Saturday October 25th 2003
The Mill is Dead! Long Live The Mill! { Zandervix }
Well, it's official. The Mill is gone. It's gone because of the complainers and wankers and abusers. It's gone because the Admins and owners grew tired of spending massive time and money and getting little thanks. I believe it may be gone for good this time. I want to thank those associated with The Mill for their long-standing efforts. You will be missed.With that being said, though, I must say I'm a little dissapointed in something. The end came all too quick and with no warning. All in one day, the news of the shut-down was given, and downloads/uploads were stopped. Sure, this was probably to stop a massive run and skyrocketing bandwidth; but c'mon. The site went down just a few days later, leaving those of us who at least wanted to search the site, and looking at what was there in hopes of getting in touch with the authors directly for their work, without a hope. There is much that I wanted that I didn't have the time to get to (I was out on business this past week when all this was happening). I mean, really, what would have been the harm in leaving the site up (without the FTP, I mean)?
Repeated attempts by many (myself included) to Admin the site and take over (albeit, non-financial) responsibilities were met with rejection. The files that were housed at The Mill will be archived and stored, yet, no one will have access to them. They will not be transferred due to certain agreements originally made between The Mill and all the author's of original works. So, no-one will be able to get copies of the archives; nor will The Mill's administration allow anyone else to host all of the files.
This isn't to say, though, that you could not host your own archive and let others put their own files there. But, for all the old stuff that was there, and for the author's who are long gone, we are out of luck. That stuff is gone and supposedly archived for good. It's a sad, sad shame.
And what about those of us who had files there who don't have a back-up copy? Yes, I know that The Mill is not a back-up service, but, in my own case, a recent computer crash lost me at least one of my maps. And, since I don't fancy myself to be a great mapmaker, and my maps weren't downloaded all that much, I may be hard pressed to find anyone who has the one[s] I'm missing. And that's just my own case. What about those who have authored many a map or tool, and have had no extra space to store them. Are those files locked away from us forever?
The Mill will always be remembered (at least by me) as one of the long-lasting cornerstones of the community. It will be sorely missed. Thanks for the memories.