[thelist] The evolt.org community will close on 31 January 2024

[William Anderson]

Hi,

if you're reading this, then you're still subscribed to thelist at lists.evolt.org, and this message was permitted past your spam filters. If you haven't heard from us in a long time, well, it's because you haven't heard from us in a long time.

And you're about to not hear from us again for an even longer time.

All our mailing lists will be closed, and evolt.org as an active community will effectively close, on Wednesday, 31 January 2024.

It's been 25 years since this list, our sites, and our friendships were created, cemented, and battle-tested. We've been through a lot. But now it's time to ... what is it the cool kids say these days? Sunset? Disengage? Consciously uncouple? :)

The evolt.org site hasn't accepted new articles about web development for years, and the mailing lists haven't seen much activity since. The community that was built up in 1998 has sadly become quiet. Why is this? Who knows? Web development has changed massively since the first evolt.org mailing list was set up as a lifeboat, ironically from another web development community - Wired's Monkeyjunkies mailing list. The skills and techniques from that time aren't fully relevant any more, in terms of applying them to building modern websites. Clearly, everyone on the lists has either moved on to other careers, or stayed in their careers but found more relevant communities to discuss topics with. And then there are those we've lost over the years.

We've tried to reboot the site a couple of times in recent years, but nothing has really come of it.

So what happens now? Well, to quote one of our very early members, Bob Davis:

  It's history. It's the Internet. Communities evolve and change and
  spawn new communities.

I hope you've all found new communities to discuss whatever you love. Sadly, this community has run its course. On Wednesday 31 January 2024, evolt.org's mailing lists will close. Everything except the Browser Archive will become completely static. All mailing lists members will have their details removed from our mailing list software, and the list configurations will be deleted. You will never receive another email from an evolt.org list ever again.

Our two cloud instances, "cerf" and "postel" (named for Vint Cerf and Jon Postel, each of them one of the fathers of the Internet), which run the mailing list software and host the domain name and sites, are having their functions slowly assumed by other services, and they will be completely shutdown on the 31st. They have been ably aided in the past by "taylor" (named for Bob Taylor, another Internet legend) and "tempest", which replaced evolt.org's legacy infrastructure previously hosted, managed, and wrangled by Dan Cody, Jeff Howden, Martin Burns, John Handelaar, Lachlan Cannon, Dean Mah, David Kaufman, and myself. Dozens of others contributed to the daily workings of the site and lists, and of course all of you, list members, made this community a community. Thank you all.

The Browser Archive, first set up and maintained by one of our founding members, Adrian Roselli, will remain, and will be improved. Hosting evolt.org has never been free, and the same will go of the Browser Archive, so if you'd like to contribute to the hosting costs, there's a PayPal link at https://evolt.org

Soooooooooooo ... that's our news. How are you? Any plans? That sounds nice.

This is neuro. Last survivor of the Nostromo. Signing off.

-n