Failure, as unfortunate as it is, gives us the opportunity to grow. Spectacular failures give spectacular opportunities. I’m not sure at what exact moment I failed, but I’ve known for a month now that things were quickly slipping into an unacceptable state. I have been working to get them corrected, as best I could, but somehow we arrived here.
For those of you who don’t know, Jason has quit hosting sailormoon.org. The short explanation is that I found another host and wanted us to be hosted on two (or more) servers which, as I gather, Jason completely disagreed with. The long explanation is that we just weren’t able to work together as a team. I am not going to point fingers or place blame since that won’t be productive at all. Given this opportunity for growth, I want to be as productive as possible.
When I asked Jason to host sailormoon.org I had very high hopes for the community. I had hoped that new leadership and new vision would revive and reinvigorate what Jen and I (and countless others) had worked so hard to build. Jason had shown himself a capable leader and a person I could work with in the past. I still believe that he, given a different set of circumstances, can do a fine job and is a good person. I realize that what happened in the past 24 hours will probably end our friendship, but that was never my intention and I sincerely grieve this loss. But, I can’t say that I didn’t see it as a possibility in the past week.
Fundamentally, there has been a complete lack of communication between the web masters. This I do attribute to Jason. I realize that his life is busy and that other things take priority. I am in the same situation with school and all the other things I’m working on. But, every time I tried to address the problem, my emails have been answered with silence. Jason has not responded to my questions since the end of January. Twice in February we set up an appointment to work on things and twice Jason failed to show up. If I can’t talk to you, I can’t work with you.
Secondly, decisions were made in secret. I put Jason in charge of making decisions, but I insisted that Jen and I have advice and consent to all major decisions. When I say “advice and consent” I mean that we expected to be informed that there was a problem, given possible solutions and asked for our input. None of this was ever done. Every decision Jason made was done without seeking our advice or asking for my consent. Normally I would blame myself for not being clear about my expectations, but I sent more than one impassioned email detailing this. Silence was the only response.
What I’ve heard through the rumor mill (which I abhor!) is that Jason informed several staff members that Jen and I were to be ignored and that his word was law. I don’t care how you analyze it, that is counter to teamwork in any group. An equal partnership cannot stand if one side clearly thinks it is authoritative. I don’t know the truth of this rumor, I can only express what several staff members said to me when I tried to find out why they were doing what they were doing.
Since January I have wanted to set up replication between Jason’s server and my server so I would always have a current backup in case of an emergency. Jason expressed a willingness to work with me on this project. He seemed excited at the possibility. But, for reasons unknown, we were never able to get together to work on this. I realize the backup procedures of the site seem unimportant, but they are vital to understand how we came to be where we are now.
While working on the backup system, I realized I could have multiple servers running the site live without much delay between the servers. This would give us the ability to have servers down for repair or upgrades without anyone being unable to get to the site. I could easily keep everything in sync and spread the load out, keeping hosting costs reasonable. Rather than have one person pay a lot for a server, three or four could get smaller server and bandwidth packages--small enough that even I could afford to have a server.
When it became clear to me that Jason had no intention of working with Jen and I -- rather wanted to cut us out of the loop and completely run the site without input from the other webmasters--I decided that I should look for additional hosting solutions. I was not looking to replace Jason, rather I felt that if other people were providing hosting as well as Jason then his unilateral behavior would be checked. My philosophy of “he who pays the bills wins” has a fundamental flaw when more than one person is paying the bill. I had hoped that by forcing Jason to set aside his exclusive claim on hosting I could bring him into an attitude of working with a team. It took some time, but I was able to find someone who had the ability to host us and was willing to work with the team, which included Jason.
Within a few hours of starting to look for other people to host the site, two stepped forward and offered. Jason wasn’t online and I was more interested in making it work than waiting for him. So, I set about getting it configured. Within 12 hours of getting access to the server, I was able to bring a copy of the site up. Another peer server was ordered and will be configured in a week or so. What had started as looking for a backup solution grew into a possible solution to a political problem. The problems of “high availability” and cooperation could be solved together--I hoped.
As I said, my intention was not to cut Jason out, but rather to bring him to the realization that he needs to live up to his end of the bargain--work with us, not be a maverick. By the time we were ready to go to bed last night, Jason had not been online. We discussed the new server with several of the staff members and decided that the best thing to do was to send Jason an email, inviting him to participate in the new group of cooperating servers.
When I woke up I checked the site to see if Jason had responded. I knew that there was the possibility of him not liking the proposal. But I hadn’t expected what I found. The database had been locked, effectively cutting off the site. Now, when Jason and I first agreed to work together, I built into the agreement a provision for unsolvable disagreements, we agreed that if we reached an impasse that we would give the site 30 days notice and then shut down or find alternate arrangements. Clearly Jason did not live up to the agreement.
However, I didn’t know for sure what was wrong with the database, it could have been a bug. I was running late as it was, so I didn’t have time to spend looking around. I quickly deduced that my account no longer had permission to the database. At that moment I realized that the best course of action would be to transfer all the traffic to the new server, even though the data was several hours old, better to lose a few hours than be down, I think. Since I realized it was a possibility that Jason was in a less than generous mood, I decided to demote him. In the database, levels are numbers, not names. I didn’t have time to find the number for any level. I picked “1” which corresponds to “blacklisted” because it was easy. I did not want Jason corrupting my most recent copy of the data--prepare for the worst and hope for the best. I also transfered all Jason’s files to Jen, again, just in case. If I was wrong, then I could easily restore from Jason’s newer data when we got the whole matter sorted out.
When I got back, I was informed that preparing for the worst was the best course of action. Jason had in fact locked his copy of the database. Which brings us to where we are now. I still have not received an email from him. All I have to go on is a post in his blog and the rumor mill. Perhaps today I will get more information directly from Jason.
Where do we go from here. Well, www2 is now the primary server for the domain. I’ve removed www1 from the list of servers and removed all the files from it and my access to it. I can’t do anything about the database on it. My only hope is that Jason is responsible with it.
The hosting provided on www2 will remain and the server will become www1. In a short while a new server will be brought online as www2. I am still open to Jason being a webmaster and providing hosting, but from the comments I’ve heard, I doubt that happens. My goal was to convince Jason to work with us, but I also knew my plan had the risk of being disastrous, which is why I wanted a working server online before I pushed the issue. I am also open to having other people provide hosting, at the agreement of the existing webmasters. I would like at total of 5 servers online, one being my home server that is simply for backup purposes. All would work together, synchronize with each other and communicate effectively. The webmasters, like the servers, must all work together and communicate. |
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