being misunderstood and attempting to change the message to be slightly better understood. The effectiveness of the message can only be judged on the results that reading the message produces.

So if we were able to add something about sub-culture and counter-culture, we would necessarily have to explain it in a way that everyone could understand, adding more points of failure to the message. Even worse is that everyone's attention spans are limited and reading can be very difficult for a lot of people, so making the message too long also reduces its effectiveness. Some of the forum readers can't even keep up with these effortposts and are getting tired from reading them, likely skipping them altogether. It's a lot of mental work.

Roles aside, all here are people who presumably care about each other's well-being and freedom from prolonged interpersonal tension more than about having any particular cool forum.

I am so glad you understand. I try to care about everyone even if I don't get the same level of care back. Hopefully this all serves as a prime example of how moderation work was getting in the way of organizational work: now that we have freed ourselves of the responsibility of maintaining these social spaces, I can commit to resolving interpersonal tension, fixing mistakes, striving for a greater common understanding, and actually working towards those goals that I (and hopefully others) believe in.

[ch1rx30]

I am what is known in Latin America as a digital guerrilla. I show up in promising social spaces and attempt to perform a social transformation. Once I have done all I can, I move on and do it again, sometimes online, sometimes offline. I have been popping in and out of existence like this for six (6) years. I do this alone, but I am also not the only one doing this - I learned it partly by studying the methods of others.

Whatttt I've never heard of this before. Idk if I could ever do this well but how do I learn more.

[Harmonie]

Danggg... Just joined this forum. I'm so sad it didn't work out. Forums are so great. =(

[madness]

Whatttt I've never heard of this before. Idk if I could ever do this well but how do I learn more.

uhhh I learned it from venezuelans on twitter a couple of years ago. where do you learn about it now? no idea. it might be documented somewhere on a venezuelan website, if it isn't still happening on twitter. but the concept is pretty simple, it's like guerrilla warfare but instead of fighting with physical weapons it's fighting with information and knowledge

[OiStepanka]

Whatttt I've never heard of this before. Idk if I could ever do this well but how do I learn more.

uhhh I learned it from venezuelans on twitter a couple of years ago. where do you learn about it now? no idea. it might be documented somewhere on a venezuelan website, if it isn't still happening on twitter. but the concept is pretty simple, it's like guerrilla warfare but instead of fighting with physical weapons it's fighting with information and knowledge

That's fascinating.

[purelyconstructive]

I can identify with this to some extent. I have been a part of several research groups, both online and off, that I put a lot of time and effort into that eventually dissolved. They seemed to have the opposite problem though in that, rather than overwhelming growth, people stopped participating until it was eventually just me and a couple of others left.

It made me reticent to invest as much energy into groups that I joined later, which unfortunately, included the Yesterweb. It can be discouraging when it seems like no one cares about the things that you are most passionate about, especially when your sincere intention is to benefit everyone through it and you work hard to make it a welcoming space for teamwork. But those experiences also taught me that, by attempting to keep my expectations humble, my heart filled with gratitude, and my actions kind, I can take peace in knowing that the things I do will eventually reach those who need it. I don't want popularity, I need genuine connection.

I was active in the Yesterweb Discord server from around its beginning to March 2022, about half of its lifespan. I left just prior to Discord updating its Terms of Service, which was a significant factor in me choosing to close my account. However, throughout the time that I was there, I had many wonderful dialogues and made some good friends. I wish I had enough foresight at the time to stay in contact with those that I didn't interact with outside of the platform before I deleted it.

To be completely forthright, I am also a little disappointed that I did not engage with the community more now that I know the Yesterweb project was aimed at a fundamental constructive change within society as a whole. This is what I had always hoped it would become and something that I am working toward myself. I joined simply out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised by many of the topics and opinions shared, especially during the brainstorming sessions.

The communities that I have been a part of always focused on somewhat niche subjects, whereas the name "Yesterweb" implies something more general. Excluding any sort of opportunism, there are probably a wide variety of potentially overlapping reasons why someone might have joined. To give a few examples (in no particular order):

• they have nostalgia about their own experiences of a less developed Internet and desire to recapture parts of it in some way
• they are tired of the manipulation prevalent on many "social media" platforms and want to inspire positive change
• they enjoy "retro" media (music, movies, games, etc.) and want to make friends to share it with
• they are interested in historical preservation, which includes information about the development of the Internet
• they see web design as an art and choose to express themselves by making a personal website
• they follow a DIY ethos when it comes to technology and are educating others on how to be more self-sufficient
  ...etc.

This diversity, a seemingly random flurry of activity, is actually a strong point of the Yesterweb. It creates a cross-pollination of ideas that can lead to conversations and collaborations that might not otherwise happen. To have condensed that input into something like the Manifesto and Etiquette is far from a "failure", it is an incredible success. I truly mean it...There is so much more that I would like to say, but I will leave it at that for now...

My sincerest thanks to all who made it possible. And please, stay in touch.

[madness]

I was active in the Yesterweb Discord server from around its beginning to March 2022, about half of its lifespan.

