Stepping down from most of my duties.

#1

(x-posted from /r/reddoin)

Hi everyone,

I know I have been mostly quiet in public around Reddcoin since early in May. With the recent and ongoing changes in Reddcoin leadership and uncertainty surrounding the project, I feel it is best to publicly state my intentions moving forward. That being said, I want to take a moment to officially step down from all of my duties except as caretaker of wiki.reddcoin.com.

I will still be around, though in a diminished capacity, and will maintain contact with the re-structured development team moving forward. I would still very much love to see the realization of the development plan that I helped outline through the Reddheads newsletter last Spring, and am going to make myself available for discussions and planning in this or any changes in that plan in-as-much as I can.

To be honest, while I mostly enjoyed my time as an official member of Reddcoinā€™s development team, I also had more stressful and sleepless nights during this period than I would wish on anyone. When I got into Reddcoin, it was never my intention to do more than become a member of what I hoped would be a thriving community. After my work on the wiki page here on reddit and the Reddcoin treasure hunt last spring and summer, I agreed to come on as the chief editor of the then-new Reddcoin wiki page. After that, I tried to help the Reddcoin economy by getting more involved in development, and quite frankly over-extended myself.

I know some of you are upset about the lack of progress with this project. I can only apologize for myself: I had high hopes this Spring to help build a useful javascript library that other developers could use, and never was able to complete that goal. To everyone that had hoped to use that library, Iā€™m really sorry if I let you down. I hope you can understand that at the point I am at in life, I couldnā€™t let a volunteer project intervene with my real-life responsibilities.

I want to thank everyone who helped make my time as a member of the Reddcoin team an enjoyable experience. Iā€™ve made a number of friends and participated in some fun times. Sadly I also allowed this project to help ruin a friendship, which was at the time devastating to me, and still is something that I dwell on at times. Finally, Iā€™ve learned a lot about myself and also about others and the world in general.

Lastly, thank you to everyone on the core team, and all the community members that have always been kind to me. Many years from now, when I look back on my time with this project, I will think of people like TheSciNerd, BrownSlaughter, bmp02050, Naro, Oliver, artiscience, tralf, reddibrek, Gnasher, and many more. You are all very good people, and I hope the good memories of Reddcoin outlive the bad for you.

All the best,
BRM

For anyone interested, the library in itā€™s unfinished form is still available at:
https://github.com/reddcoin-project/reddcore
and
https://github.com/reddcore

#2

bigreddmachine
All the best mate, you will be missed by many I am sure.
I posted over on reddit already so
I hope that you are able to drop by from time to time on this forum and offer up witty remarks as well.

#3

Thanks for all of your work. The word ā€˜ā€˜volunteerā€™ā€™ has a painful ring to it.
I am sure you are not the last person to abandon this project.

#4

Thanks for everything. Life is short so if things are holding you back because of this I fully understand!

laudney and reddcoin should take note here. This is how to properly step downā€¦

1 Like
#5

I feel you were a true cornerstone of reddcoin, your treasure hunt is one of my favourite memories of all my crypto experience and one of the main reasons I stuck around.

Good luck in your future endeavours

#6

bigreddmachine Hope you stick around as a community member at least, you have been a true asset to Reddcoin in your dev projects and community involvement. :o)

#7

bigreddmachine Thanks for everything youā€™ve done and continue to do for Reddcoin, especially your help addressing the communication troubles weā€™ve had this year.

It sounds like a few of the people working on the project have started to suffer from an understandable case of burnout. Do you think it might be better for the dev team to set longer-termed goals moving forwards? By that I mean either setting a more sustainable pace (maybe just a few hours of work each week) or having most of the team focus on one feature at a time. Iā€™m kind of in the dark so Iā€™m just throwing out some thoughts.

#8

GrayPhoenix said:

bigreddmachine Thanks for everything youā€™ve done and continue to do for Reddcoin, especially your help addressing the communication troubles weā€™ve had this year.

It sounds like a few of the people working on the project have started to suffer from an understandable case of burnout. Do you think it might be better for the dev team to set longer-termed goals moving forwards? By that I mean either setting a more sustainable pace (maybe just a few hours of work each week) or having most of the team focus on one feature at a time. Iā€™m kind of in the dark so Iā€™m just throwing out some thoughts.

Thanks GrayPhoenix. Thatā€™s an interesting questionā€¦ I think it kind of depends on the individual. Some people really like marathon sessions once every week or two, others like the slow and steady pace of a little every day. I always found that if I tried to do a little each day, I would end up either (a) not getting anywhere, or (b) spending too much time, including at work, looking at it because I didnā€™t like leaving things open ended and always had things in my mind to do next. Thatā€™s sort of how I am with anything that Iā€™m working on though, not just Reddcoin stuff.

