A new message has graced the top of Brickshelf.com:
Notice: Brickshelf will not be shutting down!
We will be offering “featured” accounts for $5/month shortly.
We have received hundreds of supportive emails in the past few days including many who said they would like to contribute financially but did not know how. This has had us rethink the practicality of charging for enhanced features.We plan to do this without reducing current functionality for free users. Thank you for your enormous show of support.
IMPORTANT: do NOT try to download the entire site, it causes major problems, slows things down for normal users and you will be permanently blocked. We will make older folders public again after we see the crawlers go away.
Thank God.
Well that was fun :)
makes me want to go build!
The Lego gods have sent down a true blessing. $5 is inconvinient, but i think it’s worth it, and it also resolves some uncertanties about the reasons that it was initially shutting down. This is most definetly the best LEGO news ive heard this past few week. Let us praise the Lego gods and cherish brickshelf.com for ever.
I wonder what the enhanced features are. And if moderation time will be better.
I want Brickshelf back but I want to be able to rely on it, and this message – although it contains good news – is still frustratingly short on information. I’m intrigued by the mention of “us” and “we” – is the running of the site now shared with someone else?
If someone from Brickshelf is out there, please just let us know what’s been going on.
“IMPORTANT: do NOT try to download the entire site, it causes major problems, slows things down for normal users…”
Ha! I knew it! THe bandwidth hit from everyone leeching folders must’ve been ridiculous!
Too little, too late.
Seriously, how can anyone trust a site operated by this guy after all the nonsense of the past week? I have begun my migration to MOCPages and I see no reason to change my decision.
I have completely agree with Ted. Why would you want to pay for a site run by an idiot? He closes the site without warning or reason. Then it comes back just to close again.
Download everything you can and move to a different site. For $5 a month I think there can be a much better site made and run by someone else.
Plus it won’t be the same site anyways. The fun of the site is that little kids and less skilled people had things up for people to look at, they won’t know. It will because a Lugnet where only the crazy freak who spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on Lego’s go.
If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a post from Kevin on Lugnet:
http://news.lugnet.com/announce/brickshelf/?n=128
He says he could have handled things differently, but there’s no explanation and no commitment to handle things better in the future.
Ted’s right: the trust is gone. Nobody wants to build their house on sand. I’m moving to MOCPages too.
It’s great that it’s back, but with the site VERY primitive compared to other outlets (resists using the F-word), why would you even want to use the site when there are better out there- something pointed out ironically after the downfall of Brickshelf.
Then there’s that issue of trust which is perhaps the biggest hurdle in enticing people back, and the fee getting charged certainly isn’t going to help bringing back those numbers.
I wont shrug off what Brickshelf has done for the community, and even the process of building itself, but I won’t be going back to a site that’s charging me for something I can get for better elsewhere.
$60 a year will get you a private site.
$60 will get you two years of Flickr and a sixpack. The choice is clear.
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