System operator of microwiki.org.uk Pierre d’Égtavie admitted earlier today that the reason for MicroWiki being offline yesterday was due to him having “a shot or two of vodka”.
MicroWiki, the web-based wiki and forums which are a major focal point for Austenasia’s foreign relations, has hosted a diverse and vibrant community of politicians and diplomats since it was founded in 2005, with Prime Minister HIH Crown Prince Jonathan joining in late 2008. When he attempted to access the site yesterday afternoon, he was met with a countdown ticking away to 15 days, with ominous background music and a heading of “Goodbye”.
Contact with other MicroWiki users via Skype revealed that the community was in a panic over what this could mean for the site, with Ultamian leader David Salapa declaring the apparent imminent closure of the site an “apocalypse”.
A few hours later, the countdown was replaced with a message from M. d’Égtavie apologising for the inconvenience and announcing that normal site access would resume in several hours. The website is now back to normal, but not before worry and uncertainty spread amongst the community – several users advised others to join them in saving back-ups of articles using Google’s cache system, and administrator Alexander Reinhardt offered to buy the site should d’Égtavie wish to resign as system operator.
Earlier today, d’Égtavie informed members of the Micropolitan Lounge chatroom on Skype that he’d “decided that everyone hated [him] and that [he] should close the site” after consuming some vodka – after putting up the countdown, he went to have a bath before returning to find the MicroWiki community in panic on Skype. Sober again, he reassured users that the website would not be closed, and stated that his actions were precisely the reason that he usually doesn’t drink.
M. d’Égtavie has since informed users that there are several safeguards against a deletion of the site, including several regularly updated back-ups.
Zealandian leader Haakon Lindstrom and Siroccan leader Daniel Anderson have both said they are “disappointed” with d’Égtavie’s actions. However, the Prime Minister has come out in defence of the system operator. Commenting on another news article on the situation, he urged people not to “forget all the hard work M. d’Egtavie has put into the wiki over the past two years – he is an incredibly competent admin, and nobody should forget that because of a single mistake”.
