entirely safe and fun

Plastic (link probably doesn’t work), participatory media pioneer and collaborative “my other blog” for hundreds of regular posters, is down again. Distinguished by the generally high quality of discussion compared to community sites such as slashdot, and the low incidence and visibility of trolls, plastic.com is, or maybe was, the cyberspace perch of choice for literate English-language users. But now it’s down with no signs of life. Sigh. I miss you, Plastic. Come back.

During previous downtimes, users gathered on the Plastic IRC server at chat.plastic.com to collectively bemoan the loss of their neighborhood bar/speakers’ corner, but now that’s down too. The most public gathering places left to us are the wikipedia Talk page for plastic.com (not much activity) and the blog “Waiting for Plastic” (not much activity there, either). With two availability lacunae in one month, the regulars seem demoralized. My most cherished hope in this regard is that the site will return soon, with minimal loss of good, regular users, but the site’s operator, Carl Steadman, is better known for top-notch product (the very late, intensely lamented suck.com springs to mind) than for working quickly.

It would be nice if Carl would make some kind of public statement in a Google-able location about the disposition of the site. Please, Carl? If you see this, could you please issue some kind of encyclical to guide the faithful?

In the meantime, I’ll be doing my one-legged Plastic Come Back dance.

update: chat.plastic.com is back up as of 14:00 or so. Dance must have worked.
20 June 2006 update: It appears that many have given up on Plastic in absence of any announcement from its management. The population has begun gathering again, reluctantly in many cases including mine, at www.treesandthings.com.
20 June 2006 update again: the Plastic IRC server is back up, with an announcement claiming that the site will be available again soon - soon enough, I hope.