Setting things right

[Bolt Restarter]

Hi all,

Been interesting reading the boards over the last couple of days. I just wanted to thank a couple of the folks that stood up to offer some defense of my role as Restarter. Some history most don't know... I was part of the team that tried to resurrect Bolt after it went into Bankruptcy in 2007. We invested a lot of money and time to rebuild but unfortunately it was a futile cause that near bankrupted me. I said to myself at the time, "I never want to hear the word Bolt again..." Which is actually the reason I ultimately called this Ning network "BoltAgain" - Failing was bad, but killing everyone's access to a community they'd come to love, was worse... And, I had some ideas about how I could offer a partial fix. That said, I needed to get on with my life and Bolt wasn't going to be part of that future. So, I spent enough time here to try and find some folks who could care for it and then I rarely ever came back other than to have my credit card ding'ed every month.

Stan was the first guy to take the helm and then came Jer. I'd like to defend both of them because I can tell you this place, and the amount of work required to run it, was enough to drive anyone mad. Both poured their hearts into their work and dedicated mountains of time. So did dozens of others. It was impressive - it was also the only way this could work. Managing this community the right way would have taken far more money and time than anyone would invest. It was the mod's, and all of their quirks, good and bad, that allowed this place to survive for so long.

So anyway, thank you to those that offered a little defense. Sorry to all the others that would have liked more out of me. And please don't blame the guys that did step up. Bolt 2 and Bolt 3 were beasts to manage. You just don't know how much until you try for yourself. Jer, your long emails and many of your ideas were terrific - you really cared and you did your best on your own. I'm sorry I let you down. I didn't realize what was going on.

I am also sorry that on that note, Boltagain will shut down shortly.

If anyone out there cares to step in the ring and make another try of this thing, I will make the time to hear viable options. There will be no cost to take control. What I'd want to see is a proposal for paying it's ongoing costs and some kind of constitution to govern this site. Moderators should be elected and serve for set periods. Freedoms and controls should be put in place. Failbacks should be designed to prevent mod wars. I must be irrelevant to the operation of this place as I am stepping permanently out now. Lastly, please understand that you are taking on a mountain of work with no legitimate opportunity to make any money from your pursuits. Someone was right to point out that advertising revenue wouldn't even make a dent in paying back your hard costs or time invested. Even at 100X the scale you'd be no where near as the costs of running this thing at 100X the scale would far exceed revenue. You'd do this for the love of the community. Keep in mind... Most likely, your life would change with time and one day you'd find yourself busy with a kid (or grandkid) and all of a sudden all the mess would start to pile up at Boltagain - again... And you would likely find yourself, someday, saying the same goodbye I am saying now.

But what do I know, nothing! So give me a yell if you want to take it on.

Restarter

[Chill Pill]

trolls never did run this place, they were just left alone because this is the internet where people do whatever they want and should be allowed to

jer and other people think meow is a troll but meow's your friend and a member of your site

i used to ban the spammers and scammers, but the meows are actually what make sites like this what they are

it's all part of the community

i banned you once because all you ever did on here was talk about how badly it's run and how much better your site is, and you'd invite all the *~non-trolls~* to your site

sending mass invites to somewhere else is called spamming, if you didn't like it here then i thought you should just leave, and stop trying to take other members with you when you go

you never did go though

congratulations on being worse for bolt than the trolls ever were, trolls are just trying to have fun here, all you ever tried to do was bleed the place dry

[Beaker]

@ Jer, Bolt Restarter, and Chillpill. You cannot let trolls run this place. There MUST be moderators with clear rules and regulations. But I think that's all just a futile effort at this point. Sorta moot.

I wish u all the best.

[Chill Pill]

i don't know why you feel like you let jer down but he's already thinking of restarting this on a smaller scale or something

if you want to work something out with him maybe answer one of his long emails or something

as far as donations go all i can think of is starting a kickstarter or one of those other shilling sites and then trying to advertise it on facebook or something

for me, bolt's like the wild west or something, it always was, and if you try to give it too many guidelines or too much structure, it wouldn't really be bolt anymore

boltagain started pretty well but a lot of different things led to it slowly dying, i could make a whole list but you can't really put all the blame anywhere

i have a weird connection with bolt but honestly 99% of the users already gave up on the place, everyone moved on or something

i'm not glad that bolt's dying but i don't care either, i do care that it already lost 30,000 members though

if bolt has to die, just let it die, stop even thinking about saving the community, everyone moved on, let me move on too

ps: jer cares about bolt like an overly protective boyfriend, you feeling like you let him down seems like an abused girlfriend blaming herself for the way her boyfriend treats her

HE ONLY DOES IT BECAUSE HE CAAARES *flush*