Quick Note: Authonomy Stablized

Someone took pity on the people at Authonomy and gave them new bandwidth. The site is stable and the agonized shrieks of jonesing site-junkies has quieted.

The culture shock continues, as members of the Starcraft Swarm flit in and out, erupting in little flames here and there. Other's (like myself) are settling in gently, cautiously testing the waters to see if it's truly safe to enter.

This is the complete message from Harper Collins:

We wanted to give you a quick update following the excitement that occurred over the weekend. (Yes, we followed it too.) (Trolls take that to heart. They were watching.)

48 hours ago none of us had heard of Starcraft. That was before Klazart posted his book on the site and started to invite support from the Starcraft community. His efforts were spectacularly successful and he has reaped the rewards of these newcomers’ support. We do not consider his actions to be breaching any site rules and his book will not be removed by us. Unfortunately the subsequent behaviour of a very small number of individuals – both his supporters and detractors – was considerably more questionable and in many cases was deeply offensive. This will not be tolerated: authonomy is for everyone. Please continue to use the ‘report abuse’ links to alert our moderators to any complaint.

(I distinctly hear a ruler rapping knuckles.)

Once again there has been much questioning of the book chart. We agree there is still room for improvement, but it is far from broken. We are willing to admit that the recent events have shown up real flaws in the algorithm behind the talent-spotter ranking. Some excellent suggestions have already been made and we’ll be considering these.

Finally, we need to apologise for the performance issues which are dogging the site at the moment. We appear to have a fault in our hosting infrastructure. It is not related to the activities at the weekend and we really should have more than enough capacity in the servers for the task at hand. We are investigating and service may be at erratic until this is resolved. Please bear with us on this one. We are making this a priority.

Posted: 23/03/2009 18:13:24

Being a techie, as well as a writer, I must say this is an elegant message. They admit there was an infrastructure issue. (Take any bets on what it was??) Spanked the trolls, said "48 hours ago we had never heard of Starcraft," AND defended the man's right to keep his novel in place.

I, as a new user, find it very soothing to my rattled nerves. I'm five chapters deep into the novel, have had a few comments, made 2 watch-lists and hope for the best.

If you happen to be curious about what I've posted -- "Besieged" has offically been retitled "Let's Do Lunch" it was posted in the Romance catagory and is about 2000 books down the list.

Here is the link: http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=7657

Stay tuned!