I have always operated under a pseudonym on my geofiction websites. But as of today, as I become the official host of the main site, opengeofiction.net, I had to depseudonymize myself – because a person hosting a website on a server with many users in countries all over the world has a sort of obligation toward transparency. This isn’t precisely a legal requirement – though who knows, with so many different jurisdictions involved. But it feels like at the least a sort of ethical requirement.
Opengeofiction.net was created in Germany by a guy named Thilo in 2012. I joined the site in early 2014, and served for many years as a volunteer administrator. Recently, Thilo has become disillusioned (or otherly-illusioned) and no longer wanted to maintain the site. But with hundreds of active users, it seemed unkind to shut the thing down. So I have taken it over, along with some colleagues, also fellow volunteer administrators. Effective today, the site is hosted on a couple of my servers down in California, and I’m the lead technical support.
This is not about making money, exactly. Though I expect some donations to help me at least break even on the rent for the servers.
Here is a screenshot of the “contact” page from the site – showing me depseudonymized for my fellow geoficticians.
