Wow, what a fucking week, eh? I will do my best to explain what has transpired, but realize I am only human and this is/was an extremely complicated situation. I see many people taking sides where they are uninformed and basing their decision upon an emotional reaction. This is understandable, and it is incredibly unfortunate that 3D decided to leave this community - however allow me to get into some of the details.
Over the past years, 3DSHROOM has been an integral part of the administration. Initially, control of the community was given to Thor and himself to maintain and finance. At this starting point, the site was experiencing difficulty and money had to be outlaid by both of them, including others such as Vampire who covered costs for equipment and the like and also helped to set things up. Within a short while, the Shroomery was back on its feet and taking in profits. Somewhere along the way 3D wanted to put his name on the domain contract to modify some settings, and Thor didn't see a reason why this would be a problem. It wasn't anticipated that 3D would take full control of the contract and remove Thor's name from it - which is precisely what occurred.
Thor eventually stepped down from his position and 3D was now the sole accountant for the site, receiving as of late $1,400-2,100 each month from sponsor revenue. Approximately $400-550 of this was appropriated for the hosting contract and where did the rest go?.. Well I don't know but I can tell you that there's no way 3D spent some one to two thousand dollars each month upgrading the site.
That takes us to present day, where recently the entire staff and administration was on board to experiment with some potential changes in the OTD forum. These experiments were discussed at length amongst the modship and administration before going into affect. After two weeks, the experiment was coming to a close with a user-wide vote and 3D decided to dump the vote, open up the forum, and effectively null the weeks worth of time put in by much of the staff in efforts to come to an agreeable solution which would help this community run more efficiently and appropriately while still allowing for the freedom of uncensored discussion. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. The administration has been overruled by 3D's opinions many times in the past where he has banned users upon personal vendetta and refused to reconsider his actions even after the entire administrative body expressed their dissenting opinions. Each time 3D has been unable to work as an equal partner, we have attempted to step in and try to council him in order to get 3D to understand that he cannot just keep overruling the administration's largely unified objective because he didn't agree with the overwhelming majority. Unfortunately, things kept coming full circle and he had affectively driven off many of the site?s largest contributors.
Thus, over the last two weeks Thor was returned his rightful ownership of the domain name and other administrators created copies of the database to be housed on alternate servers as a bargaining tool to negotiate with 3D. Our intentions were not to remove him from this community, but to give him a chance to work with us as an equal partner and not as an overseeing dictator. After heavy deliberation, we were prepared to offer 3D the following terms:- A tentative position on the administrative panel, to be made permanent in two months contingent with his ability to work on the team without incident.
- All fees covered for the remaining half year on the collocated hosting lease (approximately $3,000).
- Up front cash compensation for his services of $1,200.
- An equal share of compensation after the limited liability entity had established a reserve bank account with at least $5,000 in it to be used towards community promotions and expansion. Gross profits would be distributed on a sliding scale thereafter, continuously helping the reserve fund to grow while also offering fair compensation to heavy contributors.
Our only demand, and that which 3D could not accept, was to transfer the collocation lease into Thor or Ythan's name such that he could not have ultimate control over the servers. As soon as the limited liability entity was established, all contracts would hold the entity's name (no one individual?s), which would guarantee equal rights to the entire board of directors.
3D would have lost nothing by accepting our demands, aside from the excessive profit he had been receiving over the past couple years. The profit that has far exceeded any investments he put into the community, and a profit that he would still be able to claim an appropriate portion of in the future for continuing his part time maintenance of the servers. Unfortunately, he could not bite the bullet and accept these offers and instead has decided to withhold $4,000 worth of equipment purchased with community funds in addition to all the vendor fees that were paid to him for the month of December in advance. The vendors have had their fees waived for this month and any that had paid 3D in advance will receive credit for their January contract even though 3D has squandered those funds, in addition to many thousands of dollars over the years. We had to play hardball with him or he would have continued to keep 95% of the community's income for his own personal benefit and likely would not have considered structuring the management of a community this large in an appropriate manner with the necessary separation of duties to ensure that the community's - and not personal interests - were and are upheld.
I hope this sheds some light on recent events. Know that we did not want things to turn out this way, and I'm personally baffled that 3D would decline such an offer as was presented to him - but it was his choice to make and the Shroomery will now move forward in a direction to grow and strengthen itself with legitimate operation. It's been posted elsewhere, but I want to reassure you all that though the site is slow for the time being, the administration is appropriating much of our own money to get new hardware online ASAP. We are actively searching out components and hope to have the two servers (one for the BB and one for the front end) up and running no later than early January, but hopefully a lot sooner if we can gather parts quickly. Thank you all for bearing with us, and we hope you stick around for what truly will be a brighter future for this community.
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┼ ··∙ long live the shroomery ∙·· ┼
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, I thought that money was behind this somewhere 
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