The Great Migration - Update and Member Discussion
Note: We apologise for the wall of text - to make things easier, the key points are highlighted in blue.
Dear members of the RPA Community,
As many of you know, or have by now rightly guessed – the JCINK move did not go according to plan. On behalf of the moderators of RPA we feel it’s time to explain rather than continue to speak in generalities. Our Technical Moderator, Miss Devil, was chiefly responsible for the selection of this new host and was helming the migration of our fair site to a new and better world; one which is not only more modern, but far less expensive to maintain than our current (and severely outdated) InMotion host. Unfortunately, we were misled in this endeavour. Sometime after our migration date came and went, Miss Devil disappeared.
We only recently learned, after inquiring with the folks at JCINK, that Miss Devil was informed back in 2023 that our migration, as originally envisioned, would not be possible. Miss Devil never passed that information back to us as a staff group, and so we did not have the opportunity to address it further or revise our plan. Instead we believe she attempted a workaround on her own initiative, while insisting to the rest of us that everything was indeed fine. Among other things, this meant that our FAQ about the move was not accurate (for example, usernames could NOT be transferred), and that we paid money to a third party for a new JCINK skin that we now may not use. According to JCINK, Miss Devil only contacted them a second time the week before the move deadline, where they informed her that her workaround would not work and that, again, a migration would not be possible. As this was the same day that Miss Devil disappeared, we can only assume that she panicked and decided to ghost us rather than admit her mistake.
With this information in hand, Miss Devil has been stripped of her staff title and all rights that come with that, and there is an ongoing conversation surrounding a potential permanent ban. Miss Devil had many opportunities to inform us of the truth, and we could have worked toward a better and more sustainable solution. The simple fact of the matter is, she chose not too and fled rather than taking accountability for her mistakes. She consciously chose to deceive us and by extension the entire RPA community.
As a staff we decided to trust one of our peers, and in so doing, we took you all down the rabbit hole with us. This is the cause of the numerous delays, the push back of the dates, and locking down threads to prevent new posts for a migration that ultimately wasn’t imminent, or even an option. These mistakes have taught us a valuable lesson and we will not repeat them. Our ultimate responsibility is to you, our user community, and we sincerely apologize for all that has transpired. We let you down, and we hope that in time you will be able to forgive us.
With that out of the way, what does the path forward look like? One thing we know for certain is that remaining with our current host in the long term is unsustainable. The costs are exorbitant. But that doesn’t mean we are giving up. Moving to JCINK is still an option, but it has drawbacks: as we cannot take any of our existing threads or data with us, to move there it means we lose all our history, all of our posts, blogs, visitor messages, the works. The advantage would be that we could move quickly, and we would keep the original site running for a "handover" period (currently proposed to extend 2-3 months after JCINK goes live) to give folks ample time to register and either migrate their content for themselves by simply re-posting it on JCINK, or to save it elsewhere. We are also exploring what else is out there, and if there is another host we can migrate to successfully which is more cost effective, but so far there is no standout option that will leave us secure and sustainable in the long run.
With all of the above said, we would now like to hear from you, our members, about how you would like us to proceed. We will also continue to provide updates as they are available. We thank you for your continued patience, understanding and support, and we welcome any and all feedback or questions that you have.
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