OK, I want to answer
gnarl's questions and comments here, because he summarizes some of the misconceptions and issues that have surrounded this process. I'm just going to answer this from a large-scale view, since I think some of the specific points raised are covered in
Draft Everything2 Terms of Service response. I would reiterate that the terms of service are a working draft.
His summary of the process:
"The only reason for having Terms of Services for this site is because the owners (presumably) would like the new features listed here to be implemented, and turn E2 into a media rich product."
Nope. The Terms of Service are a noder-generated deal. Here's the whole history of it. Some evil noder (no, not you, another evil noder) posted something that belonged to someone else not on the site. That person wrote us a letter asking us to remove it, which Jack took care of right away. However, this good copyright holder had several unkind words to say about how hard it was to find an address on the site where such concerns could be addressed. Consequently, we thought a clear DMCA process was called for.
Other noders were reflecting on conflict they've had amongst the ever-tranquil participants on this site. Being called a "douche" seems like a violation of the "be cool" injunction that has served as our organizing principal to this point, but to whom, and what are the right and responsibilities of the noders? Really, the e2gods and the Content Editors only have tradition on their side, with nothing protecting them, or the people they edit.
There's no way I can be more clear about this: the "owners" of E2 did not initiate this Terms of Service process. We have *no* goals other than making sure you have fun and feel like your shit is covered. The idea of us envisioning this site as a "product" is well outside anything we've considered. Dann has done a good job explaining the roles of BSI and MSU. BSI is the legal owner, with a contract for provision with Michigan State University. I'm not an employee of BSI, nor is Jack or dann. Nate and kurt are principals in BSI, and kurt also has an appointment at MSU. We're all super-cool with adopting whatever terms of service the user community decides on. If we wanted to take E2 and make a "product" out of it, it would be much, much easier to start from scratch and code the whole thing in a different language. I have to confess, thinking of E2 as a saleable product made me squirt a little milk out of my nose.
So I think it's up to the userbase what you want to do. As I said above, "we" are willing to go along with whatever "you" want. We're fine keeping the status quo (with the addition of the DMCA process since we are trying to protect other writers' content) or adopt whatever conditions you want. I wouldn't blame the e2gods and Content Editors, including dann and Jack for resigning if you don't offer them protections that would be in a Terms of Service, but I think that's up for the userbase to decide.
Let me address the site changes really quickly as well. We've thought about the idea of starting "E3" or something similar and forking, but there are several problems with that. It's still possible of course, and if we make a major enough change to the codebase (like port it all to php) we'd likely try it. It's not a huge priority for me to do that however, since I think *this* site can handle some change. It's not a matter of failing. We have a large audience, and people are still writing and reading. I miss people who have left, but turnover is natural. The problem becomes we're not attracting many new members. The numbers show we're not very sticky for new members, and some things may help fix that. What's wrong with trying to attract new voices to the nodegel? Some changes probably won't happen. Video doesn't really seem like it's needed. Some will, and some have been. kthejoker and Oolong have been quietly making many improvements. I asked the content editors for the 5 things we could fix in the next couple of month, and the list was pretty consistent. 1) Stop the freaking 500 errors 2) make direct messaging (i.e. catbox) less of a clusterfuck 3) semantic URL's so we can cross-link E2 more easily with other sites 4) get a solid WYSIWIG editor in place and 5) bring back the nightly email. I'd still like to see pictures on the site, or more capacity for external links, but this is something we can user test and see how it goes. As I've said many times, if a new features sucks balls we can remove it again.
Let me say one more time: everyone is committed to the writers on E2 maintaining sole and un-molested rights to their content. Everyone is committed to the writers on E2 maintaining sole and un-molested rights to their content. I would have hoped that our 10-years of commitment to that principle, even in the face of changes other sites have made in opposition to that trend, would buy us some slack, but hopefully this clears some of it up.
Now, pardon me whilst I go steal lollies from babies, check in on my slave camps of grannies knitting socks, and take my evening bath in the tears of a unicorn.