Is RLSLOG.net Nearing Its End?

August 11, 2008 by sharky

RLSLOG.net, the popular blog for new scene releases, is facing even further troubles today as a group of seven staffers tendered their resignation publicly on a blog posting. As expected, it was quickly removed as though it didn’t exist. This puts yet another nail in the coffin for RLSLOG, as nearly all of the best editors / contributors have now left the site in search of greener pastures. Here’s where it was for just a matter of hours:

http://www.rlslog.net/time-to-say-goodbye-rlslogstaff/

Here it is in full (by ReeGed):

It is with great sadness that I must announce that the following RLSLOG staff members hereby resign from their positions:

Over, Christian, Nyr, sc0rff, Nikola, Mr.X and myself (ReeGed).

 

Unfortunately it’s not the 1st of April this time around.

 

During my time as a RLSLOG editor and admin I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. Most people make a very minor contribution (a couple of posts or so) then they leave their editors account unused. I’ve also seen major contributors leave RLSLOG. Shiny and Lee left the site without really stating their true reasons. Their reasons however were the same as ours, but the editors above including myself are hereby giving you, the reader, the courtesy of knowing why we must leave this site which we have put endless hours of work into.

 

RLSLOG was once a very small project. I don’t think anyone ever suspected this site would grow as much as it has. At the end of July this year, we peaked at 237,814 UNIQUE visitors in one day. On a regular day we’ll get anything from 200,000 to 230,000 unique visitors. This growth came about relatively quickly. RLSLOG has only been around for a bit over 2 years. As you might imagine, the curve of ad revenue growth over time must look pretty sweet.

 

The truth of course, is that only one single person sees the full profits from the RLSLOG ads and that is Martin (the founder and owner of the site). The majority of the staff including myself completely accepted this and continued to write our articles. RLSLOG was a fun hobby for us and never something we expected any money from. In the past 5 months however, we’ve witnessed the regard to quality from the owner slowly decay. When the staff has had their eyes set on improving this site, his aims have been to increase ad revenue. To do so, he has turned this site into something we can no longer proudly write for.

 

On a personal level I’d like to thank all of the great people that have made my time at RLSLOG such a pleasant one. Some of the editors had a couple of things to add:

 

Mr.X:

As the second longest running editor on rlslog.net besides Martin, I have decided it is time to call it. Spanning over 16 months and 1000 posts I’ve decided to quit while I’m ahead. There have been too many disagreements between the staff and the site’s owner, and we have all collectively decided to completely cease operations from here on.

 

Christian:

Being an editor for a site which does not value the input and feedback of its staff is not something I’d like to be a part of. Thank you to everyone who commented and I hope you’ve made good use of the applications (my main category) I’ve posted about.

 

sc0rff:

I have not been an editor for very long here on rlslog, but from my short time, being involved with the wonderful staff, the forums and the awesome irc community I have discovered the true face of rlslog from the inside. I have dedicated many late nights to cover TV releases from across the pond with nothing in return. Unfortunately the owner is unenthusiastic and has no desire to maintain quality on the site.

 

Nikola:

RLSLOG is great because of all the ACTIVE editors here. Thanks to all readers of Rlslog, & thanks for your comments. Greetz from Nikola.

 

Over:

I’d like to see RLSLOG grow and be more than just a SCENE news site. I could really imagine a great community here, and I am not only talking about the forums I am talking about things on a different scale. My Thanks go out to a lot of cool people i met in the staff and on IRC.

Read follow-ups on this thread in the RLSLOG Forums (which are still admin’d by ReeGed - for now at least). There’s no telling how long that thread will live.

The story doesn’t end there, however; and Martin (the sysop/owner of RLSLOG.net) has taken the brunt of the blame of the recent exodus of editors for underpaying (some suggest hoarding) the ad revenue from the site, which is obviously quite high. But before you jump on the bandwagon to stomp all over Martin, one should take a look at this recent MSN conversation between ReeGed and Martin (as posted by Martin):

http://paste2.org/p/57599

Here’s Martin’s rebuttal to the original post which contained ReeGed resignation (and the others):

http://www.rlslog.net/rlslog-riot-look-from-the-other-side

Whom you believe doesn’t change a thing - the writers are gone, and even the forums are in serious jeopardy. Why ReeGed would want to continue to be the admin for the forums of a site he just quit writing for is anyone’s guess. My hunch is he’ll eventually - probably sooner than later - take his loyal forum fanbase to his own URL.

Regardless, there’s a ton of competition for scene-release blogs, proving that the Hydra Effect does indeed span across more than just BitTorrent sites. Look for these RLSLOG competitors:

As a last note, those who are loyal to RLSLOG but wish to remove the annoying ads can do so with either AdBlockPlus for Firefox, or this small script.

UPDATE (Aug 22/08) - It appears that the RLSLog Forums are now completely gone, yet another huge blow to their community. Worse news follows - the editors that left the site have commandeered the official RLSLog IRC channel, and RLSLog has had to scramble to set up another channel - look for it here: irc://irc.austirc.net #rlslog.



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