Call, Rumours, the EBT-Tool, Wap and more...

[jovada]

Oops,
Philippe, I think I've missed the part (again) where the opinion of the loyal user base comes in. Without us, you would've had nothing. WE are the success of EBT, not you.

[EurobertCharlebois]

Avij, Nerzuhl. Please hear what Philippe said. Please communicate with each others and put your egos down

We want EBT back on track like in the good old days (actually 3 days ago )

Efforts from both parts is needed !

[erzin]

Philippe,

glad to hear from you.

We (the normal users) don't know what is going on behind the scenes. You say something, Avij/Nerzhul say something. What is right, what is wrong ? All we could see was that the site was running very well the way is was.
To us, normal users, it looked like you weren't involved anymore. You didn't enter any bills anymore, you weren't present anymore. I was wondering if you even cared about EBT. You do care, but you showed it by taking over the site again, a very drastic action. almost nobody knows who you are and you took us al by suprise. Taking the site away from the people who took care of it, doesn't give any confidence. It looked like a hostile take-over just because you weren't present for a long time.
I hope all of you find a solution so the site stays and we can keep our hobby.

[jovada]

To us, normal users, it looked like you weren't involved anymore. You didn't enter any bills anymore, you weren't present anymore. I was wondering if you even cared about EBT. You do care, but you showed it by taking over the site again, a very drastic action. almost nobody knows who you are and you took us al by suprise. Taking the site away from the people who took care of it, doesn't give any confidence. It looked like a hostile take-over just because you weren't present for a long time.

Well said!

[JanV]

Avij, Nerzuhl. Please hear what Philippe said. Please communicate with each others and put your egos down

We want EBT back on track like in the good old days (actually 3 days ago
Efforts from both parts is needed !

I agree with this. Get on speeking terms with eachother and solve this problem together.

For the long run it is maybe better to create a kind of a foundation which owns the site. Then it is possible to give every role (creator, administrator, volunteer, user) a rightfull place. For example by creating a kind of governing board.

This are my thoughts about this unwanted situation. I am a Dutch native speaker, so sorry for my poor English. I thought is was better to discuss on the English parth of the forum.

Jan Vente (JanV)
Berkenwoude
The Netherlands

[philgelico]

For the long run it is maybe better to create a kind of a foundation which owns the site. Then it is possible to give every role (creator, administrator, volunteer, user) a rightfull place. For example by creating a kind of governing board.

Yes JanV, it's an excellent idea. In France we all have the right to create what is called an "Association", and surely in European Laws, it's possible as well .
The advantages of the Association are multiple, in particular we elect the President, and the Responsible of money (named Trésorier), and we deposit the "statuses" of Association, with all aims, rules. And we even can receive financing from the State, from the Region, or from the Départements or the Towns .
However , naturally , EBT's tragic problems have first to be solved, and then we have to think about the future and perennity of our EBT .

[tinka]

its great dat you make a statement overhere altrough i dont understand half of it because i don't have lots off knowledge about computers backgrond.
i also dont know you , just a few mentionings at the site.
you may ore may not be a enterer of notes, its great that you stoud at the base of this site .
Together with others it is become a really fun place to come to , to chat over notes and al the things around and entering all the notes (whitch must takes a lott of their time by big enterers )

I know that running a site always costs money and a few years back i believe that there was a idea to make a deposit ore to make something we could bye like t-shirts, stickers and that idea was declined.

I personally wouldnt take it bad if there was a decision for a banner to come out of the costs but thats a thing that you have to make offcours.

Get around the table, talk and make good things happen.
So we can get in to a eurofabulous 2008

[Dakkus]

Philippe. (I think that I should write "Dear Philippe" in English, but being Finnish my definition for the verb "to love" can only be used to close family or girlfriends or such, so I will refrain from doing that as I want to speak only in a manner that is natural to me. Such is my lifestyle. I anyway want to show that I am writing sincerely and with friendly intentions, no matter how bad I always am in making myself understood in such matters . (quite a long way of saying this, BTW ))

