Studentis
 

None of you know me but I am a web developer that used to work for Studentis AB. Studentis AB is the company that purchased Abandonia.com from Kosta.

(content removed per request from thread author)

Thanks for your support!

wow, maybe kosta should read this

If I understand your complaints against the Studentis, the company appears to have violated several employment laws - which is more than enough to file a group lawsuit from all laid-off employees.

Coming to sites they own and posting your complaints there without any proof can however be grounds for them to sue you for defamation.

:notrust: Sorry, but as you know: they own us. They have access to the servers, and consequently the databases.
They can shut down the servers, re-create the accounts and at best take away the perpetrator's administrative access. At worst, ban their access to the site completely and sue them for damages.
If what you said is true, Studentis is not shy about laying off inconvenient personnel, and we are not their employees to begin with.

I sympathize with your situation, but if the choice is between aiding a complete stranger whom I don't have the slightest reason to trust and preserving Abandonia's current crew (and quite possibly existence), for me there is no choice whatsoever.
The welfare of the community has to take priority over that of an individual, no matter who they are. I hope you can understand this.

lol, they even forgot they own us, how could they care about accounts

I completely understand where you are coming from and have nothing against it. I just felt the need to air some of this since Studentis is trying to keep a lid on all of this so that they can continue to mislead.

BTW,

I really wish that they would try and sue me because then a lot would come out in the wash of it. They would gain nothing but I would have my day in court. Something which is very difficult to have in Sweden.

Maybe you can tell us why Abandonia has not been operational for many days.

If you mean the FTP server it is quite simple. In every case that I have been aware of the FTP server has stopped working because the bills have not been paid. This usually happens because there are no routines in place for payment. By this I mean if a certain person goes on vacation or is sick then the bills gather dust until they return. Why they do not pay for services in full for the whole year is a question that you will have to ask the Studentis Group. My feeling is that it because they do not posses adequat funds. Which is kind of strange because everything seemed to be liquid while Kosta was in charge.

Now if it concerning the new Abandonia and why things fail frequently I will go into detail if you like. But the basic reason is because the site is built on Drupal 4.7 and poorly coded Drupal. Studentis (despite warnings from all the web developers) chose to go with an older version of Drupal and not make any changes to the core system to accomodate Abandonias needs (which are huge!!).

If you want a more technical outline of the causes including explainations of the LAMP stack then I will start a thread on this elsewhere.

Sorry, I understand your situation but I won't delete my profile, this is my favourite site ever.
Explain me why they should not care about their investiments, I don't really understand.

Btw Kosta should be aware of this, Romano could you please contact him?
Thanks

Not before next Monday. Sorry.

Btw. : http://www.hiveminds.co.uk/node/3751

I just tried e-mailing him about this matter, but the mail bounced due to his inbox being completely filled up. :(

Figure that I might give his phone given at the Studentis' website a try in a little time.

I am using abandonia as a forum and I consider Kosta a good friend. I worked close with him here in Sweden for many months. He is a smart guy and we share an admiration for Tesla. So I don't want to hurt Abandonia as a community in any way. I especially don't want to ruin any business deals Kosta may have or hurt him. So you don't have to delete your profile ;)

But I do feel that people should be aware of the many things that happen in the background their favorite community. You can then go forward by making your own decisions based on good knowledge and feel good about your choices. Maybe deletion of profiles is a little harsh. But three or four days of complete silence will get a lot of attention. Because Abandonia is the last stronghold for Studentis.

Of course things may go the other way. A sudden flood into Abandonia to read this thread would kill the server and cause the router to have fits:nuts:

:huh: Could you elaborate what exactly do you mean?

wait...are you trying to get Abandonia shutdown?

Please stop..

Well, given this thread, and given how long the servers have been down, I think this is the end of Abandonia. To be honest, I felt something was wrong from the moment I saw the new website design. I said at the time it had gone from a cosy site to like a business excel demonstration, and that made me suspicious.

With this new site things like getting a thread response email, clicking the link, having to log in, logging in then taking me to my profile page and from there having to find the thread concerned to post a reply also made me angry! All this means I haven't visited Abandonia half as much since the new site design as I did before the change.

Despite the above - good luck Abandonia, no doubt in a week or so I will pop back and see what happened. Somehow, at the very least, I think the servers will still be down......

Why must the good die young :(

Alexa is not perfect but it gives a good view of the comparative value of abandonia as vs. all the other Studentis aquisitions.

Although it has declined slightly Abandonia remains the flagship and can be used to drive traffic to any number of websites in the ring. It also can be used to pump up numbers when potential investors look at the general stats for all the companies holdings.

Well trust me most members here don't have a good opinion about studentis and all the things that happened ever since the partnership started, but there's nothing we can do. If we boycott this site it would just kill it, and the community which doesn't have good opinion about studentis anyway.

If anyone can do anything about this then it is Kosta himself.

Take note I do not want to shut down Abandonia! If it helps some can change the thread title to "Boycott Studentis". I am guilty of being angry and using the title to gain attention.

What I would like to see is the power of the Abandonia community leveraged in away to make Studentis aware of how dangerous it is not to listen and to think that they simply can use people. Because believe me there have been numerous conversations concerning how important it is not to piss off the those that work hard to make Abandonia work. Kosta never stopped saying this while building the new site. But the Studentis leadership seems to always have another agenda, one that does not necessarily include the opinions and ideas of the Abandonia community. I would hate to see Abandonia become ghost town like Student.se which seems to be hanging on by having a popular domain name.

