On June 3, 2004, the Spymac world changed.
It was a new era for Spymac users. For months a Spymac moderator named Zmai had been publicly championing Spymac’s committment to community while privately waging a battle with the Spymac administration. Zmai believed that outrageous services like “1GB email” were destroying the community values that had made Spymac the busiest, best Macintosh-related website available.
The administration disagreed, and Zmai staged a revolt by creating a new community website to fill the void left by the rapidy corporatizing Spymac.
On June 3, 2004, Mellaflusia was born.
Much has changed since then. Mellaflusia was conceived as a place for creative intercourse, but drama on the sideboards eventually took its toll on the population, and by this year only a fraction of the original membership were still regularly posting.
It was brought to my attention recently that Mellaflusia might benefit from a change of management. Like all revolutions, the momentum can only be maintained so long as the protagonists maintain their fire and fervour, otherwise they may become part of the problem. So I will distance myself, to give it a chance at growth.
On September 14, 2007, I have set the ‘flue free.
I have stepped down as an administrator of the site. Caerulea, long term co-administrator will now be responsible for all day-to-day operations of the site, as well as any future planning and feature implementation.
I will retain the name of the site, as well as the “frog” branding. I am a graphic designer by trade, and I created the name and branding. It is only fair I am able to keep this. Caerulea has registered a new name, theflue.org, to which I will redirect traffic to this site for a while.
The wheels of progress turn slowly, but they do turn. Two and a half years after leading the revolt from Spymac, I find myself stepping aside to let other minds run the new republic.
Nurture it, because it will live or die at your whim. While I may not participate much any more, I will be watching from the sidelines – watching to see how the burgeoning republic is getting on in its brave new world.
It’s hard to give go of something that we once “baby’ed” for…. especially when we see the growth it’s made, etc since we first put our energies towards it.