h0bbel.p0ggel.org

Seems like I'm not the only one leaving 9rules after the recent membership agreement changes. The fallout so far seems to be:

• brokenkode.com
• h3h.net
• seopher.com
• danlockton.co.uk
• www.standardsforlife.com
• baires.elsur.org
• www.i-marco.nl

I guess that out of that list, Brokenkode is the most notable as it has been a member since July 14, 2005.

I also find it very ironic that the traffic I see from 9rules now, by far outdo the amount of traffic I normally saw when I was still a member.

Now, I think I need to clarify a couple of things;

I wish 9rules the best and hope they succeed in what they are trying to accomplish. If my previous posts can be conceived differently, that was never my intention. All I wanted to explain was that adding active participation on the 9rules site was never my goal or purpose when I joined and that when 9rules now revise their membership agreement to include such criteria it pretty much rules me out.

No hard feelings at all, I just did what I think is right for me and that was to immediately let 9rules know that it no longer is a good fit for me. That I decide to leave is not a big loss for 9rules, and I doubt that it's a big loss for this site to no longer be affiliated with it either. To be honest, 9rules probably needs a bit of a cleanup of the membership sites anyway, and having people decide to leave on their own is a most likely the best way to do some housekeeping without creating a lot of noise.

I am surprised that Tyme and Scrivs took the time to comment on my Leaving 9rules post though, as I have yet to see them comment on any of the other posts linked above. Maybe I'm just too quick and they haven't had time to comment on them yet, but it does make me wonder what was so special with the post I made. I guess I'll never know.

Update 1: Two new sites added to the list

Update 2: Did Paul Stamatiou leave too? I don't see the leaf on paulstamatiou.com anymore

Update 3: Stopping updates. This 9rules note probably gets updated with more details

Late last night I got an email from Tyme over at 9rules, informing me of the revised membership agreement that I have to accept in order to stay as a member of 9rules. Sadly the new agreement has some requirements that pretty much eliminates me as a member.

The new rules try to force all members to participate and communicate with each other in the new members area.

Let me be clear – participation in either the new member area or my.9rules is required for all members, requested by members.

To be honest, I don't need yet another timesink and I really don't like to be coerced into participating in a community that I have yet to see any benefit of. In fact, the only interaction I've ever had with any of the 9rules members, inside the 9rules network, was my introductory post when this site was accepted as a member other than that I have yet to see any value in the 9rules membership at all.

So, I guess members like me are the ones that other members has been complaining about in the members section:

Members spoke out about their displeasure concerning members that they never interact with and never hear from, yet all member entries carry the same weight on 9rules, which is not fair.

And here I was, thinking that delivering "quality" content was the requirement. How silly of me, I was clearly mistaken.

Nearly a week ago I posted a little list of plugin ideas for Habari and I'm very happy that it's possible to disregard one of them already.

Robin Adrianse has announced the availability of his first version of Headcode, a plugin that allows you to insert data into the head- or footer-section of your theme. This allows for easy implementation of things like Google Analytics or ReInvigorate.

This plugins development cycle also works as a perfect example on how the Habari community works. Someone has an idea, another someone decides to implement it and to top it off the "official" Habari developers facilitates the development by adding core functionality that the new plugin requires. All of this, in about 5 days. Excellent!