The hacker is gone. I cleared out this sever, and restored everything.
Gonad does not like me, so he stole the database and created his own version of the site at www.son240sx.org. So now he is trying to persuade everyone that I am evil and that they should abandon son240sx.ca and go to .org where they care about each and every person.
My Rebuttal to Gautam’s Announcement
Firstly, any concerns you have should be taken up with me directly rather than sneaking around behind my back and talking smack. Thank you so much for informing me of this thread.
I’d just like to take a minute to rebuttal your “announcement” for what its worth.
I will openly admit that I do have other priorities now, so I am not as active on SON as I once was. I don’t appreciate your tone, or personal attacks, and feel it is unfair to undermine all the work I have done in the past 4 years to improve the forums. I have done most of the major upgrades since the days of black and yellow, and don’t appreciate you taking credit for doing everything. I am the one who installed all of the new themes, vBulletin, etc. so please don’t say I haven’t done anything lately.
The title of President does not mean that much to me anymore since I am not very active. I tried to get involved again, but none of the initiatives we created went anywhere, and to be honest I don’t have the time to do all the changes and programs myself. I would gladly pass the club on to a worthy party, but it seems everyone has their own agenda. Also, as is one of my biggest pet peeves, nobody has approached me regarding any of this either. When I took over as President it was because nobody was stepping up so I came up with a plan, spoke with the former admin’s, and got the ball rolling. That is how things should work, we shouldn’t be running around behind each other’s backs. Grow up.
There is no reason to move the forums to another domain name aside from wanting to take control which you have no right to do anyways. Moving the club to a new server doesn’t affect your ability to keep the boards clean and club running, so I am sure there is an ulterior motive (eg. get rid of me). If you have an issue with me, at least do me the courtesy of talking to me directly.
Yes, I essentially “own” SON now. Its been this way for a few years. Why is this such a problem all of a sudden?
Alot of the new members haven’t met me, but I didn’t know it was a popularity contest. If that was the case I’d certainly be at all the meets and work my way around like a politician schmoozing for support. I have met most of the older guys, and have put a lot of work into SON. Just because I don’t know all the new faces doesn’t make me a terrible human being.
As for the issue of running a webstore on the club’s FTP… back in 2004 I created an installation of osCommerce to test it out since I didn’t have my own server. Once I saw that it would work for iquaco.com I purchased my own hosting account and installed it there. I am sorry I forgot to uninstall it and took up 20MB of server space. Time to burn me at the stake.
I knew Gonad was trying to start his own version of the site, so I spent 24hrs straight to beat him to the punch. I set my alarm clock every 2 hours last night so I could import more tables into the database and get SON up and running ASAP. Why? Because Gonad went behind my back, and there is nothing I hate more than backstabbers. Funny how some kid with no technical training beat the world’s greatest webmaster in getting the forum up and running. If you care so much what took so long? Oh yeah, I set it all up the first place, so I know my way around the script.
Gonad also changed the password on the webhost behind my back to lock me out. Again, a cunning display of his integrity. The first I knew of this was when I went to login to restore the forum myself.
In terms of ownership/control… of course I want to maintain ownership of SON. Why would I want it to fall into the hands of people who act this way? It is a disgrace. Sure I could sell control of the club, but all I’ve heard are rumours, and nobody has approached me about it. I wouldn’t sell to someone who would ruin it.
Speaking of pocketing money, almost every one of the regional leaders has collected membership funds and not remitted it to the club, so don’t try to pin this on me. There are about 10 people who have collected membership fees, yet I am the only one who has any expenses. I collected enough to pay for hosting, which is why I did not charge members from 2004, 2005, and 2006 again… we have enough. If I really wanted to exploit the site financially I would have pressed for renewals.
The Google ads issue: yes, the money went to me. I pay for the hosting on my credit card, there is no separate account. I am not secretly collecting money. Anyone who bothered to ask knows that the google ads money went to me. But its not very much… how many of us actually click those crappy links? I’m clearly not getting rich off these.
Half of the Vendors are senior members / admin crew so they didn’t even pay for thier section. The others, yes I collected from them. Anyone who has bothered to ask knows this as well. I haven’t done anything secretly, you just haven’t bothered to ask.
You say my interest in the club is financial. If I really wanted to make money off the club I would have put the Google ads back up after you took them down. I would make sure memberships are renewed EVERY year. I would go out of my way to find more banner ads and sponsors to buy stuff. I would go find more ventors. I would launch my own aftermarket parts store ON the domain where there is lots of traffic. I would optimize the whole site for search engines. I would… and the list goes on. There are so many ways to exploit the site if I was here for the money, so I don’t think that argument holds water.
son240sx.org is running on its own version of vBulletin because I changed my licence number and password so you couldn’t steal that as well.
I am not going to personally attack Gonad because it is not my style, but I am annoyed by the fact that he hasn’t bothered to talk to me directly. IMO his actions are extremely childish. Having people from his camp spamming the son240sx.ca forum with this “important announcement” propaganda is another good example of this. I’ve tried to be civil, and haven’t banned him and his “crew”. Why? Because I want there to be one SON, one club, not two. I will not be restoring moderator permissions to this group, but will allow them to use the forum so long as they can behave.
So now that you’ve made me out to be the badguy, I have a question for you. What is your REAL interest in controlling SON240SX? With the splendid display of character you’ve demonstrated over the past couple days, I am not sure you’re such an angel either.