I think the main point lays in a misunderstanding.
I have met Avij a lot of times, often calling him while around just because I find him an absolutely great guy. And from the email you sent it appears that we do share the opinion.(I find this great, BTW!)
I can see and sense that you have grown afraid of avij. I also think I can now guess the reason. As you can see, you have founded a foundation upon which a fabulous community has grown like a garden of flowers. Flowers that shine even in this grim December darkness. The bulk of the community is this forum, which currently has 3940 registered users. That is three thousand, nine hundred and fourty users that consider each others a part of a network of friends. For some nodes(users) the connection to the network is not very strong, but for perhaps hundreds, it is very strong. So strong that we consider each others friends, forming a fellowship. Unfortunately archive.org is down, so I cannot check the numbers, but my random-ish estimation is that the userbase is.. say.. eight time the size it was when you stopped being active.
You being inactive is not bad, as you are a human with humans' needs. And also, a human won't be motivated forever and this being a voluntary project it would be more than idiocy requiring that you stay married to EBT forever.
However, your inactivity has caused one important thing:

Logically, this being a community, it associates itself with people among it. You were not among it (which, I want to make completely clear, has not been wrong of you and nobody (naturally, a tiny number of exceptions may occur, but I don't know of them myself) has anything against you for that decision), and therefore people don't feel like you being a part of the community. As I said earlier, the greatest part of us in the community have joined it after your inactivation. They have seen the two active webmasters, Avij and Nerzhul. Since those have been the only ones seen implementing new functions, they are also the ones considered to be in lead of this project. This has been the general feeling, but this feeling has not been actively by Avij and Nerzhul. However, they have both often, so often, made it clear that they are only users among other users, who just happen to have some special rights for practical reasons. (a server can't work unmaintained, somebody has to code new features, so on.) There have also been other people with special rights (it has been necessary that more than just a clique of two people decide among the changes, it has been necessary for some specified people to do the translations, it has been necessary for some specified people to plot the postal code locations and so on).
Because of denoting themselves as users among users, they also haven't written that you are a leader over others. You said it's bad they are considering themselves co-webmasters of the site, thus being on the same level with you. However, the situation is actually a bit different from what you have understood. They have not lifted themselves as co-webmasters with you. They have instead talked of themselves as being a direct part of the bulk of us. As a coincidence, they have also brought you with them on the same level. Therefore, the people do not consider you a leader. They consider you the great dude, who got the idea.
Now.. The couple hundreds of most active people/flowers who create the strongest part of the community are all friends with each other. Also Avij and Nerzhul are in the same community. And thus, they both are our good friends. So many have met them IRL, or at least through just one intermediate person. (this also applies to everybody else, not only those two! They are only considered superhuman by a few people - Milanocapitale, our beloved angry speech box occupier, coming in my mind for starters )
Now it is a clear fact that you did an attack against Avij and Nerzhul. Since the bulk of the community:
1) finds you a somewhat outside person for above mentioned reasons
and
2) finds Avij and Nerzhul their close friends,
they have seen the attack towards them as an outsider attacking their close friends. I believe you can understand this behaviour from the ones that never saw you on the forum. And they are the bulk of the community and thus also the creators of the general feeling, which is also what has made you so worried about your and EBT's security.
My point here is that the motivation for people for trying to help .eu to win "the war" they felt existed came from theirselves, after they saw all webmasters but one kicked out and one becoming a sole, sovereign leader over them. Do not be angry for Avij and Nerzhul for doing this. They haven't held passionate speeches to the public and haven't asked anybody to harm .com. Not even behind the scene. Let me use myself as an example of how this happened:

I first saw people posting on the forum about all kinds of weird things happening to EBT. Things getting broken and all that stuff. I was wondering what is going on, but didn't really care. Then I heard in IRC that EBT is no longer in the hands of the active webmasters. That made me furious. I felt that my trusted friends had been attacked and I felt there couldn't be a reason for that. The situation had been on for hours and most people already knew much more than I did. But in the end it was us saying to Avij and Nerzhul, who were already pondering the idea given to them by somebody in the channel at that time, that they should not let this happen. That they should fight no matter what. We all _know_ that Avij and Nerzhul are trustworthy people and logically, one kicking the trusted friends out was not. And thus, I joined the people in the shouting. I opened a query window in IRC, asking Avij how he was feeling. He was mostly confused. Like so many others, I told him that he must not just let this situation prevail, as I felt that suddenly the power was no longer on the community, but someone who had taken over it. I didn't want to be a part of EBT with a leader. I am an anarchist and an anarchist I will always be. My original reason for enduring through the first 370(?) notes before getting my first hit was that I wanted to help the community grow. I was doing it for me and others, not for someone that would be over me. I told Avij that for beginning this might prove a disaster, but in a long run it is so much better being free that more good than harm would be done. This is only my part, different people did their parts, as well. All in all, we were afraid. Nobody had notified us (after all, you hadn't notified the community as a whole of your doings, only two of us) of this and the only source of information we had were the two exiled webmasters who had received the private email from you. That kind of situation is not very comfortable, as you can believe. We didn't understand what gone into you - and actually we didn't care. The situation needed rapid action. The reasons could be found out later, first it would be important to get action ASAP. It was not a situation in which we just sit and wait. The longer we would have waited, the harder it would have been for us taking EBT back in the community's hands.