Student.se was fine but now it looks like a cross between lunarstorm and a brochure website. It is totally lifeless and has no personality while being milked for ad revenue. It is one of the sites that is being used for the "Google please buy us campaign". Something we all know will never happen. The originator of the site has moved on to better things about 6 weeks ago. I think that he knew that working with Studentis was a mistake and decided to part ways with them before getting screwed.

The end of Abandonia?

The core of this site knows very well this will never happen. If this site close down, it will open again somewhere else. If we can't use the name "Abandonia" again, we'll simply rename it...

Don't despair. We're here.

I think you are right...if something wrong happens...we could ask asylum to Abandonia Reloaded until things won't be solved, we could reorganize things there.

Btw thanks "carlmcdade", you are answering to several questions we had from long time.

QFT. We did it once, we can do it again.
AR is also owned by Studentis, mind you. If "something wrong" happens, both sites are likely to go down together.

QFT? What does that mean?

Quoted for truth?

And now it all comes clearer.

I always wondered why no one bothered to fix problems as soon as possible. I always wondered why we never moved to the original design (As this design was much worse). I always tough that Studentis were working for us, but in reality they own us.

What a bunch of bull****.

Who's gonna pay for the server? What's the new name? Has anyone sued Studentis yet? Where's my Ovaltine?

Calm down, Kugerfang. There are a few things we can try doing.

Like what?

Above is a qoute from wikipedia.
the following questions are directed to Carl
1. Do others in the team feel the same as you?
2. Is anyone working on the site?

Edit: maybe this thread should be given sticky status

I've sent my e-mail to Studentis. We'll see if they react to it.

You're right :(...

Ok, we can't do much, but they should remember that "we are the site", without crew and regular members this place would be soon a desert.
They should not play with us like dolls.

I suggest to wait Kosta's response and to wait some weeks before taking drastic actions.
Thanks Fifth for your mail, I hope they'll answer us soon.

All mails to him bounce back due to a completely clogged up inbox.
Both of my attempts to call him failed (maybe I was entering the numbers wrong... never dialed an international call before :o).
The soonest he'll be aware of the situation is next Monday, since I understand he doesn't have regular internet access in Ireland.

If we have to take any drastic measures (hopefully not), it will be done under my authority and on my full responsibility for their consequences.

My thoughts exactly.

Yes, I knew, I meant next Monday too :)

Hopefully not, of course.

Btw let me congratulate with you for your mail to studentis, the server is up, thanks to you this time we won a little battle :amused:

@carlmcdade: I have received an e-mail from Studentis regarding your matter. Basically, they refuse to comment on the disagreement between themselves and any current or past employees on open channels.
However, they did promise to issue some sort of statement regarding this matter by tomorrow.

Ok.. now i'm going to take the "bad guys'" side;
Here in Sweden, we have one of the thoughest employment-laws in the world. The right to employment is in the constitution and the unions have a verry strong role.
IF they where fired like said in the original post, there had to be a reason for it... perhaps they didn't have the workload to support the empoyed ppl they had or the tasks where not bringing a revenue.
These ppl would normaly get a 1-6 months notice, UNLESS they signed away that right when they where hired.
Laying off staff is every companys right, and if they want, they can hire other, cheaper staff, all in according with the laws.

IF you where fired without proper notice, you should complain to the "Arbetsmarknads domstolen" (Basicly a labor-right court) or your union on the workplace.

Comming to a forum and complaining about it doesn't do any good.



About Studentis in general: They struck a deal with our intelectual owner and founder; Kosta. Not everyone likes it, but as long as Kosta owns the place, he calls the shots.
The contract (if i remember correctly) will expire around Aug. or Sept. and they will have to renegotiate the arrangements.
This can end in 3 ways; They keep the current deal, They drop us from theire servers, They buy the site alltogether.

Don't get it wrong... Studentis owns the RIGHT to use the site, but Kosta still owns the place.

[Lurkmode=1]

Titan is here :nuts:
Our alltime oldtimer adminitrator.
I'm so happy to see you again.
How are you? How are your pets :D
I mean those you keep in cellar!

SSSSHHHHHHHH!!!!! Don't tell them i have Kosta here! Not done with him yet!

Seriously; I've never left, I've just been lurking and reading instead.
TFH does an amazing job, and i don't want to screw it up :)

Unfortunatly we all lost a good deal of intrest/activity in the admin-crew it seems with all these problems around the transfere.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
You're a funny man Humorguy!
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

*Sigh

For those of you who might rememeber me I am #alex# from the old version. I can't stand studentis and I boycotted this site right after the supposed (Upgrade). And besides I can't get my old account to work anyway :P


All you guys have to do to get you're voices heard is to boycott this site for 2 weeks and not upload anything. That way all material is frozen on the site. And even post on the main news about it. Get it heard by studentis. It is that easy.


Whatever do what you want.

Punch, if you have problems with your prior account all you needed to do was contact me.

As for what you propose... we're in contact with Studentis now anyway, and such a drastic course of action would only hurt both parties.

glad to hear that ftp is back

A bit as HotU the last couple of years.......

Not so long. I hope!

okay does this mean no updates for awhile tell this is sorted out?

As was said earlier in this thread, the issues will probably be addressed by comments from Studentis no earlier than Monday.

I'm highly leery of posts urging boycotts of new siteowners, from someone with a chip on their shoulder. Whether the chip is legit or not, the place to go isn't to appeal to the membership and getting everybody upset. It's to seek legal redress.

It is all speculation until we know more.
Considering the FTP server is back. I'm inclined to close this thread.

Contact me or 5th if you want it open again.

Thanks.