Wedge

Hello Kindred!²

Considering the probably nice (and outrageously uncalled for) PM to Snoopy, and the fact that no-one in the team bothered to tell me when my signature link was edited out, I've made a decision.

In a few days I'll be releasing as expected a new version of AeMe with a few fixes that were long overdue, including the infamous youtu.be fix. You know, the fix that wasn't supposed to be linked to?

And the Noisen link will be replaced with a link to Wedge. Oh, the horror!

I'm afraid there is *no rule* about what kind of links that can be put in mods. [1][2]

It's within your rights as site owners to block any link you find objectionable, of course, seeing as we've heard it plainly said that it's not an open community[3]. Just be careful of karma if you do so... I'm sure we all remember what happened in January 2010 where linking to Jeff's blog was a ban-worthy offence, and the site name was the subject of censoring the words - which just meant, ultimately, people were more intrigued to find out what was going on.

The issue that we raised before isn't particularly whether you want to block us, because you have that right regardless, but whether you feel you have to make up new rules to justify it to yourselves. In other words, if you want to, go nuts, but be honest about it.

So, crunch time: if you're going to censor AeMe with this link in, do it, do it now and do it completely. No half measures, no messing about, either censor it completely or don't bother - any half measure is going to just encourage people to get curious about it.

That is...

- Don't forget to delete all of the AeMe related topics. (The most important ones to remove are: 1, 2, and 3, plus the discussions in Chit Chat asking where it went last time.) And no moving to a recycle board or a private area. Just the good old "Remove Topic" button. I want to see all of us who spent many hours to help the community lose those hundreds, thousands of posts in our post count.

- Oh, and while you're at it, if you delete these topics, then I want you to delete all of my posts as well. Not my account or whatever, *just* my forum posts. That's only 6k posts, barely a quarter of a percent of all messages on the board. No one will notice.[4]

- You can delete the ~400 bug reports on the bug tracker, while you're at it. Who cares about bug reports when the developers don't give a damn about fixing them anyway. Don't worry, I've fixed them all in Wedge so it's not like it's important by now.

- Basically, make sure no one ever remembers me or Aeva Media, let alone mention us.[5] You could even add to your Core Values a new paragraph saying that you believe forks of SMF are Evil, and that you vouch never to let anyone mention us.[6] I mean, you could even use the word censor to replace Wedge and AeMe with SMF and SGP, just like the good old Jeff Lewis days, but maybe that's going a bit far. There is a part of me that thinks you should add something along the lines of, "AeMe never existed anyway, it's obviously your imagination. Why would anyone spend two years fulltime working on a free gallery system for the benefit of a software managed by incompetent fools?[7]"

Take these hints lightly, with heart or with contempt, I don't really give a hoot.[8]
I said what I had to say, and I made fun of what I needed to make fun of. The simple fact that I *had* to actually post this, should make you start thinking about your team's behavior.
The SMF community can't be fooled. Try hiding things from their sight, you'll only make them wonder what's going on -- you're doing yourselves a disfavor.[9]

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Arantor adds: I completely support the decision being taken here, after thinking long and hard about it, about what I'd have done in the same position, though I suspect I'd have just removed Aeva long ago were I in that position.

There's a fair bet you'll call us out on being 'unfair', or that we're 'needlessly griping' or similar as has happened to my previous messages, except that to do so would underscore my impression of how both of us were treated at times: that it's fine all the time we're benefitting the project but the minute we stop benefitting it, there's a distinct sense of "sit down and shut up".

If the team feels it's in order to withdraw AeMe because of this being unfair, that's ultimately for the team to resolve, not Nao; I've been saying for a while that Aeva is ultimately going to disappear because it's basically not being developed for SMF and hasn't been actively developed for SMF's benefit in months.[10]

It comes down to this: this is ultimately giving you carte blanche to remove AeMe from sm.org forever, to be pretty much permanently rid of us[11]. When your users ask you where it went, you're the ones who have to look them in the eye and tell them where it went, and why - and why we felt Wedge was even necessary in the first place. Remember that.

I've called for there to be a halt to links from sm.org to here, initially of the team's request. Notice that while I wasn't happy, I was compliant with your request and tried to encourage others to do so, with varying degrees of success. I'd hope that the same courtesy could be supplied on your end.

1.	Arantor confirmed that there have been no rules for the past 2 years on this, and there certainly aren't any in the current rules about it. The only rule that's ever been enforced to his knowledge are the users who linked to a warez site in the mod descriptions and in the mods themselves, and he demanded they remove it - with a week's notice, which led to this rule being added to the rules. Whatever, there aren't any rules about it right now.
2.	No doubt, though, there will be the argument that 'well, it's not allowed on the main site so it shouldn't be in mods either'.
3.	As per http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=404701.msg2836362#msg2836362
4.	AeMe was never considered a 'Contribution', so the wording of the CLA does not apply here: 'For the purposes of this definition, "submitted" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to Simple Machines or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, Simple Machines for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by You as "Not a Contribution."' - the posts in the AeMe topics are not contributions to SM because they are not for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work. My other posts may or may not be contributions, I don't care, what I know is that I can simply delete them myself.
5.	You know, like Amy asked for her name to be modified on the SM database.
6.	And while you're at it, remove most of Arantor's posts from December that mention it.
7.	Of course, I'm talking for you but feel free to replace "incompetent fools" with something more in line with the depths you felt your team sank to.
8.	Arantor did change some words, though, because years of frustration do not adequately convey what needed to be said.
9.	Like last summer, with the number of 'where did Aeva go' threads. Oh, and of course -- the thousands of websites with Aeva or AeMe installed will keep showing a link to the Aeva website, and thus indirectly to the Wedge website.
10.	Note from Nao (hey, I can add footnotes too! :P): again, AeMe is no longer in development, but I'm trying to keep up with security updates. Considering there have been no security breaches in 2011, I didn't have any reason to release new versions. I've had no plans to delete AeMe from SM.org simply because I like the SMF community, at least enough to make sure SMF Gallery <yikes> isn't the only gallery system available to them.
11.	And once 2.0 final is out, that'll be it.