We are never ever, ever getting back together in The sky is falling!
Revised: 03/08/2018 8:50 a.m.
- March 7, 2018, 11 p.m.
- |
- Public
Or: Open Note to Bruce (or whomever)
To: Kate
Hello!
I hope this email finds you well.
You may have already heard the news - but if you haven’t, Open Diary has been re-launched! We have had over 5,000 ex-members re-join us in the last few weeks - if you’re not one of them, we’d love to have you back!
Your diary is still in the system, but cannot be accessed or seen by anybody unless you reclaim it. If you would like to re-join the OD community, it’s easy! Just go to the front page of the site, and click the Reclaim Diary button - then follow the directions to reclaim by email using the email address where you received this message.
Open Diary will be a subscription service going forward, but you will have access to your previous diary regardless of whether you choose to subscribe. Lifetime memberships from the old site will be honored on re-activated diaries.
If you have any questions, please click the Contact Support link in the Questions section of the front page.
Thanks!
Reply to Whomever
Is this Bruce?
If so, why would anyone trust you again? If not (your note is not signed) then the content you have was sold or transferred illegally.
I will assume this is Bruce.
I am sorry things didn’t work out for you. I do hope you have someone else running the day-to-day as customer service and honest communication are vital to nurturing customer loyalty. It became far more than a programming experiment–it was a business. You didn’t treat it as such.
I tried to help you. I offered my services as a business consultant more than once and free of charge as I believed in OD and wanted it to thrive. You never accepted.
I wish you the best, but I have moved on. There is no way I would trust you with my business or my content. I did try to reclaim my diary. Thankfully, it appears it did actually delete when I deleted it before the fall.
One thing you did right, and I commend and thank you for it: you provided a download option in XML. This saved me, and many others, countless hours reconstructing our content.
On the other hand, you never told your users you planned to keep their content in any form, much less for an eventual recovery. This is further evidence to me communication is not high on your list of priorities.
Medium, ProseBox and other far-more-professionally managed sites have stepped in to fill the gap you left. Transparency and available management are two of the things they are doing right.
This note is harsh, yet I am sure no harsher than some you received after the lights went out at OD. Nevertheless, I really do wish you the best and bear no grudge. Only a healthy skepticism and a self-protective stance.
Kate
To be clear, I will NEVER go back to OD. So if you are looking for a Kate-free safe space. Buh-bye.
Last updated March 30, 2018
hippiechica15 ⋅ March 08, 2018
"On the other hand, you never told your users you planned to keep their content in any form, much less for an eventual recovery. This is further evidence to me communication is not high on your list of priorities." YES YES YES
Fred hippiechica15 ⋅ March 08, 2018
My recollection was the opposite. I deleted mine because he couldn't say for sure what he was going to do with it, and hadn't ruled out selling it.
hippiechica15 Fred ⋅ March 09, 2018
I honestly cannot remember specifics but the reaction from many people here surprised that their OD was still stored somewhere tells me it wasn't very well communicated. And holding onto servers with info for years with no plan isn't great, either. I don't think I had time to delete mine before the server went down "forever," did download it though. And even more suspect are the number of people who knew they had deleted their diary ONLY to have it pop back up with this resurrection. That's not a way to foster trust.
Fred hippiechica15 ⋅ March 09, 2018
I thought the same thing had happened to me, but when I went through the process of "restoring" it, it turned out that it was the very last entry only, which presumably I had failed to delete. I expect that others will find the same thing.
crystal butterfly ⋅ March 08, 2018
Well said. Saw you on the opening page. I don't trust him. I figure for some reason he needs to be working on some programing skills again and what better place to experiment and make money is to use OD as a Guiana pig again. Sure that is not how you spell it but figure you know what I mean. When the new wears off, the new challenge is completed, etc. he will let it go again.
At Last ⋅ March 08, 2018
Exactly. Perfect and why I have zero interest in reclaiming my diary.
nightborn ⋅ March 08, 2018
Yep. Whatever Bruce is attempting to resurrect is long gone. I wish him luck but to many of us, thanks to him, the OD of yore is dead. Long live OD.
Jeanine ⋅ March 08, 2018
Two thumbs, way up! (Bruce's ass.)
Azzura ⋅ March 08, 2018
Yea I was considering going back.but it was too.much of a hassle. You raise a good point. Why was he keeping peoples diaries? I feel pretty betrayed by that and distrustful. Shouldve just let OD die.
drawnwell ⋅ March 09, 2018
sigh. I haven't gone back and looked. Might at some point, but I barely write even here anymore. I was extremely early with OD, and recovering 3000 pages has some interest, but also I just don't want to see some of that writing ever again either. Not good years some of it.
moneypenny ⋅ March 11, 2018
Even setting aside the 100,000 valid issues with trust and customer service, the new site is a janky mess that's impossible to navigate. Literally the only thing he did right the first time was the interface.