The past week was the end of an era. After consideration between myself close friends, I decided to sever my ties with the WhatNET IRC Network . The reasons for doing this were pretty clear and were thought out. WhatNET was formed when users from the AfterNET IRC Network decided that they needed to move on, and create their own home.

The story in short is that two network staff decided to return to the previous full positions even though one had resigned and one hadn't exactly done anything for the network this year. The returned to their staff positions (incidentally as network admins) and decided to unlink two servers.

The servers were in a test phase with the network to see their progress over a period of time (standard procedure really). Earlier this year, the network came to a point where it was stagnant. Myself, Martijn and two other members of staff decided that this needed to change and we needed to change the direction of WhatNET to prevent it becoming permanently stagnant and then eventually dwindling down to nothing. These changes were made, new servers were accepted for test links, we got closer to the users and we updated many aspects of the network.

We moved over to a new IRCD and I created a new site for the network, a clean fresh approach to what should of been a whole new era. This however, isn't the case. There seems to be a lot of hang ups on the previous network in which many of the staff were members. To prevent yourself and a network from moving forward you have to let go of the past and when you're in denial then you're not able to do so.

I handed my resignation in on Saturday night, which was after another staff member had also resigned. Following mine, Martijn resigned as well as providing a de-link notice. Josh also de-linked two of his servers. We've since moved on (we're keeping user accounts of WhatNET only) and started out with our new home. We plan to head in a forward direction and have systems in place to prevent the kinda of playground drama that ensues at WhatNET.

If you'd like to come and see our new home, named Eximo drop along to irc.eximonet.org and join #eximonet and come chat!