There is a key peice of info that would go a long way toward explaining the recent crash of both the GL and SBO! sites, but unfortunately I cannot disclose it.

He may have been involved behind he scenes in the begineing. That I do not question. Alex has not been around for a while. Superman said that the germanlook.com domain name has always belonged to him. That is simply not true. Alex passed it (registered to Alex at the time) to Zen who registered it under his name. It was then passed to Superman's control over a year or more after he took control of site admin. And it was intrusted to him to carry this site forward but we all know how that went. I don't care if the original site was his idea. Alex and Sandeep built this site, Held the domain name to it, passed all of it to Zen who continued to build it, held the domain name to it. Superman was not involved in any way when it was passed to Zen or while he ran the site. Sandeep can say if Superman was involved in the site when he ran it. I bet I know the answer to that one. For Superman to say that the domain name was always his is just a lie.

I know and I told Superman that I would not talk about it also. But that is not key to this thread. I revert to the fact that he did not communicate to the people asking the questions on STF and other forums. He also did not tell anyone that he was going to use the domain name he was trusted to keep to open an online store. He did not maintain the main page with all of the tech articles, galleries and other info that he was intrusted to keep. The forums he was intrusted to keep suffered outages for months on end. He offered it back to us (I think because he only wanted to work on the oline store, but that is my own take on it), gave us a username and password ot access the files and then changes his stroy in a lame attempt to save face (again my take on it) when he sees that the GL community as a whole is realy pissed at him. He dropped the ball (or had it kicked) then doing nothing about it (to include not posting a simple update on any forums were people had questions).
He needs to delete that thread in question on SBO and not push this any further.

From my view,
The site started having issues, then stayed down a long time. Promises of "up soon" were made via third party. The site didn't get put back up, months go by. Wasn't about to get put back up.

Several people got together and did what was needed in just a matter of days and now the site is running along fine.

It seems like someone was relieved of a responsibilty they didn't want or know how to deal with... why be bitter to the people who helped with a problem that you wern't going to solve?


Jeff-

I also don't understand the whole argument of who started what... You didn't invent the farking internet! You didn't write the first line of code in the world! It's a niche site for a tiny group of people that makes zero profit. Why is it sooooo important to claim responsibility for something you didn't care enough about to keep running?

I Soooo Agree with you Jeff...
good call


Chris.

...sounds like this guy is not "super" at all, but he does have a business degree :rolleyes: like many other people that don't know how to use it. I've dealt with people like this. They get mad and take their ball home, but it's NOT their ball :lmao: A REAL business man would personaly admit his failure, and not use some third party.

He would not be the first to have a degree in something they suck at. Thats fine, what gets me is how he distorted the truth or outright lied. To his credit he did offer the site back to us (all but the domain name), gave us access to the files, but after that I am not sure were his mind went.

I can only re-iterate what has already been said so well in this thread. Dave and Sandeep have portrayed the situation exactly as it was and is. There is always more than one side to the story (or way to tell it), but I am perfectly fine with letting our reputations speak for themselves.

I think it says something that we each chose to give up administration of the site in the past for personal reasons (which still exist) and felt there was enough of an injustice being done to the community as a whole that we chose to step back in and get the situation corrected. And that it was done in less than a week (and to ensure credit is given where it should...that was ALL thanks to Sandeep's initiative). And btw, we still don't want admin responsibilities for the site, but are doing what is needed right now. Future stewardship selection will be handled much better than I handled the last one.

Tell me, who is honestly concerned about the GL community!

There is nothing wrong with someone making money off of sites like this. Not a thing and that is not what this is about. However, the conditions I handed over my ownership of the site (I don't care who started what, possession is 9/10ths of the law and EVERYTHING was under my name back then) were not met and it is obvious the communication to the masses has been greatly lacking. This ENTIRE thing could have been avoided with some basic communication and action to back it up. I don't have a BM degree (I have only been a chief architect proposing, obtaining funding, designing, budgeting, and project managing IT infrastructure solutions for a 300k user company for the past 10 years, also managed their entire risk management policies, processes and awareness programs and have/still headed several small businesses of my own in the music and technology industries on the side), but it seems to me that communication is a fundamental tenant of any business.

You don't get paid for a degree unless you are a professor...you get paid for performing in the real world.

It is unfortunate this has had to play out like it has. Time for the drama to end and the community to heal, reconnect and grow. I (and I'm sure most everyone) wish Superman the best in his venture. I won't be buying from there and I think he unfortunately has damaged his relationship with a large part of the GL community and the GL.com brand bad enough that others will make that same decision. Maybe with good communications, that can be overcome though.

I've noticed Superman hasn't been over here (or anywhere else) to share his thoughts. Hopefully he will do so. I'd do so on SBO!, but he charges something like $25 for access to those forums and the privilege to communicate there. Perhaps someone will extend and invite to him over there.

BTW, we won't ban someone for speaking their mind here as has been threatened/stated against us by Superman on his forums. So feel free to speak your mind as long as you are speaking the truth and are not relying on secondhand knowledge.

Well said on all points Zen. I wish he would come here and voice his point also. I just don't think he will. But I bet he has read everything for sure.

It not only says something, it speaks volumes.

I have tried to remain quite about this whole deal, but after reading everything posted over the last week... I finally had to post something! I try not to say anything bad about anyone, but this guy takes the freakn' cake! :screwy: :rolleyes:

It does not cost anything to create an account and be a member of SBO!. You will be able to post in any thread you have access to. There is a private forum you will not have access to and you cannot upload picts but you can link them. The $25 lifetime SBO! membership gives you full site access and upload privileges and access to set up your own galleries, a garage and a blog if you want one. The membership fee only helps to offset the cost of keeping the site up.

There are alot of people from this GermanLook community that paid or rather donated far larger sums of money to "keep this site up". What is or was "Superman's plan" for them? I think that was a part of why he first "offered" to give everything (everything but the domain name that HE SAID always belonged to him) back to (1st) Zen, (2nd) me then Sandeep. If someone, anyone could have put Humpty Dumpty back together again, it would clear him of that obligation. But he did not care were the forums/site was rebuilt at first. He only made the offer to hoast it on his server under "his domain name" later in the game. He has still not deleted the thread in question or recanted his remarks. Hell he still has not removed the link to my webste from "his" sorry landing page on the .com site.
I think this thread should be linked at the thread in question so that the people over there can see what realy happened. Or better yet. He should wipe out that thread, apologise for slandering the people over here and offer to square up with everyone who donated funds to keep the germanlook site up and running. If he will do that, I vote we will wipe this thread out like it never happened. That would start the healing. Could you ask him if he will do that and let us know what his answer is?

I'm glad you brought that up. Let's also make it clear that none of those donations that were made over the past year were transferred to bring this instance of the forums back up. This was brought up with new donations by a select few hardcore GL'ers. There were also many more offers from those already back on this forum, but the funds have not been accepted at this point (everything has been covered for now). There may still be plans for those funds donated to GermanLook.com over the past year or two, but there isn't much communication as to what those plans might be. It sounds like they may be used to pay for the design of the store or paying for the porting of the forums from vBulletin to Supe's chosen platform. It does take money to meet the basic operating costs, but those costs are pretty low if maintaining the current site. If changes are required/desired, costs certainly can increase. Just depends how you want to spend your money...or other people's who just want a running site.