Thoughts on Freedom-Uplink

[rbcp]

I found this blog post in my logs yesterday, which is about one of the IRC servers we use.  I'm reposting it below for some reason.  Why do you people like freedom-uplink anyway?  Personally I'm happy enough with efnet.  I've never understood the point of running your own IRC server when places like efnet and dalnet have been around forever.  If anyone has any suggestions for this guy, you should visit his blog and post them there.



Freedom-Uplink has been around off and on, for quite a number of years, each time sucking up resources and some of my money until I deem it not worthy of my time or effort and discarding it, only to change my mind and bring it back. Despite this, we tend to always have quite a following of users when we come back up. What is it that Freedom-Uplink provides, if anything, and what should I do to prevent a loss of interest on my part?

We’ve had the UplinKIRC Network up again for quite sometime and have a number of users utilizing the network for both Uplink related channels as well as PhoneLosers.Org taking up a home in #Phonelosers. This is promising as it shows that there is some interest in keeping the network alive. It shows that users like some of the public services to allow communication for their own entertainment. No content is generated through such a service however.

I have also put the old Freedom-Uplink Website up again, using the old template (fixed up) as well as the Uplink Forums hopefully to win over some souls to bring in new talent as Uplink tends to lack it. Which highlights one of the biggest problems with the whole idea of the network.

Freedom-Uplink has many users, some very dedicate, but the majority of users tend to have no useful skills or simply no motivation to give back to any community. There are a number of great friends I have that hang out, who have skills but are unable to help due to school or other commitments, and these are not the people I’m referring to. The ones who contribute little to discussions, can’t code, can’t think of ideas, can’t really do anything but take up bandwidth are really like filler, of which we have too much.

I don’t really have a solution as of yet. We’ve already tried having a closed community where you need to be approved for membership, which still sounds like a good idea. It would also allow us to look into other options such as a printed newsletter among other projects that are possible.  The downside is that the group becomes very small.  Perhaps a closed structure of members but still allow some guest users to take advantage of some of the services.  It’s possibly a good topic for the meeting today.

I really enjoy the company of most of the users as they are entertaining, and perhaps that’s enough. But if nothing ever happens, it makes it somewhat boring, and I’ve always been very conscious of what may be wasting my time that could be spent on other endeavors.

Any suggestions are more than welcome and appreciated. I just wanted to get this out there.

[Tachyon]

I dunno, it's where all the cool kids go.

[fubster]

i remember the original freedom-uplink. it never really panned out.