Hey, you may know me as Michael Lat, Tau, Technical Death, that Admin guy, etc. I was the original founder of the site you are currently on, I left due to financial issues and life issues. Upon my first return there were some problems which I won't get into detail with, generally I left to go code my forum/CMS project, latova. I missed the map making scene so I decided to come back making a new site with LegacyWeapon and MindArchon, to make a site which was radically different but it had a lot of features I always wanted to have in previous versions of SEN but I never had the ability to create. I initially worked under an alias hoping to ease the community drama, but that failed wonderfully. The site is running fine but it's running into some internal disputes, I want to relieve some of the pressure of running a site off myself and work more upon Latova. I made an emo topic recently and we discussed the possibility of shutting down maplantis. IP stumbled across it and told me I'm welcome back at any time to run the community (he speaks highly of me in this area, it was very flattering). I thought about it, and I decided things would be better off with an already established site with already active programmers instead of coding and maintaining a different site on my own. So here I am.
WTF? What becomes of maplantis?
The features will remain active since SEN does not have it's maps database and wiki (there are no real good map making sites other places to host these things, other than bwmaps, which is really for melee anyway). When SEN has its features up we'll migrate what we can over here and pull the plug on maplantis.
Is SEN going to be OSmap happy now?
No. IP, moose and I all agree that we'll keep things a little more on the pro-protection side, but we'll allow for authors to state that their maps can be freely edited. I still will strive to encourage open mapping here, not force it though.
Are you going to come in and change everything to be like Maplantis?
No. Maplantis is not SEN. I know very well what this site stands for. Moose wants to adopt some of the better Maplantis ideas I had but SEN will remain fundamentally intact. Your minerals aren't going anywhere, mapping isn't going anywhere.
What will you be doing at SEN?
My primary role will be managing the community. News posts, moderating, chatting with you guys, hosting map nights and whichever, etc. I'll chip in for the server bills a bit and I'll do minor programming once SEN becomes stable.
None.