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Grex > History > #14: The Fall of M-net - a bit of local historical trivia or just gossip? | |
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mdw
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The Fall of M-net - a bit of local historical trivia or just gossip?
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Sep 1 07:11 UTC 1991 |
I don't know if this quite qualifies as history (yet) but it's
definitely "local", and it certainly will be "local history",
so I guess this conference is as good a place as any:
What's this I hear about "M-net going away"?
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| 56 responses total. |
polygon
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response 1 of 56:
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Sep 1 14:20 UTC 1991 |
The login message on Saturday announced that M-Net was going away as of
the end of the Labor Day weekend. Dave explained (in the login message
and in !party) that due to lack of support and the fact that he has to
move out of his house, M-Net could no longer continue.
Rumors about this impending event have been circulating for a month now.
Essentially, the word was that M-Net was not supporting itself financially.
On Sunday morning about 1am, the system suddenly stopped responding (I was
logged on at the time). Callers would get a connect tone, but no response
from the system. This morning, M-Net's phones don't answer.
I think this is it.
Anyone who cares about the viability of Grex should get ready for an influx
of refugees.
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remmers
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response 2 of 56:
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Sep 1 15:42 UTC 1991 |
M-Net's up again as of now, noon, Sunday Sept 1. But assuming that
the shutdown will be real and permanent this time, this item will
definitely qualify as one for the History Conference, and I'm sure
I'll have something to say from the perspective of my 7-year
association with the system.
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keats
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response 3 of 56:
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Sep 3 03:25 UTC 1991 |
predictably, dave has shut m-net off to guests and wiped them. patrons
are still "welcome." but the system's as dead as driftwood in the desert
and i doubt that patrons are going to be interested in renewing for
such a system so handled.
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mcnally
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response 4 of 56:
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Sep 3 05:13 UTC 1991 |
Not that I had anything there that I'm really upset to have lost but it
was sort of a rude shock to go away for a week, come back, and learn that
M-net is gone away (presumably) forever.
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hexagon
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response 5 of 56:
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Sep 3 13:01 UTC 1991 |
I just logged on m-net befor I came here. Obviously, the system is still up.
But there are no geust accounts. They have been wiped clean. All there is
left is the patrons. But for how long.. I don't know.
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polygon
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response 6 of 56:
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Sep 3 14:12 UTC 1991 |
I was a patron, and my account was eliminated.
Of course, my patronship should have expired some time ago.
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danr
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response 7 of 56:
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Sep 4 02:42 UTC 1991 |
I !talked to lmaster over on mnet earlier today. He was telling me
that he is interested in injecting a little money into mnet, becoming
a partner with Dave. There may be some hope for mnet, but I'm not
holding my breath.
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polygon
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response 8 of 56:
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Sep 4 07:04 UTC 1991 |
Injecting?
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jep
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response 9 of 56:
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Sep 4 23:32 UTC 1991 |
Dave said on-line that he'll continue to run some sort of dial-in
system as long as he has a Unix system. A closed system doesn't hold much
interest for me. I'll probably continue to log in every few days as long
as I can, just to see if he announces any new plans, but M-Net is dead at
this point as far as I'm concerned.
There are about 70 accounts left on-line, including former staff,
patrons and various system accounts.
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tnt
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response 10 of 56:
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Sep 5 04:48 UTC 1991 |
M-Net was dead soon after DD bought it.
He fancied himself as Superman, & M-Net was his own little 'Bottled City
of Kandor' to play with & manipulate as he pleased.
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mcnally
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response 11 of 56:
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Sep 5 06:34 UTC 1991 |
Your compassion is touching, Tim. Give it a rest, why don't you?
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tnt
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response 12 of 56:
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Sep 5 18:47 UTC 1991 |
(I'll show compassing by not wasting time dealing with #11...)
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jennie
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response 13 of 56:
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Sep 5 20:28 UTC 1991 |
Tim, I don't know you, but that was a cruel thing to say under any
circumstances.
Griz
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tnt
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response 14 of 56:
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Sep 6 06:11 UTC 1991 |
I've just re-read the response in question, & I think it is a very accurate
analogy. Other than that, I don't care to waste time talking about the
dead system.
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mdw
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response 15 of 56:
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Sep 6 07:18 UTC 1991 |
Actually, M-net was dying before Dave bought it, and if Dave's purchase
sealed M-net's doom in the long run, in the short run, it did postpone
its fate. It's sadly obvious, in retrospect, that Dave really did not
understand the system he had bought, but to be fair, I think very few
other people understood that at the time either. The whole situation is
particularly unfortunate for Dave, who had basically trapped himself
with his investment and his loyalties. But the example he turned M-net
into, and the time he bought, really did make grex possible. There
is nothing quite like losing something that's always been taken for
granted to galvanize people into action.
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fes
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response 16 of 56:
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Sep 6 14:03 UTC 1991 |
I tend to agree with Marcus, particularly his last sentence. I find it hard to
imagine NOT having something like m-net or grex and I'm not even a hard core
addict.
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choke
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response 17 of 56:
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Sep 6 19:53 UTC 1991 |
Have no pity for the fool. He makes his choices willfully.
I agree with tim. If honesty is judged as cruelty, then is dishonesty
desirable kindness?
Dave behaved foolishly and irrationally. He discarded the advice of those
who knew better. It was predicted that his method would bring no benefit
to m-net, and it has not. He abused and persecuted people and the system
itself. He was unfit to be a 'Sysop' and M-net was unfit to have a 'Sysop,'
Where is there room for sympathy in all of this?
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jep
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response 18 of 56:
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Sep 6 21:41 UTC 1991 |
Because, right or wrong, Dave was doing the best he could for M-Net.
