[Internet] ROMhacking.net Closure Was Handled Horribly
Alright. I already shared my feelings about ROMhacking.net essentially closing. Now that the "mourning" is out of my system, I'd like to return to something I previously touched upon:
The closure of this site has been the most halfcocked, rushed, and lazy "closure" of a site of this magnitude that I have ever seen.
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Firstly, this notification was tossed up as a generic news article. Not a special announcement, not its own thing or a landing page, but just a generic news article that's easy to overlook. As it is, the article has moved from the bottom of the front page to being archived.
Secondly, There is absolutely no obvious indication whatsoever that the site is being closed or put into "news-only mode". The only indication comes in the form of a "too bad, so sad" kind of page that pops up when trying to submit anything other than news which reads: "Submissions other than News are permanently closed." No apology, no explanation, nothing. Why leave those options, or leave the Scratchpad up, when you're not accepting new submissions and refuse to explain what's going on? As far as the casual viewer is concerned, the site is just "business as usual", but being slow to update. As previously stated, that's what I thought until I noticed an unrelated news post mention "the end".
Thirdly… you've archived all the hacks on The Internet Archive so people can pick and choose, so why even leave the site up as it is? Especially if it's costing so much money, or such a burden to operate? As has been mentioned, the brief and unassuming mention of the site closure has more than likely caused more than a few site-side "scrapings", likely in part due to the lack of apparent information regarding the closure. So, why leave it up when there are "alternatives"?
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08/22 Addendum: While it's "considerate" of the management to upload the entire 11 GB archive to the Internet Archive for preservation, it's not very well organized. All the files were haphazardly tossed in with little consideration to where. Yes, hacks are in their own folder… documents… screenshots… That's all fine and dandy, but, here's the thing.
That's as far as it goes.
It's not organized by game, or even by hack author. It's organized by when it was uploaded and maintains the original upload archive filenames, leaving the user to route around blindly for their favorite hacks. For example, would most people be able to tell what a file named "ttpac123" or "dontpanic" is? If you're looking for something specific, you'd better hope that the original author used a descriptive name like "Ultima - Runes of Virtue - Legend of Zelda Skin". Otherwise, good luck.
It's also worth noting that this entire archive was uploaded with only the implied consent of the original creators - this stemming from the idea that they put their work on the website to begin with. No one was explicitly asked if their work could be shared outside of ROMhacking.net and, in fact, more than a few ROM hacks specifically say they're not to be distributed outside of that website.
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Finally, the drama. Going public with that bit of information was a terrible choice, in my opinion. Nightcrawler could have simply said "I don't wanna do this anymore and I don't trust anyone who's offered to run it in my stead", and left it at that. Now, the rumor mill is in full production and people are slinging misinformation and conspiracies around. I understand wanting to give users full disclosure, but the way the post was written sounds more like they were fishing for sympathy rather than trying to explain the situation from start to finish.
As I said, this is easily the worst site closure of this magnitude I've ever seen, and I really have lost all faith in this place going forward. This makes me really wish I had bailed a couple months ago.