[Raion]

Recently I was made aware of some nasty rumors spreading on Reddit and via a discord that shall not be named, and I wanted to make a post specifically for newer users and the unaware so people are not misled by our silence. 

• Firstly, the main founder (Me) is not a criminal. There's a persistent rumor and some comments from me from years ago that are being taken out of context. I have no criminal history. I have never been charged with any actual crimes and convicted, not even "reckless driving" which in the US is a Class 1 Misdemeanor (Meaning the most severe kind). As an adult my only "crimes" are related to urban exploration, wherein to explore abandoned places I have trespassed or in some cases disabled locks or doors on abandoned buildings. Like most urban explorers I follow a code of ethics that states to not break things like windows, not to damage buildings or steal artifacts etc. Any other rumors related to my "criminal history" are taken out of context, things I did as a teen (am I supposed to believe that nobody else did stupid stuff as a teen?), fabrications I told primarily to test if people were sharing my personal info (And it worked, whataya know?) 
  
• Secondly I have never ran anyone off from IRIXNet. I have had to make hard decisions to terminate people's positions here in the past (Something I no longer do alone, being there's others who help in those decisions) and I've had to ban a repeat offending user (along with a troll/doxxer who attacked me) but these were made after multiple attempts to remedy proved impossible. Anyone else claiming to have been ran off left of their own accord.
  
• Finally, I've made it a point since the mid-pandemic to not give a lot of energy to people like this. I only am speaking up because I had a user come here and ask me personally to confirm the veracity of claims. 
  
  Discord is a cancer, and Reddit is not much better. I maintain a presence on Reddit because I'm one of the few active leaders of the IRIX community who can quickly respond to questions and answers on Reddit, and I am also one of the fastest reactors to changes in the industry. I won't pretend my infrastructure is perfect, it's not and I'm working to fix that as we speak, but I can definitely say with certainty that I'm not a moron. Rumor mills hurt others, so I would recommend people to never consider gossip as the "Truth"
  

[sunray]

Sorry to hear such stuff. Just curious, what do you mean when you say that the infrastructure is not perfect, in what way I mean?

[Raion]

Sorry to hear such stuff. Just curious, what do you mean when you say that the infrastructure is not perfect, in what way I mean?

It's fine, but I just have had enough people mention it that I had to say something. People are fucking psychotic.

The infrastructure we have here is a bit unreliable at times with a profound lack of monitoring tools or "automation" (AKA there's no devops).

There's a few reasons for that, but the main ones are that I set this stuff up myself and I've done very little other than run updates, build new packages, and maintain our setup as best I can by myself. I'm an old fashioned sysadmin who despises devops. I see utility in stuff like it, but I've not been very good at learning it because most of it is Python-based. I am, for scripting, primarily a Lua guy.

I'm not a fan of big tech (AWS, Vultr etc) so I've purposely kept us off that. Why? They're hard to use, expensive, and if we ever decide/need to speak outside of big tech's norms, we have the freedom to do so. That's another reason.

I have a job and gotta sleep, but I keep a close eye on the community and stuff, I keep things well moderated and I make sure nothing really "sits" too long so we have a good response time for a lot of issues. I have since the beginning of IRIXNet kept a close eye and worked hard to keep us on top of the new users and ensure everyone is quickly brought up to speed.

[weblacky]

Wow, I never heard these rumors but good on you for telling us. Your site has been reliable for me and at its current size I've not seen hiccups or growing pains. It's free, so it's uptime has been pretty stellar (my opinion).

I don't know why it would matter at all about prior criminal history, you don't physically interact with anyone, you're not chatting personally with people, nor are you talking about people. You put out technical updates and opinions on troubleshooting...wow, so scandalous.

Honestly, we don't have to all be someone you'd "want to get a beer with" and there is no content here that isn't about collectables, electronics, or hobbies. It's all indexed by Google, it's all out in the world, It's good content as far as I've seen (compared to social media).

It's sad that people attack you out of jealousy, because that's what it is, you run the most repair-oriented SGI community site in present times...period. Your finger is inside the pulse of SGI collecting and repair. You said it, then did it. That takes real commitment. That kind of commitment, shows me you're serious and have good intentions. I'm happy to be keep contributing (both on Patreon and as a content creator) as your site has allowed me to grow my skillset as well. It's educational, that has value.

Don't for one second feel bad about your success and your work, you're building on it, it can only get better. I also don't think you've made this site "all about you". We know you're the owner/operator. But it's ran in a fair way, decorated in a neutral manner, and doesn't silence people.

The quality of content is the best "welcome" to newcomers I can think of, where else are you going to find this stuff now?

[Raion]

The majority of unreliability has been extremely transient, since 2019 we've really had very little downtime overall. Certainly less than some major sites, or on ancilary services, mostly for files.

> I don't know why it would matter at all about prior criminal history, you don't physically interact with anyone, you're not chatting personally with people, nor are you talking about people. You put out technical updates and opinions on troubleshooting...wow, so scandalous.

I mean, it does and doesn't, but I'm not a criminal is the point, and there's a person whose under a bad faith attempt to convince people I'm a criminal with no regard for others, which is false. Some of the things they posted could have only been gained from them basically stalking me, which unnerved me slightly. That's some rent-free obsession, for sure.

I think integrity matters, to be fair. Being an urbexer is hardly a crime in the US of note. "Oh I got arrested for looking around in an abandoned factory and not bolting from the cops in time." is that really what someone wants to claim is so noteworthy? (I have never actually been arrested in my life, granted). It's also in other parts of the world legal/decriminalized, including a lot of Europe. If you're unarmed, clearly not causing a disturbance and compliant then the cops will shrug and escort you off with a slap, and send you on your way. Or in China, where I did it (Ghost cities) you can literally just pass 500 RMB to a cop and he'll pretend he didn't see you.

> Don't for one second feel bad about your success and your work, you're building on it, it can only get better. I also don't think you've made this site "all about you". We know you're the owner/operator. But it's ran in a fair way, decorated in a neutral manner, and doesn't silence people.

The majority of the "Raion is a prick with eyeballs for testicles and his name should not be mentioned" comes from our discord we had, which was a shitshow, but I mean it was a place that ultimately just got out of hand due to being advertised on /g/ (4chan tech board) and also just attracting the wrong crowd. If people actually gave you the full story, it was intended as a "shoot the shit" place, nothing more, People kept rioting and forcing my hands with it. I learned my lesson though. Live discussions are for the moronic.