I think this experiment was bizarre more than anything, I guess they just didn't understand the work they needed to do. I read some of the closing thread, and it seems like the former admins have no interest in ever having a forum again. One admin, madness went as far as to say they are leaving the internet entirely to "build community" offline instead. To me this is extremely strange considering they made the forum and discord because they want a similar experience to the old web. Was that it? are they all giving up completely? that's the vibe I got. No new projects, no promises that they will try something out in the future, just an extremely verbose and pedantic explanation that boils down to like a single point: The forum sucked, and you guys suck, and we don't want anything to do with you anymore. We tried to save you, but you ungrateful animals didn't want saving, so we are destroying everything.
From one of the moderators: "folks dont care about the yesterweb movement, is exactly the reason we're giving up on the forum."
I honestly don't understand what they are talking about. I have the feeling that the "movement" was more important to then then the actual content they were exchanging. The whole forum seemed to just be about building websites, and it might just be me, but people have to make websites for a reason other than their love for the internet. People who make websites have a purpose, intrinsically they post things that they care about more than the "yesterweb movement"
Part of a bizarre post from madness again:" Afterward, the more serious problem that emerged came from PMCs. For those who don't know, PMC stands for "Professional and Managerial Class". These would be your tech bros, highly-educated tech workers, yuppies, bosses, elitists, and rich techie children with middle-class mentalities. While NOT ALL PMCs are a problem and some of them are very sympathetic to what we do, I'd say about half of them really do not have our interests in mind. And this is particularly challenging because this sector of people definitely has the time and money to completely derail the movement and solidify its status as a sub-culture, killing its counter-culture potential."
?????? WHAT? What the hell are they talking about? are rich techbros "sabotaging" the movement? what??
It is very clear that something else was going on. These people don't really care about "Yesterweb" or old style forums, they want to build a real political movement based off of bizarre niche marxism for the goal of ________? (which was NOT expressed to the actual users as was revealed in the closing thread) The forum was a way for them to try to build that. But, when they saw the people who were actually interested. (obviously politically diverse internet weirdos) they were disgusted by the non monolithic opinions of those interested and gave up. They want an echo chamber, FULL STOP. They do NOT want anyone that does not follow their manifesto exactly. Madness actually says that the yesterweb name was a curse because it attracted people looking for the old web instead of _______? .... No shit. this whole thread is ridiculous.
Isn't diverse discussion between very different people a basic trait of the old web?, aren't the echo chambers of today engineered by big tech to placate people, with the side affect of increasing division? Isn't the strength of forums being able to share longform content with nuance effectively, thus allowing for REAL discussion???
In the end, it boiled down to the staff getting burnt out spending too much time on the forums.... doing something, idk. Couldn't they just take a more lax moderating style, or pause work on the forum? Micromanagement to ensure complete adherence to a "movement" and their manifesto IS OBVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE, so why were they so obsessed with doing that? Sadness explicitly expressed it wasn't a monetary issue. It makes no sense. I don't think that anyone could make sense of it, because all the reasonings given are stupid. The moderator, madness devolves into an insane and delusional tirade about the failure of the "movement" because nobody cares and how they couldn't tell anyone about what the forum stood for because "you cant lead a horse to water etc". They literally didn't tell anyone their manifesto and were angry that no on followed it, for fucks sake. I just have to say that madness is fucking insufferable with a massive saviour complex, and I hope for the decentralized web's sake that they never get involved in a project again.
this was their "secret" gameplan for their users:
"1. Find the Yesterweb via discontent with the current state of the Web
2. Learn WHY the web is the way it is now (by using the nostalgic lens to see the historical alternative)
3. Collectivize with all of us in raising our consciousness of the oppressive nature of the current Web (capitalist exploitation via data harvesting, commercialism, etc)
4. Develop real solutions to further raise consciousness of people outside of the Yesterweb
All of this took massive amounts of energy and time and without more help- it fizzled out. We all became so burnt out with trying to help people understand that we gave up in a lot of ways."
I have to say, I and most niche web people would agree with most of this statement, and I would gladly join a community that expressed this goal clearly, but this wasn't the real reason. They wanted something else, a perfect movement that would meet all of their ideals and align perfectly with their ideology. But that is not possible. I'm tired of reading this garbage.