I do think that trying to get more people involved on each project, so you can bounce ideas off each other and troubleshoot with others, might be beneficial. That requires either open sourcing everything, or at least granting more people access to private repos. Iā€™ve always been in favor of ā€œthe more open, the betterā€.

Any of that make sense, or answer your question?

2 Likes
#9

bigreddmachine

Thank you for the message Mike and for making things clear. I donā€™t know why but I feel sure youā€™re going to be around a bit longer! :slight_smile:

GrayPhoenix

It sounds like a few of the people working on the project have started to suffer from an understandable case of burnoutā€¦

I donā€™t think anyoneā€™s suffering from burnout, honestly.

Larry has made it clear he doesnā€™t want to work on the project any more. Thatā€™s not burnout - heā€™s just lost interest. For a while he has been dealing with RL stuff. He has also become quite sceptical about cryptocurrency, it should be said (perhaps rightly so!).

Jonathan does not do any coding. He feels the next Bitcoin hype cycle is necessary to bring interest to Reddcoin and that we have the infrastructure in place ready. I donā€™t think he would mind me writing this: this is simply what he said in his newsletter to the community.

Andrew is not suffering from burnout - heā€™s involved in other things and his motivation for the project has waned, but I wouldnā€™t call it burnout. The opposite really. It seems that ā€œRLā€ has also taken over for him.

For Mike - see above!

Leonard (Lionzeye) continues to make brief appearances but always to reassure that his thesis is advancing.

John (Gnasher) has ideas, is doing research and is enthusiastic about working through this transition phase into a new long-term period of development. But these plans are still being crystalised.

Iā€™ve only just begun to converse with Henry, but from what I read he appears genuinely enthusiastic to contribute to the project and he also clearly has a particular vision about how such a project might work in a more open-source fashion.

Iā€™ve been heavily overtime at work with some major projects coming to completion and associated events and changes, and also a series of family responsibilities. Iā€™m going to be pretty much out (as I have been) until September, when I would like to take up again from where I left off.

Again, this is a major transition phase and getting into a new stable collaborative environment will take more discussion and organisation. Itā€™s going to take time. Iā€™m sure others are going to become involved as well. But we need to be patient. And as I said before, for all development proposals, speak with Gnasher.

4 Likes
#10

reddibrek said:

bigreddmachine

Thank you for the message Mike and for making things clear. I donā€™t know why but I feel sure youā€™re going to be around a bit longer! :slight_smile:

Hey Stuart, I am not planning on disappearing. I mostly just need separation from being a part of any official team. I hope to find some small things here and there I can help with moving forward, maybe an app or site or something like that. But I am liking the idea of doing things just because I like to. My favorite thing Iā€™ve ever done was the treasure hunt, which was just me doing my own thing, not an official thing by the Reddcoin team. Maybe Iā€™ll find something like that down the road to get me going again :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#11

bigreddmachine That definitely does answer my question. I always appreciate your straightforward way of writing and your willingness to express your honest opinion.

Another question - Iā€™m trying to learn some javascript for a Reddcoin-related website/service Iā€™d like to build. I want to send reddcoins directly to addresses based upon what happens in a javascript application. Is this possible using your unfinished library? Iā€™m very new to programming so Iā€™m not sure if this is a valid question.

1 Like
#12

GrayPhoenix Hmm, Iā€™m pretty sure it is possible. But itā€™s definitely more convoluted than it needed to be, and not well documented. One question though - are you planning to have this run server-side or client-side?

#13

bigreddmachine Server-side.

#14

GrayPhoenix okay, in that case, do you want to use JS just to simplify the number of languages you use, or for another reason? are you writing a node.js backend? the ā€œreddcoreā€ library is where you want to start. I think it is probably prudent to run a node on your server or another server that it can talk to, rather than relying on a third-party like live.reddcoin.com. I probably canā€™t offer much specific advice. it might be worth tracking down TheSciNerd on reddit: /u/drthescinerd. he had a PHP reddcoin faucet that he ran a while back that can probably help you out a lot.

#15

bigreddmachine My brother is a web developer and he suggested I learn Javascript and use node.js based upon what I want to do with the site. I donā€™t know any programming languages so if I can do it all in JS I think it would be easiest for me. I have a long way to go, but I might have some more questions for you or TheSciNerd at some point in the future.

Iā€™ll take a look at the library once I understand a bit more about what Iā€™m doing.

#16

GrayPhoenix Love that you are getting involved

#17

GrayPhoenix said:

bigreddmachine My brother is a web developer and he suggested I learn Javascript and use node.js based upon what I want to do with the site. I donā€™t know any programming languages so if I can do it all in JS I think it would be easiest for me. I have a long way to go, but I might have some more questions for you or TheSciNerd at some point in the future.

Iā€™ll take a look at the library once I understand a bit more about what Iā€™m doing.

Okay, it sounds like you have the right idea. The current reddsight/reddcore infrastructure works with node.js, so it might work exactly as you need.