Dear ex-neighbours,

For those who don't know us, we (Marcus and Alberto) used to live in the Jam Factory a few years ago. We contributed to the community by creating a social network website to support and improve the communication among the neighbours.

We handed over the running of site to the official representation of the then JFRA at the time, and have since contributed by providing technical support and training when required. This was, is and will be a free and voluntary service provided by Marcus and Alberto at a personal level, not as a company. The site is hosted and supported by Webjam and the domain name “myjamfactory.com” was registered by and is owned by Marcus.

Lately the website has become some kind of battleground for an internal conflict to which we are being unwillingly exposed. On the conflict itself we don’t have and we don’t want to have an opinion, as we don’t live there and we don’t have any vested interest in the building anymore. But, due our involvement on the creation and ownership of the site, we are being pressured by the sides to make decisions that go well beyond our duties.

We cannot afford to be involved in this conflict, but we are happy to support any solution that you manage to reach within the community.

In order to help you to make this happen we, Marcus and Alberto, are taking the following actions:

• Giving full ownership of the site in terms of management, edition rights, moderation and membership acceptance to a trustworthy third party. 
• Making the forums, which are in the core of the conflict, private until the new management of the site is consolidated.
• To avoid future conflicts, we would like to agree with the new management of the site a number of guidelines that should be followed in order to bring the site back to its initial purpose:
  
  • myjamfactory should serve to the community as a whole with no restriction in terms of membership or affiliation.
  • myjamfactory's purpose is mainly to become the place for the neighbours to discuss and contribute on topics, not the official communication platform for any residents association - this can be done on separate networks, run by the residents associations, which we are happy to help setup if required.
  • The core of the network are the forums, associations of any kind can request to be allocated space in the site that will be managed and edited by them. No representative of any residents association have editorial or moderation control on these or the site as a whole.

 

We hope you understand our position and agree with the actions.

While knowing that trying to be neutral is sometimes a futile effort, we are trying hard to find a solution that could keep the site alive. The other options being either keeping things as they are, that will keep putting us in the middle of the cross-fire, or closing the site and letting you start from scratch without our involvement.

It’s your decision.

Thanks a lot,

Marcus and Alberto

(By the time this message is posted, the ownership of the site has been transferred to an agreed 3rd party within the Jam Factory. We hope to be able to help you re-launch the site properly, in a more positive mood within the next few days)

Click here to continue to the site. Please note that the forums will remain private until everything has been sorted out.