They did all this because they were asked to. They were reluctant to this, because they felt like it was too dangerous to do, but they had a great mob of people telling them they should not give up.
I think you underestimated the will and power of the community, no matter what it was that you were doing. (and I still don't understand what it was)

Now.. You were clearly afraid that Avij was going to take over EBT sooner or later. I must say I'm a bit disappointed of you thinking that. Maybe you didn't know it, as you never wanted to join our discussions, but it had been planned for months and months that EBT would be transferred to a registered organization which would take care of it. That was usually brought up when talking of what would happen to EBT if Avij had a similar burnout you had had earlier. Volunteering to give up his copyrights over EBT clearly shows that he wasn't intending to take over the site. I don't know what was keeping the organization to be founded, but for some reason it was not possible creating that now. Maybe they just had something in the code to care about and wanted to get that through first. Don't know about that, but from his voice when talking of this face-to-face I could clearly see that he was honest with the plans to create that organization.

Also, you mentioned the development discussions moving to IRC. I find that quite natural. I originally created the IRC channel because I wanted to strengthen the community's ties to each other. When people would talk with each other in real time, they would feel even stronger unity. A lot of ideas came from the people in IRC and Avij and Nerzhul had to address them when they were mentioned in real time instead of in a forum where it's a lot more acceptable answering by adding the requested feature months later.
I believe a lot of development communications also took place in queries in IRC. That is quite natural, because that way they could speak in real time, instead of sending forum messages. Also a lot of communication took place on the channel itself. If you had to design something and could decide between real time chat and sending messages to each other, I bet you would go for the real time chat. And besides.. How hard would it have been for you installing irssi with apt-get and joining our discussion on the channel?! Why on Earth did you never do that anyway, if you felt you had gotten disconnected from the community?

So.. To summarize.. I figure the situation has happened because of a misunderstanding. You found the atmosphere such that you had been excluded. And because you considered that the community as general was under some organizational structure with leaders, you assumed the atmosphere had grown from Avij and Nerzhul.
Also, Avij and Nerzhul didn't understand that you see them as something else than a direct part of the community. Community's spokespeople speak differently than community's leader. Since they failed to inform you of their status, you were not able to interpret their messages correctly.
And now it's all kaboom because of nothing. That is sad.

Generally, my feeling is still that I am confused by all this. The most important word is: why?

Now, this sure did become a long text! Luckily I can almost press the Submit button already!

(and sorry for beginning all the sentences with "I". That's then again because I'm writing in a foreign language. In Finnish I would have used passive form instead, in English I could not do anything similar while concentrating on my thoughts at the same time
And also sorry for writing such an incomprehensible text with cascading brackets. They are hard to figure out, but I wanted to write everything crystal clear, because I'm always a bit afraid I might do a mistake and destroy everything. Hopefully the alternating font sizes have made it easier to read this, not harder. (Oh, and apparently I'm ending this message with brackets, too ))

[j3paris]

Philippe, it was good to finally hear from you on the forum today. But I find some of the things you said alarming.

La balle est dans leur camp, n'hésitez pas à leur faire comprendre.

The ball is in their court, don't hesitate to make them aware of that.

It's not our job to let Avij or Nerzhul know or make them understand anything more about what is a dispute between the three of you.

Please get it all sorted out soon... this situation is seriously compromising the reputation and future of EBT with two new countries coming on board in a few days and thousands of loyal users who, and I'm sure I speak for many, are disappointed, fed up, rightfully angry and frankly hurt.

C'est un peu énervant de voir l'histoire ré-écrite par eux. Si AJ et MS m'y autorisent je suis prêt à rendre ces mails publics pour les prendre à témoin devant toute la communauté ou ce qu'il en reste. Pourquoi utiliser cet argument pour m'attaquer ? La bascule n'a aucun rapport avec de l'argent, c'est assez clair pour tout le monde ?

It's annoying to see history rewritten by them. If AJ and MS authorize it, I'm prepared to make these e-mails public to the community or what's left of it. Why use this argument to attack me? The switchover has nothing to do with money, is that clear enough for everybody?

