Trying to reach SpagMag editor(s)

Well, email isn’t working out so I have to go the public route. I’ve been trying to reach the editor(s) of SpagMag but I’m not having any luck. I’m not sure if my email is being marked as spam or something. Anyway, SpagMag is being hosted on my server and I am just trying to make contact so I can get in touch if anything ever comes up. I’m happy to continue hosting it but if I cannot reach the people who are running the site, it’s understandably a large problem for me.

So, SpagMag editor(s), if you read this, please respond to my email. If you haven’t seen it, it may be in your spam folder, but hopefully not.

Sorry for the noise on the forum.

Yes, I received the emails. The site and the Twitter account have both been active, so I’m not sure where any confusion arose. Everything is fine.

Yes, I knew things were active; that wasn’t my concern. I think it’s reasonable to want to have an open line of communication with someone who is actively using my server. I had also mentioned other things in my emails, regarding i.e. software updates and email addresses. A single, simple reply of “Hi, no thanks, we’re all good” would have been considerate and would have prevented me from thinking that my emails weren’t getting through.

I have been hosting spagmag.org for you for free out of my desire to help support the IF scene, but that involves putting a lot of trust in you, someone whom I do not know and apparently someone who is not willing to communicate with me even the slightest bit. At this point, I have lost that trust and I am no longer feeling comfortable with continuing to host the site. I suggest that you find another host. I don’t know if you can get a data dump from within Wordpress to transfer everything to another host, so if you cannot, contact me and I’ll see about dumping the database for you. I also own the spagmag.org domain name. If you want it, we can find a way to transfer this to you. Otherwise, it’s actually about to expire on September 1 anyway and I simply won’t renew it.

I apologize, I’ve just been sick and working on graduate school applications for the past month or two, plus my full-time job, which means I’ve barely been checking my non-personal email addresses. It’s not a matter of not having an open line of communication, it’s a matter of all my free time going toward A) not ending up in the emergency room, as I am in fact still sick, and B) catching up on the work and life responsibilities that being sick tends to, let’s say, disrupt.

As for the domain expiring on September 1, that is a bit of an issue as we are supposed to publish very soon – the original ETA, in fact, was August 31. I apologize if this seemed like an issue of trust, but from my end, one element of trust is not having to scramble at the last minute because a person is pulling the plug on a community resource with little warning. I also do this on a volunteer basis, and I urge you to reconsider. What you are considering is not just unfair to me, but to the many writers and contributors who have devoted their time and resources – again, on a volunteer basis – to the magazine.

Nah, I don’t understand that at all really. You know what content is being served there, so what is there to be paranoid about?

I understand it perfectly. If you host something for nothing, it’s because you know/trust/love the people/content being hosted. If you have queries about that and they are not returned, you start to think maybe you don’t know the people all that well, or trust them, and as much as you love the content it starts to look like you’re just being used without any further considerations; taken for granted. “Oh, we’ll just keep using his site, we don’t even have to worry about returning his e-mails”.

Clearly, from Lucea’s latest post, there are other things to take into consideration now, but he didn’t know that, did he? All he knew was that he was sending inquiries and getting increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of response he was getting. His ultimatum (which may or may not change given the latest information, and really, whether it does or it doesn’t is no one’s business but his own) was perfectly understandable for someone who was starting to feel like the people who were using his service didn’t even bother to reply to him.

People don’t have to scramble around, wondering if someone is going to pull the plug at the last minute, if they keep communications open. The second post in this thread was a great place to have said everything that was said in the fourth, and would have placated the situation. It’s not necessary to wait for the nuclear option to explain why there’s been no communication.

(I’d been trying to avoid saying this, or similar stuff, before, since this seems to be between Lucea and jakobcreutzfeldt, but now that the discussion has been opened, hey)

BTW, it’s the first of september today and the place is still up.

I suppose I should respond to this…I had forgotten that my title was listed as “Managing Editor” on SpagMag. I do try to help out with SPAG occasionally, but emails to SpagMag don’t go to me, and in fact I don’t even have the Wordpress login. (And I almost didn’t see this post because I’m not normally on the forum.)

Thank you for not letting the domain expire, jakobcreutzfeldt! (Unless it actually has expired and it’s just in a zombie state waiting to be disconnected, in which case I still sympathize with your frustration. With my name listed there, I should have been more accessible too.)

I’m afraid that transferring the data from within Wordpress wouldn’t be enough to keep SPAG whole. It looks to me like only the last few issues are in the Wordpress system. The Wordpress version of the site just has a link to the plain HTML files that represent the older issues, which are also hosted on spagmag.org. If anyone has mirrored the old non-Wordpress part of SPAG in the past few years, that wouldn’t have changed in the meantime, so preserving that plus the Wordpress should probably be sufficient to get the whole site. I would just ask you to be careful about any transition because I don’t think anybody has fully taken stock of what’s there since the former editor, Dannii, handed the site over to Lucea. If I can be of any help, you can find me as @careyfew on twitter.

Discussions have moved to email and we’re sorting out a solution. In the meantime, spagmag.org will remain up.

Hurray for talking things through! :smiley:

Thank you! I have to say I love SpagMag. And I know it is hard for people to spend time on it with so many competing priorities. (I hope everyone’s health is improving!) If you need to raise some $$$ for domains or whatever, please let people know here. I would gladly kick-in. (Or if there’s a current donation area that I have missed let me know that.)