Hello everybody, I'm Jay Bonci, the new owner of Everything2. A lot of you remember me from years ago, but I've returned after a good deal of maturing and professional development, and I'm here to guide this place to its bright future. There's a long story of how I came to own it, and what the plan, but I will lay that out in great detail over the next month. For now, however, I wanted to get off on the right foot and let people know what this means in the short term.

My main focus in the upcoming month is going to be on stability of the code, improvement of the development experience, and general work on the infrastructure of the site. It's going to seem quiet for a while, as there is a lot of ground to cover. Our code is now hosted at github, where I will be working in an open manner to bring this site up to a modern codebase as quickly as possible. After the infrastructure is set, it will be time for the rapid functional and collaborative changes to evolve this place.

Writers and people are the lifeblood of this place, and what has kept it alive over the last 13 years. There's no place like it on the web, and we will continue this grand experiment. There's a few quick takeaways from this transition that I want to let everybody know about. The site's not going anywhere. All the current staff still retains their current positions, and I have no plans for any staffing changes. Making sure that writers retain rights to their work and are rewarded for what they do is my primary goal. The quick view on what the changes are is that I want to enable people to better collaborate, give better feedback, have their work be more findable (internally and externally), and be rewarded for the different ways people contribute to the site.

Lastly, I want to personally thank alex for helping to pull this transition together, the various members of the coding staff who has helped to maintain this site after I walked away from it years ago, and to nate for helping me to find a career on the web, both directly and indirectly. He trusted his baby many years ago to a complete stranger, and it was that act of trust that helped me grow.

At any rate, that's the scoop. My email is on my homenode, and if you have questions, feel free to email me. It's an exciting time for all of us.
-Jay

It's been wonderful for all these years, but as of January 23, 2012 the Blockstackers have transferred ownership of Everything2 to Everything2 Media LLC. Jay Bonci, a once-and-now familiar face, will be taking over the helm of E2. It's been a good ride for 13.5 years, and I'm very happy to leave my baby cum live-at-home-adult-child in very capable hands.

If you have any questions about what this means for E2 moving forward, I suggest you /msg the new management.

ScienceQuest 2012 runs until the end of this weekend - up to the point where the server no longer thinks it is the 12th of February. The initial announcement was slightly ambiguous about which midnight marked the end of it, so we have decided to err on the side of giving everyone extra time. You are invited to write anything to do with science - whether new innovations and discoveries, episodes from the history of science or general explanations of known scientific facts. Oolong is also looking for science-related readings for the next E2 Podcast.

Dear Everything2,

It's been 10 years since we turned off the lights at the Everything Development Company, and E2 became a community run and maintained, living off the generosity of various benefactors, from my former employer to Michigan and Michigan State Universities.

While I spent most of the intervening decade at SourceForge, this spring I started my own company, Ingenuitas. It, like E2 before it, is currently drawing a load of 40 on my single core brain.

As most of you know, my involvement with the site has been minimal for some time, and my interest has been primarily to keep the site alive, and facilitate any research projects it was used for. Last week we had our end-of-year Blockstackers meeting, and we voted to try and Sell Everything2. Rob "Cmdrtaco" Malda has graciously offered to handle the sale and transfer, and any serious inquiries should go to him.

Blockstackers' main interest in this is to keep the site running as long as possible, and without our intervention. I've done my turn, and am now at the point where my energies need to be put into making computers see the world.

--nate

PS. Someone sent me a snapshot of everything1 via the wayback machine. Nice.

The fourth annual Iron Noder Challenge begins on November 1, 2011, so now is the perfect time to sign up if you're planning to contribute. The goal is for every participant to publish as many write-ups as there are days in November. There's glory to be had in accomplishing the ideal, but there's also no shame in falling short!

For the faint of heart, we're also looking for people to join our panel of Iron Voters. These users pledge to read and vote on everything submitted for the quest. 

Read more about the Iron Noder Challenge and sign up here.

Want to get something awesome in the mail? Want to surprise other noders with your generosity? Love wrapping presents in the most interesting paper you can find? Then E2 Secret Santa 2011 is for you!

gwenllian is continuing the tradition of a secret gift exchange, but the deadline to sign up is only days away, on October 31st! Hurry on over and sign up now!

Have somebody specific in mind you want to send a gift, but want to make it a surprise? Well, then, she has something for you, too! E2 Secret Grinch 2011 is a new tradition she's starting as well! Sign up soon—Christmahanakwanza will be here before you know it.

The Northern Hemisphere is cooling down and the quests are heating up! First up, we've got A Season of Cider and Cinders: FallQuest 2011 running until October 15th, for all your leaf-turning, wood-burning apple cider needs. Beginning today and lasting to All Saint's Day, we've got our traditional Horrorquest, run by the indefatigable Jet-Poop! The Nodegel from Yuggoth: The 2011 Halloween Horrorquest is on!

For an extra bonus, until October 15th, you'll get extra-special prizes for submitting nodes that fulfill both quest criteria!

E2 has experienced unplanned downtime this month twice. First, it was down on Thursday September 8th for several hours. Today, Tuesday September 13th, it was down for a similar period of time. In both cases, Joe had to go down and physically turn the boxes back in to restore the site.

In both cases, all of the servers were found to be powered down, including the battery backup unit to which they are attached. They are located in a locked data closet which is shared, so the cause is unclear. It could be someone unfamiliar with our servers is powering them down, not aware they should be left on.

Hopefully no more unexpected downtime will be experienced, but until the root cause is tracked down, we can't be sure. I offer my apologies for the inconvenience. -om

Steampunk? Try steamships! Industry Quest 2011 is a factual celebration of the industrial revolution in Europe and the US! Node your favorite historical figure from the period, or try your hand at a little hard research on a related topic. The field is wide open, so don't be scared off by not being an expert!

Since June 10th, writeups found wanting have no longer been 'nuked.' Instead, they are 'removed', which entails them being turned (back) into drafts. Users can remove their own writeups without editor intervention.

Since June 24th, users have also been able to remove writeups nuked before June 10th 2011 from Node Heaven and turn them back into drafts.