I see a lot of speculation, so I guess I'd better address this now.
The GUESS reports will be coming to an end towards the end of October. I'll be putting a notice on the web site sometime this weekend.
My web hosting contract expires October 28th, and I won't be renewing it, nor will I be moving to another site. After 14+ years, it's time to call it quits.
There are several reasons behind it, but the biggest reason is I'm simply no longer interested in investing any time or effort into it. I stopped playing GD years ago, and while GUESS is mostly automated, I still have to deal with the occasional failure of a world to download / update, issues with space on the server, etc. I just don't want to do that any longer.
It's not about the money, although ad clicks and Paypal donations have dried up considerably since the heyday of GD. The reason I removed the ads and the Paypal / Amazon links (which I did nearly a month ago!) is that I don't want this to be seen as begging people to throw money my way or I'll take my ball and go home. [A small number of people have set up recurring donations, and I've cancelled them all (I think. If I missed one, I'll refund the next one and cancel it at that time.)]
It's also not a spur of the moment decision. I made the decision back in December that I would be retiring the site when my hosting contract expired. I informed the WIS team but swore them to secrecy.
I'm sure some of you have lots of questions, so I'll try to anticipate as many as I can.
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Q: Are you merging with WIS?
A: No. I informed the WIS team back at the end of December that I was going to retire the site. I provided the code to them several years ago - we had a discussion about ratings and rankings back when Adam Lorenz was still around - and told them they were free to implement as much as they wanted. Unfortunately, my code isn't something they can just drop in to their code (different Frameworks, different back end databases, etc.) so a full-on implementation would require a major coding effort. (Effort that would, IMO, be better spent on re-writing GD from scratch.) I don't have any direct input nor insight on the changes WIS is making, but as I understand it, it's a partial (VERY partial) implementation of what we did on GUESS. But I wouldn't expect the Collegiate Insider to suddenly look like GUESS.
Q: What would it take to keep you running the GUESS site?
A: A million dollars? But seriously, I have zero interest in continuing the site.
Q: Can someone buy the site from you?
A: I'm not interested in that, either. Call it my ego, but GUESS is my baby. And honestly, it's not as simple as that anyway. The whole system is running on obsolete and out-of-date software, so it would need a major overhaul just to get it to a modern / current state. About eight or nine years ago, I switched my hosting plan from a "shared" plan to a "dedicated" plan, meaning I was the only website on the server. That was due to performance issues we were experiencing. While it greatly improved how fast everything loaded, it also came with an increased cost in time (server management) and money. The server is still running the same OS as it was back then (Centos 6 which went End of Life two and a half years ago) and is running an outdated version of Ruby on Rails (that's the framework that the website is built on). A little over a year ago, I tried to update the database backend (MySQL) to a supported version and it "broke" a number of components.
But, having said that, if someone wanted to launch their own version, I'd be willing to offer advice and/or talk to them about the architecture behind GUESS. They can even use the published ratings - there's no "secret sauce" when it comes to how the GUESS numbers are calculated. (The letter grades are a slightly different story - I don't mind sharing that, but frankly they are trash, and have needed to be overhauled for years.)
Q: Are you still going to be an active member of the community?
A: I don't think what I've been doing the last few years qualifies as "active member" in the first place, but I'll probably poke my head in from time to time. I have to stay in touch with my BFF bagchucker123456789. :)
Q: What's going to happen with the Yatzr tools? Or the Dobie coach interviews? Or the links to the maps?
A: <shrug> I dunno. Maybe someone will keep a copy of Yatzr's stuff on a Google Drive somewhere. As for the rest of the stuff, you've got plenty of time to make copies or bookmark the links.
Any other questions? Just ask here or sitemail me. I'll try to respond when I can.