What happened to Array?

May 8, 2000 12:01 PM

What happened to Array? Poof! Another editthispage site is gone. Does this have anything to with the whole winerlog debacle?
posted by grant (29 comments total)

Crud. I wasn't registered with the site. Could someone who is post the bulletin here when it is released? Tks kindly,

Ed
posted by Calebos at 12:28 PM on May 8, 2000

Array was the site of the guy who created the Pike and Manila Express graphics that WinerLog "defaced". I think he said something to the effect of, "WinerLog goes, or I go."
posted by harmful at 12:29 PM on May 8, 2000

Oh, then that would make *him* the guy subject to litigation by the heirs of the Eisenhower estate?

:-)
posted by baylink at 12:41 PM on May 8, 2000

>> I think he said something to the effect of, "WinerLog goes, or I go."<<

That's unfortunate. I hope that Dave updates the terms of the editthispage service so that there will be less confusion when situations like this arise in the future.

I'm looking forward to seeing Array find a new home.
posted by Calebos at 1:02 PM on May 8, 2000

Someone must have a bad net connection. Array is there, as far as I know it's always been there. Have a nice day.
posted by davewiner at 1:19 PM on May 8, 2000

Here's what I get:

you have found array.

but array.editthispage.com no longer exists. if you are a member of this site, a bulletin will be forthcoming.
posted by luke at 1:31 PM on May 8, 2000

Here's what I'm getting.
posted by mathowie at 1:42 PM on May 8, 2000

Note that I do not believe that Winer shut down Array. The message left behind implies that the creator deliberately shut the site down for reasons of his own; I do hope he (or some member of his site who receives his bulletin) will post the explanation in public.
posted by harmful at 1:48 PM on May 8, 2000

Of course I didn't shut down Array. I love Garret. He's a kind warm generous human being. He's my friend!

And I realized that I get through to his site because he made me a Managing Editor of his site so I could fix bugs. He was one of the earliest contributors to Manila. I'd trade 10,000,000 Garrets for one LCD missionary.
posted by davewiner at 2:10 PM on May 8, 2000

Ummmm... I think that you mean that you'd trade 10,000,000 LCD missionaries for 1 Garret. (And what is an LCD missionary?)
posted by delfuego at 2:16 PM on May 8, 2000

That's Winerese for "Lowest Common Denominator", which appears to be his catch-all term for people he doesn't like.
posted by harmful at 2:25 PM on May 8, 2000

i can get to the stie just fine. if anyone cares.
posted by sikk at 2:39 PM on May 8, 2000

At the moment, Array is back up, but showing February-dated content. (I don't know how often he updates). Garret (so that's his name) may or may not be removing his site, changing it, or who knows what else. This is the net, so things are subject to change; watch timestamps for clues. I do hope that he can settle his dispute with Winerlog, without taking his bat and glove and going home.
posted by harmful at 2:46 PM on May 8, 2000

LCD is a mathematical term, you're right it stands for lowest common denominator. We get our share of visits from them. Some people like Garret take them seriously. He freaked out and shut his site down, which he has the power to do. Once shut down, our policy is to redirect, so links don't break. One other site did the same. Since neither editor left us redirection instructions we read the sites and saw obvious links to other sites they run, so we just redirected to those. We've made the same offer to every ETP site. Clearly posted on Scripting News now.

posted by davewiner at 2:52 PM on May 8, 2000

I believe that "freaked out" is approximately correct. Garret was not the target of the parody graphics, and I thought Winerlog removed them anyway.

I don't get it, either. If another WWA user wants to dis or parody me, what do I care that he's on WWA or not? He could be anywhere on the internet, and my leaving WWA isn't going to change that. What should I do, start my own internet?
posted by dhartung at 3:00 PM on May 8, 2000

>Of course I didn't shut down Array. I love Garret. He's a
kind warm generous human being. He's my friend!
And I realized that I get through to his site because he
made me a Managing Editor of his site so I could fix
bugs. He was one of the earliest contributors to Manila.
I'd trade 10,000,000 Garrets for one LCD missionary.

Ok, now I'm *sure* that's not really Dave.