Hi. I saw you had an account here and I was wondering if you would show up to the party. After all of our messages back and forth it should be no surprise to you that if I was going to be working on anything in this life, it would have to be radically constructive.

You may have witnessed a glimpse of the possibility of real change within that server. We worked hard to create those conditions, similar to what has manifested in this forum topic, even if it only existed for brief moments in time. It's difficult, it requires sustained intervention into the social space with the culture you wish to create, all while resisting the opposing culture that attempts to creep its way back in. The amount of self-discipline and cooperation required is substantial, but it is not impossible as we were blessed enough to experience.

Maybe we didn't see it the same way, but once I saw it, I was confident that we had created something new, a new web, even for a couple of seconds. And it was so fulfilling and satisfying that suddenly all of that nostalgia and old web stuff felt lifeless and depressing in comparison. When we got a taste of the new world it's all we could ever justify working toward.

Sadly it was probably too ambitious for the handful of us who wanted it, but I hope in the future there will be enough people to bring it into a stable form. I'd like to believe that you will be a part of it.

So yeah, it's a lot of stress, pain, effort, energy, suffering. But the human spirit is indomitable. We didn't have a choice when we were born into the era of warriors, it's probably best to become one.

[OiStepanka]

I was active in the Yesterweb Discord server from around its beginning to March 2022, about half of its lifespan.

Hi. I saw you had an account here and I was wondering if you would show up to the party. After all of our messages back and forth it should be no surprise to you that if I was going to be working on anything in this life, it would have to be radically constructive.

You may have witnessed a glimpse of the possibility of real change within that server. We worked hard to create those conditions, similar to what has manifested in this forum topic, even if it only existed for brief moments in time. It's difficult, it requires sustained intervention into the social space with the culture you wish to create, all while resisting the opposing culture that attempts to creep its way back in. The amount of self-discipline and cooperation required is substantial, but it is not impossible as we were blessed enough to experience.

Maybe we didn't see it the same way, but once I saw it, I was confident that we had created something new, a new web, even for a couple of seconds. And it was so fulfilling and satisfying that suddenly all of that nostalgia and old web stuff felt lifeless and depressing in comparison. When we got a taste of the new world it's all we could ever justify working toward.

Sadly it was probably too ambitious for the handful of us who wanted it, but I hope in the future there will be enough people to bring it into a stable form. I'd like to believe that you will be a part of it.

So yeah, it's a lot of stress, pain, effort, energy, suffering. But the human spirit is indomitable. We didn't have a choice when we were born into the era of warriors, it's probably best to become one.

You know what you described to me. Sounds similar.. to what we (my former online community) were close to having on this site called Xat.com wayyyy back when. Which is what Discord is based on. Any Xat original knows Discord wouldn't exist if it wasn't for xat.) But, back to my main piece.

On xat, back when I was a teenager. We had a group chat among folks ranging from ages 12-25 and we.. damn near had a paradise online. An escape from the world that adults had .. honestly run into the ground and the internet was growing up around us subsequently. It was a new world. We interacted well with each other. We were very formal in our greetings and exchanges. We were very interested in what everyone was doing in that chat at that moment. I had a glimpse of what it could become..

An off-line world. Where.. there might be cafes run like it. Villages. A world that we actually were actively involved in creating.. which is similar to what has happened here in people being excited to create their own personal websites.

We were on this site at a time where you had to go to another page to get the codes for the emoji's. Where.. we created our sense of the world in this space.. through role play. Specifically rp fighting and it was damn near spiritual. The key is .. we created our world through the use of text.. these stories we'd weave together.. We had a culture. We had a community. We had something so special. We called it the Golden Era of Xat and theres only a few of us left to tell the tale. Plus, xat made the instant pen pal dream become a reality.. conversing in real time. There were other chats too.. but xat was unrivaled in 07.

It was very much, if I'm going to be honest like that first line in the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God."

The word.. was with us, the use of words.

And everything only tanked because xat introduced.. Powers: The monetized subscription service that ACTUALLY made hierarchies based on who had what from there on out..

Before, yes we had hierarchies but they were earned by CONTRIBUTION. Not who has how many paid for items..

I literally got to witness an entire cultural shift. It was this monetization issue and for those of us who were younger around the age of 16 .. it's like the hormones kicked in and we literally went to war with each other. Up until that point, it was peaceful. We were kind of territorial like we stuck together in certain chats but .. the dream was there. There were rival clans and what not but like.. our way of handling things.. we respected the culture we had created.

A new culture can be created. When someone believes it is possible. With all their might. I actually got to see it once, and twice now including here..

Just to bring that memory back. I'm at a loss for words.

[ch1rx30]

I feel like the rave scene is more than a subculture.. like an irl counter-culture as defined ITT and could bring about world peace if it wasn't so addicted to social media.

If this is true then you should be able to organize it. Who wouldn't a world based on peace, love, unity, and respect?

Trying right now. Are the community guidelines and rules from the discord archived somewhere?

Also looking for a reader-friendly breakdown of subculture vs counter-culture to share.