"Community, or what's left of it". This doesn't sound promising. And we want a real solution, not to smell you three's dirty laundry.

Philippe, if you do take it all back by yourself, bear in mind that we have come to expect nothing less than the excellent service, development and good improvements that Avij and Nerzhul and all of the other volunteers have provided over the past few years.

I know there are negotiations in progress. Help us make it a happy new year with the site so many people love, reunified. This has been, and maybe still can be the greatest currency tracking site in the world.

But until then, no more bills from me, on either site or side. EBT is not about "sides".

You count on us.
So we're counting on you.

[capitobi]

I would like to thank Dakkus for the posting above. It took me a while to get through it. Well, I pretty much agree with almost everything there, except for being not really involved in anything at all.

To Phillippe I would like to add that personally it doesn't really make a difference for any average tracker who wrote what code, made which design or had what idea. Yet, everybody considers the notes entered his or her own. So the database can be owned by whoever, the data itself is owned by whoever entered it. That is also why anybody who asks to do so can have his contact details and/or notes removed, by law.

[Pimpe]

Sorry, my english is not wery good, so I wish that someone translate this

Iltaa vaan kaikille
Minun Englanninkielitaitoni on sen verran rajoitettua, että kirjoitan suomeksi ja toivon jonkun kääntävän sen Englanniks (ja korjaavan kieliopilliset virheet samalla)
Mää oon tämmönen suht keskiverto harrastaja ja olen ymmärtänyt vallitsevan tilanteen näin.
Sivuston idean on keksinyt joku Giro tai oikeastaan kopsannut sen Where's George ideasta ja kehitellyt sitä ekat pari vuotta ja sitten on avuksi tullut Avij ja Marko. Jonkun ajan kuluttua Giro on jostain syystä jäänyt oikeastaan kokonaan pois tästä harrastuksesta ja Avij ja Marko ovat kehittäneet ja ylläpitäneet tätä harrastusta (ilmeisesti maksaneetkin meidän kaikkien harrastuksen). Jossain välissä, en tiedä koska, on mukaan tullut useampiakin vapaaehtoisia, jotka auttavat moderoinneissa, tulkin hommissa ym. Nyt Giro on yhtäkkiä ottanut sivuston haltuunsa ja kopioinut omaan koneeseensa kaikkien setelitiedot, koska aikoo sillä tienata jotenkin ja ottanut Avijilta ja Markolta käyttöoikeudet pois.
Avij on luonut uuden osoitteen, jossa on siis edelleen samat tiedot.
Siinäpä tietoni pähkinänkuoressa.

Koska ilmeisesti suurinosa käyttäjistä (setelimäärällisesti) on siirtynyt eu puolelle, niin kuinkas Giro on ajatellut hoitaa nämä vapaaehtoistyöt ja mitä sivustolle tapahtuu jos hän taas kohta kyllästyy harrastukseen. Jos itse työskentelisin vapaaehtoisena jossain yhdistyksessä en todellakaan tykkäisi ajatuksesta, että joku kerää rahaa minun ja muitten ilmaisesta työstä yhdistyksen hyväksi. Ja jos sivuja aiotaan käyttää mainontaan, mikä takaa ettei minulle ala kohta tulemaan osumailmoitusten mukana jotain mainoksia.
Minä olen valinnut sivustokseni eurobilltracker.eu:n koska luotan enemmän Avijiin ja Markoon, jotka ovat todellakin aktiivisia jäseniä. Enkä halua, että joku minulle tyystin tuntematon käyttäisi hyödykseen minun harrastukseen käyttämääni aikaa. Markoa en sen kummemmin tunnista edes kuvista, mutta Avij ainakin näyttäisi olleen mukana kaikissa yhteisissä tapahtumissa Suomessa ja Euroopassa. Olen myös saanut yhteyden Avijiin, joka kerta kun tarvetta on ollut.
Toivon että jonkinlainen sopu saadaan aikaan eikä tapauksesta jää kellekkään mitään hampaankoloon. Aion jatkaa kirjailua ainoastaan eu puolella ja olenkin lähettänyt com puolelle pyynnön poistaa kaikki setelitietoni. Samalla pyydän anteeksi kaikilta, että järjestin 3 feikkiosumaa com puolelle, että muutama kirjaaja pääsisi foorumiin ja näkisi mitä on tapahtunut. Nyt jo tajuan, että se ei ehkä ollut kovin asiallista ja tuntuukin pahalta nyt katsoa com sivujen osumalistaa, joka on täynnä feikkiosumia. Itse olen sitä mieltä, että pitäisi olla jonkinmoinen pankkitili, johon voisi laittaa vapaaehtoisen kannatusmaksun esim 5€, jolla katetaan harrastuksen yhteiset kulut.
Toivottavasti hauska harrastus ei kaadu rahaan
-Pimpe-

