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Comment on Ask HN: passing the torch on userscripts.org

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OMG I love you and I didn't even know it. Congrats on Nebula's and UserScripts' success. You have made my internets much more enjoyable.

FWIW I'm with user24: life is long and you'll have many years to regret the sale/dispensing of UserScripts if you ask me. It's very hard to acquire a user base like you have.

The technologist in me loved being able to write and deploy software accessed by over a hundred of thousands users a day.

I've learned so much about running a (relatively) large website from userscripts.

I used to have time to watch munin, new relic, ... every day - it has been a month since I've checked http://munin.userscripts.org :(

I don't really want to get rid of it, but my life is too hectic to give it the time it needs. The site went down for half a day last week due to a DMCA takedown request that occurred while I was traveling for work. It needs someone who can pay attention.

Maybe I can find a product / hacker / designer who can run it with me - but I don't want to make myself the bottleneck, so if someone comes around who can do a better job, I should probably step down :(

Maybe this is the wrong place to ask but doesn't the site make enough money that you could hire someone? I see you have "sponsors".

How much time on a weekly basis do you estimate would be required to maintain the status quo?

the "sponsors" is buysellads.com - which brings in ~400 a month. That said it used to make $100+ a day on adsense but I didn't like the ads. (funnily after I removed adsense google offered their custom packages/...)

I'm purposely minimizing revenue since:

1) if the site made money those who don't like what greasemonkey does might seek damages for the money 2) it sends the wrong message to the community if I'm just making money and not giving it the attention it needs

Before Nebula I had planned to work on userscripts and make it pay for itself and my time. I tried to spend some time on it each day, but working on Nebula is really 2 jobs - working for NASA (the client) and working on my company (ansolabs) - and I rarely get any time for the company, let alone my non-nebula open source work.

Status quo would take an hour or so once I have procedures in place for how to deal with DMCA issues. But I think it needs a lot of community features (moderation, groups, directories of good scripts, ...)

Thanks for taking the time to answer so thoroughly. I wish I had the time to play with it or could offer my time to help but, like you, I am busy with my company. If you think I can help in any way, feel free to email me (email in profile).

Best of luck and keep us posted!

"Maybe I can find a product / hacker / designer who can run it with me" - This seems like an excellent idea.. you've obviously got a lot invested in the site, and ideas about where it ought to go.

You should deploy to heroku and not worry about munin, new relic, etc. Let someone else sysadmin.

For DMCA takedown requests, establish a process that allows the company to remove the script (a lot like youtube) without taking down the whole site.

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