No one else was going to try to save the system, once Mike Myers decided
to shut it down. Dave did that. He spent a heck of a lot of money in the
attempt. He deserves some credit for that, though in the end it turned
out he didn't have the ability to make it work. Be charitable if nothing
else.
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mcnally
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response 19 of 56:
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Sep 6 23:17 UTC 1991 |
Yes. His intentions were good even if his execution was fatally flawed.
At the very least he bought M-net's users a year or two at the expense of
a great deal of his money and a lot of bitter feelings on both sides. Now
that it finally looks like it's over, what possible good can be served by
personally vilifying him in a forum where he's not present to defend himself?
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remmers
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response 20 of 56:
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Sep 7 04:32 UTC 1991 |
Speaking as a 7-year veteran and ex-staffer of M-Net, I have to
observe that much of what people have said on both sides is
perfectly valid, but I also shrug my shoulders and say "so what"?
Regardless of how you feel about how Mike Myers ran M-Net or how
Dave Parks ran M-Net, the fact is that in a very large sense
neither of them ever did really run it. The users ran it; the
system was shaped by the people who called in and entered text.
The best measure of this is that even in the very worst of times,
even when frequent threats of shutdown were eroding the base of
financial support and it appeared that the system could go down at
any moment, M-Net retained the essential characteristics that
attracted me to it in the beginning -- it was a place where new
people continued to showed up and say amazing things, to open my
eyes to new points of view.
Case in point: Some of the most active people on Grex right now
are folks who became M-Netters in the last six months or so.
Even though activity had slowed from the heady days of four or
five years ago, I have to say that right up to the very day that
newuser was shut down and the guest accounts wiped, M-Net was a
fascinating place to hang out.
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jep
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response 21 of 56:
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Sep 7 04:36 UTC 1991 |
M-Net is still on-line, for those few who were patrons when it went
down. There is discussion on how to go about bringing it back. Dave
wants to get out of having the bills in his name, and favors a Grex-style
user group to take over the system. Leather Master seems to want a closed
no-guests system. There are five or six people participating in the
discussion, as of about six hours ago. Anyone who wants to become a
patron and participate in the discussion can send mail to kite@m-net. If
anything definitive happens, I'll post something about it here.
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mdw
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response 22 of 56:
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Sep 7 08:49 UTC 1991 |
Actually, there was an effort made to talk some sense into Mike Myers,
and to negotiate some sort of transition to a group owned system, just
before Dave bought the system. Not that there's much point in worrying
about the "what if"'s--Mike really was most anxious to get out the
business as fast as possible, and likely wouldn't have been very
interested in waiting 6 months - about the amount of time it took for us
to organize grex.
Very probably, such a reorganization would have taken even longer
anyways. 6 months before the sale, there were some very bitter
arguments online, about how things ought to be run. There seemed to be
about two camps online, a "pro-control" faction, in favour of such
things as restricted guest access, more limits on allowable speech, and
a more fascist attitude towards troublemakers, and a "pro-anarchy"
faction that was more or less happy with the way things were, was not
interested in restrictions on speech, and felt that fascist acts
actually encouraged troublemakers. At the time, the two groups were
about evenly matched, but with Mike leaning more and more strongly
towards the pro-control group. What actually ended up happening,
though, is that the whole argument fizzled as everybody had their say
and got tired of the whole mess. With a split of 50%, and people
arguing on what is more a matter of taste and values than anything else,
there wasn't much else to do.
It's a bit tricky to interpret what's happened since. While Dave made a
valiant effort to keep things as they were, deep down, Dave has always
been "pro-control". So it's certainly no accident that some of the grex
founders had been some of the more vocal "pro-anarchy" voices. It's
tempting to ascribe M-net's subsequent troubles to Dave's increasingly
"pro-control" attitude, but that's certainly an over-simplification. It
might be as fair to blame M-net's troubles on a distinct lack of focus
and consistency, trying to please everyone at once, and pleasing no one
as a result. The 50% split seems to argue that there is room in Ann
Arbor for a much more tightly controlled system. Perhaps that would be
a good niche for M-net, who knows?
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remmers
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response 23 of 56:
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Sep 7 14:11 UTC 1991 |
Re #22: Yes, my impression is that Dave move very quickly to
purchase M-Net, without involving or consulting others in the
decision or the negotiations. It wasn't generally known that he
was buying it until it was a fait accompli. That's why I think
it's not entirely fair to say, as some have above, that Dave was
the only person willing to take on and continue M-Net. Had there
been more time and more openness about the whole process, some
other person or group of persons might have acquired it, or Dave
might have bought it but at a more realistic price. But that's
only speculation -- M-Net morale was at a low point at the time,
as Marcus points out there were deep divisisions about the
direction the system ought to go, so M-Net might've been slow to
sell if Dave hadn't moved.
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mythago
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response 24 of 56:
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Sep 7 14:42 UTC 1991 |
Regardless of Dave's position on M-net policy matters (and he's perfectly
free to logon here and defend himself), my biggest problem with M-net
was not Dave's decisions about such things as patron costs or shutdowns,
but his utter lack of business sense. You don't get people to support
a system by continually threatening to shut it down (especially when
you keep backing out), being insulting, or trying to squeeze every
last cent out at the expense of goodwill. One case in point was his
threat to start a "new" system and take the patronship money with
him, under the pretext that patronship contributions were a 'donation',
so you should shut up and not complain if you sent in money for a
1-year patronship that would turn out to be 3 months long. (i.e.,
"Thanks, sucker.") It took aaron pointing out that calling it
a 'donation' wouldn't stand up legally to change this
My reaction after a while changed from "I'm glad I sent in money since
I use the system so damn much" to "I'm glad I quit sending in money.
Let somebody else play slot-machine with patronships."
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