[Yannn]

Philippe. (I think that I should write "Dear Philippe" in English, but being Finnish my definition for the verb "to love" can only be used to close family or girlfriends or such, so I will refrain from doing that as I want to speak only in a manner that is natural to me. Such is my lifestyle. I anyway want to show that I am writing sincerely and with friendly intentions, no matter how bad I always am in making myself understood in such matters . (quite a long way of saying this, BTW ))


........


Hopefully the alternating font sizes have made it easier to read this, not harder. ([/size]Oh, and apparently I'm ending this message with brackets, too ))

Dakkus, you know what ? That's wisely spoken.

[Tik Tak]

Hi everyone.

To start a short presentation, I was among the first EBT users in 2002, the first Portuguese user in fact, and I translated the first Portuguese version of the website. In those first years I was very involved on this project, and I was always on the forum. Then my participation was reduced to only tracking notes, for many reasons, mainly lack of time. More recently I've visited the forum a few times, and I hardly can recognize anyone, both in the Portuguese or in the English forums. I even had to change my nickname, because didn't remember the password of the first one (Bossa Nova)...

Anyway, although I enjoyed the forum and community, my mainly use and interest in this website was tracking notes, and still is. I like it, it's a stupid and sterile hobby, but I like it for some reason. And I want it to last, so it sounds to me much more reasonable and reliable a professional administration of the website, then one based on.. charity? of a single person. A few Google ads would be enough to pay for the site costs, and wouldn't bother me a single bit. Most of the websites I use (e-mail, searching, video, blogs) have publicity, which is a small price for using a good service for free. That's exactly what I want for EBT, that it works fine and with no costs to users.

And I guess that's what most EBT users want too. Most of them don't come often to the forum as well. Tracking bills, that's the first purpose of the this, right? So please, solve this very annoying fight as soon as possible, and according to the laws, and not "feelings". The forum community is always changing.. big deal if someone made lots of posts in the last year... The creator of this site is not a mythological entity, it's a real person, so with real rights over this matter.

So please, solve this all thing soon and get to a reliable and sustainable solution. Tracking serial numbers is already weird enough, if we ad to that the factor uncertainty on the future of the records or worst, a schism of them.. well, it gets a bit psycho I guess.

Peace and a happy new year!

PS: I could never imagine that there were so much "profit allergy" between money trackers... that was a real surprise!

[Craft]

Sorry, my english is not wery good, so I wish that someone translate this

Iltaa vaan kaikille
Minun Englanninkielitaitoni on sen verran rajoitettua, että kirjoitan suomeksi ja toivon jonkun kääntävän sen Englanniks (ja korjaavan kieliopilliset virheet samalla)
Mää oon tämmönen suht keskiverto harrastaja ja olen ymmärtänyt vallitsevan tilanteen näin.
Sivuston idean on keksinyt joku Giro tai oikeastaan kopsannut sen Where's George ideasta ja kehitellyt sitä ekat pari vuotta ja sitten on avuksi tullut Avij ja Marko. Jonkun ajan kuluttua Giro on jostain syystä jäänyt oikeastaan kokonaan pois tästä harrastuksesta ja Avij ja Marko ovat kehittäneet ja ylläpitäneet tätä harrastusta (ilmeisesti maksaneetkin meidän kaikkien harrastuksen). Jossain välissä, en tiedä koska, on mukaan tullut useampiakin vapaaehtoisia, jotka auttavat moderoinneissa, tulkin hommissa ym. Nyt Giro on yhtäkkiä ottanut sivuston haltuunsa ja kopioinut omaan koneeseensa kaikkien setelitiedot, koska aikoo sillä tienata jotenkin ja ottanut Avijilta ja Markolta käyttöoikeudet pois.
Avij on luonut uuden osoitteen, jossa on siis edelleen samat tiedot.
Siinäpä tietoni pähkinänkuoressa.