Matt? Could you attempt to confirm, out-of-band? And, if not, remove and block this poster?
posted by baylink at 3:16 PM on May 8, 2000

It's Dave. I confirmed the IP addresses in the logs a while ago.
posted by mathowie at 3:21 PM on May 8, 2000

Array is only sort of back up. The editthispage site is redirecting to the Array Design Studio corporate site. The blog is still missing in action.
posted by grant at 3:37 PM on May 8, 2000

Crap. I punched in the wrong url to Array Design in my previous comment. It's probably a moot point, but the link should have been this. Sorry about that.
posted by grant at 3:39 PM on May 8, 2000

Of course I typed the 10,000,000 thing in backwards.
posted by davewiner at 4:18 PM on May 8, 2000

Yes, it's really me.
posted by davewiner at 4:18 PM on May 8, 2000

I think Garret had some screed up on his site (pre-shutdown) about how he was doing all this wonderful volunteer work for various organizations, and didn't want people to think he was creating those hateful graphics. I wish he'd left a bit more of an explanation in place.
posted by harmful at 5:26 PM on May 8, 2000

Just curious, did you read Garret's site before he took it down?
posted by davewiner at 5:40 PM on May 8, 2000

Be damned.

Otay. Thanks, Matt.

No more offense than necessary, Dave.
posted by baylink at 7:39 PM on May 8, 2000

Sorry, Dave, if you took my earlier post to mean that you had shut down Array. No, I was reffering to the offending graphics issue, and the request to take them down.

I agree completely with your actions here. I was just suggesting that you might want to update the "terms" page of editthispage to state that as creator of the community of sites, you reserve the right to remove any content that you find offensive. Right now, the page says that there is no editorial policy, which is not entirely true. You, rightly so, will not support hateful or illegal content on editthispage sites. True, you shouldn't have to state this explicitly, but doing so might have nipped this issue in the bud.

My thinking is that had the terms page stated this clearly, the offending graphics could have been pulled, no questions asked, and Array might still be up. Or maybe not.
posted by Calebos at 7:49 PM on May 8, 2000

If davewiner's question was directed towards me, I believe I did; I can't even guarantee for sure that I'm not confusing it with another site. Since the Array site is no longer available, I must rely on my imperfect memory and personal interpretation. I wish I did know Garret's exact words, but I am not attempting to be deliberately misleading.
posted by harmful at 9:09 PM on May 8, 2000

OK, cool, what we're looking for is help at coming up with a statement that gives people adequate notice and also makes it clear that they own the content we're hosting and that we will never interfere with that.

Also, the headline for this thread says "another" ETP site goes poof, well Array is the only site that's down now, and truth be told, I hope we can bring it back after the LCD folks give up on us and move on to another venue.

Also, something very important -- I strongly believe that if you host someone else's content you must make it available to them to back up and to move elsewhere if they choose to. Manila has this feature, in all the sites, including those hosted by our customers. In Phoenix in Marchm at the Web Apps session, I asked all the people in this field to do the same. So far I think UserLand is the only one that actually provides this protection against Murphy and abuse by the host. It came up in the recent flamewar, and I'm very glad we had the feature to show to people. It helped us save one of the sites. I urge Blogger to work with us here. Let's make it easy for our users to move back and forth between various web app CMSes.

Pointers:

http://weblogs.userland.com/manilaNewbies/stories/storyReader$1019

http://pikebeta.userland.com/stories/storyReader$707


posted by davewiner at 7:51 AM on May 9, 2000

I like the idea, Dave. Not quite sure what it would mean for us to work with you on this, though. Since all our users have all their data on their own servers already, the same issues don't necessarily apply.

One thing people could do right now with Blogger -- though I'm sure it doesn't occur to many -- if they wanted to get their data out in a more machine-friendly format, would be to change their template to XML, publish once, and they'd have all their content in a format they could import into a database, Manila, whatever.

To make this easier, we plan to make it an option to publish in XML (possibly, various formats) at the same time you publish in HTML (i.e., without changing your template or needing to figure out the XML format yourself).

Any other ideas?


posted by evhead at 10:26 AM on May 9, 2000

Dave, you seem to have the idea (in this thread and others) that Blogger is a hosting service. It isn't -- it's a service that allows you to easily edit and post content, but to your own servers.

So backing it up and restoring it isn't anywhere near the same as it is with Manila.
posted by delfuego at 1:03 PM on May 9, 2000