Koska ilmeisesti suurinosa käyttäjistä (setelimäärällisesti) on siirtynyt eu puolelle, niin kuinkas Giro on ajatellut hoitaa nämä vapaaehtoistyöt ja mitä sivustolle tapahtuu jos hän taas kohta kyllästyy harrastukseen. Jos itse työskentelisin vapaaehtoisena jossain yhdistyksessä en todellakaan tykkäisi ajatuksesta, että joku kerää rahaa minun ja muitten ilmaisesta työstä yhdistyksen hyväksi. Ja jos sivuja aiotaan käyttää mainontaan, mikä takaa ettei minulle ala kohta tulemaan osumailmoitusten mukana jotain mainoksia.
Minä olen valinnut sivustokseni eurobilltracker.eu:n koska luotan enemmän Avijiin ja Markoon, jotka ovat todellakin aktiivisia jäseniä. Enkä halua, että joku minulle tyystin tuntematon käyttäisi hyödykseen minun harrastukseen käyttämääni aikaa. Markoa en sen kummemmin tunnista edes kuvista, mutta Avij ainakin näyttäisi olleen mukana kaikissa yhteisissä tapahtumissa Suomessa ja Euroopassa. Olen myös saanut yhteyden Avijiin, joka kerta kun tarvetta on ollut.
Toivon että jonkinlainen sopu saadaan aikaan eikä tapauksesta jää kellekkään mitään hampaankoloon. Aion jatkaa kirjailua ainoastaan eu puolella ja olenkin lähettänyt com puolelle pyynnön poistaa kaikki setelitietoni. Samalla pyydän anteeksi kaikilta, että järjestin 3 feikkiosumaa com puolelle, että muutama kirjaaja pääsisi foorumiin ja näkisi mitä on tapahtunut. Nyt jo tajuan, että se ei ehkä ollut kovin asiallista ja tuntuukin pahalta nyt katsoa com sivujen osumalistaa, joka on täynnä feikkiosumia. Itse olen sitä mieltä, että pitäisi olla jonkinmoinen pankkitili, johon voisi laittaa vapaaehtoisen kannatusmaksun esim 5€, jolla katetaan harrastuksen yhteiset kulut.
Toivottavasti hauska harrastus ei kaadu rahaan
-Pimpe-

Here goes, roughly :

Evening everyone

My English skills are so limited that I'll write in Finnish and wish someone would translate it into English (and correct grammatical errors too).

I'm a rather average amateur and I have understood the present situation as follows.

The idea for the site was invented by someone called Giro, or actually he copied it from Where's George and developed it for the first couple of years, and then Avij and Marko came to help. After a while, Giro has in fact totally dropped the hobby for some reason, and Avij and Marko have developed and maintained it (and apparently paid the costs for this hobby of ours). Somewhere down the way, I don't know when, more volunteers have joined in, who help in moderations, as interpreters etc. Now Giro has suddenly taken over the site and copied everyone's bill data to his own computer, because he wants to make money with them somehow, and cancelled Avij's and Marko's user rights. Avij has created a new web address, where the same data still exist.

That's in a nutshell what I know.

Since apparently the majority of users (by number of bills) have moved to the eu side, how is Giro planning to take care of the work by volunteers and what will happen to the site if he once again gets bored with the hobby? If I were working as a volunteer in an association myself, I surely wouldn't like the idea if someone were making money for himself out of gratuitous work by me and others for the association. And if the site will be used for advertising, what would guarantee that I won't start getting some advertisements along with the hit notifications?

I have chosen the eurobillracker.eu to be my site since I have more trust in Avij and Marko who are truly active members. And I don't want someone totally unknown to me to take advantage of the time I have spent on this hobby. I don't actually recognize Marko, not even from pictures, but at least Avij seems to have attended all the common happenings in Finland and Europe. I have also reached Avij every time I have had a need for that.

I hope that some kind of harmony will be reached and that the incident will leave no one any old scores to settle with anyone. I'll continue entering notes only on the eu side and therefore I have sent a request to the com side to remove all my bill data. I also apologize to everyone that I arranged three fake hits to the com side, so that certain users could enter the forum and see what has happened. I now realize that this action may not have been quite correct, and I now feel bad to look at the com site hit list, full of fake hits. I think that there should be a bank account or something where people could pay a voluntary support amount say € 5 to cover the common costs of the hobby.

I hope that the nice hobby won't fall down because of money.

[Craft]

I have many thoughts about the whole matter but I'll crystallize them into this only:

So far, the slogan for EBT could proudly and justly have been:

Concordia parvae res crescunt...

Sadly, this may now have to be changed to the latter part of the proverb:

... discordia maximae dilabuntur.



[Rough translation: With consensus, small things grow... with discord, greatest things fall to pieces.]