RIP Tremonter

I killed Tremon­ter tonight. It was a good exper­i­ment, and taught me a lot about the neigh­bor­hood. Through it, I met a bunch of won­der­ful neigh­bor­hood peo­ple and another bunch of won­der­ful Cleve­land peo­ple. Through it, I became part of the Cleve­land Foundation’s Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions Grant Com­mit­tee, and was sent to some neigh­bor­hood lead­er­ship train­ing in Nashville. Through that, in con­junc­tion with some other folks from Cleve­land, I helped put together a Cleve­land Youth Sum­mit at City Hall. Because of Tremon­ter, I was threat­ened with a law­suit, threat­ened with phys­i­cal vio­lence, told I was racist, and told I was a cor­po­rate shill. Good times.

For the first year or so, the site just con­sisted of me post­ing things I found online that had to do with my neigh­bor­hood, busi­nesses, local weblogs, local artists, art gal­leries, events. Even­tu­ally the read­er­ship was high enough that strangers started com­ing up to me and telling me how great the site was.

Then I opened the site up for any­one to post, which is prob­a­bly why I now have gray hairs. At first it was still shiny, happy peo­ple hold­ing hands, but then folks started show­ing up and forc­ing their agen­das all over the place, in your face. Names were called, feel­ings hurt, and new rules had to be put in place. About the time I raised money for two more years of host­ing by putting ads from local busi­nesses on the site [some­thing like $30 for a year of adver­tis­ing], I started get­ting emails from peo­ple who were try­ing to fig­ure out why they were being attacked by com­plete [to them] anony­mous strangers on my site. At first I tried to explain, but more and more often I had to read emails that were from peo­ple who were telling me that they could no longer visit Tremon­ter because the tone was now so antagonistic.

The com­pli­ments about the site became less fre­quent, and then stopped alto­gether. Users threw my rules back in my face and were shocked when they were pun­ished for it. Folks started reg­is­ter­ing mul­ti­ple accounts under anony­mous names and post­ing pos­i­tive things again. For a bit, this gave me hope, new, pos­i­tive blood, until I found out that it was actu­ally the case and had to put my foot down.

For the last year, the site has been noth­ing but an endur­ing headache. The only emails I get now are from peo­ple who have com­plaints about the peo­ple using the site, or com­plaints about the site from peo­ple who are using it. I no longer derive any per­sonal ben­e­fit from Tremon­ter. It has been that way for awhile, I’ve kept Tremon­ter open for longer than I should have, out of a sense of respon­si­bil­ity for what had become an impor­tant news and gos­sip source for the neighborhood.

I con­sid­ered burn­ing the cur­rent incar­na­tion of Tremon­ter and reset­ting it as a picked-​author neigh­bor­hood ‘zine, and even bounced the idea off of a few trusted folks. Then I tried to fig­ure out just how long it would take me to get all of that set up. Then I received a few more emails from peo­ple who were very polite, and not con­de­scend­ing in the least, but were once again hurt by being attacked by strangers on the Inter­net. I let this hap­pen, time and time again, in my house. I can no longer apply any sort of moral rel­a­tiv­ity to the sit­u­a­tion. I never liked the movie Old Yeller, but if your dog goes rabid, you put it down yourself.

I have a whole host of other projects that I’d like to work on, the most impor­tant being Abra­ham. With the weight of Tremon­ter off my back, maybe I can actu­ally get the chance to work on one or two more.

Comments on this post

  1. jeff buster

    Hello Mr. Harvey,

    I have known about Tremonter/​you only since I bumped into Frank Giglio a week ago, but I do know that open com­mu­ni­ca­tion via the inter­net is vital to all of us in NEO.

    Hav­ing been involved with Real­neo for more than four years I know that keep­ing a web­site going is chal­leng­ing, expen­sive, and often with­out appar­ent appreciation.

    The con­tent that you have accu­mu­lated on Tremon­ter is of immense value — and I hope you will keep the server alive so that the archived dis­cus­sions of your com­mu­nity will be avail­able for all of NEO in the years to come. (real­neo can help in this regard if you wish)

    Instead of RIP­ping Tremon­ter, I encour­age you to take a hol­i­day break, and then recon­sider snuff­ing it in the new year.

    I would also be inter­ested in hear­ing more about the Cleve­land Foundation’s involve­ment with the estab­lish­ment of the Tremon­ter site — specif­i­cally, did the CF change their orig­i­nal sup­port for the site in response to opin­ions on the site? Did you have com­plete edi­to­r­ial freedom?

    NEO needs as many vocal inter­net sites as it can gen­er­ate, so I encour­age you to keep the lights on.…I respect your efforts.

    best,
    jeff buster

  2. Chris

    You did good, Adam. It’s a thank­less job to host a com­mu­nity site, and Tremont is such a bizarre neigh­bor­hood (in a good way!) with lots and lots of folks who care deeply about it (man­i­fested in pos­i­tive and not-​so ways).

    You did good.

  3. Adam Harvey

    Hi Jeff,

    To be clear, the Cleve­land Foun­da­tion has never had any­thing to do with Tremon­ter. Nei­ther has Tremont West. Nor have they ever tried to involve them­selves with the way the site has been man­aged. It has always been mine and only mine. The rea­son I ended up on the Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions team is because the work I did on Tremon­ter came to the atten­tion of TWDC through my inter­ac­tions with the TWDC com­mu­nity orga­niz­ers, and they sug­gested I apply for the committee.

    The Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions pro­gram is fan­tas­tic, and the peo­ple on the grant mak­ing com­mit­tee are all folks who have proven them­selves as cit­i­zen activists in their own community.

    Hi Chris,

    Thanks for the words of support.

  4. Tim Russo

    inter­est­ing. i’d like to know more.

    http://​blog​ger​in​ter​rupted​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​t​r​e​m​o​n​t​e​r​-​d​i​e​s​-​a​m​i​d​-​s​l​e​w​-​o​f​-​c​r​e​e​p​y​-​b​l​o​g​-​p​o​sts

  5. Bridget Ginley

    Adam,

    Con­grats on walk­ing away from a project that drains and not grows. Cleve­land can often tear down the walls peo­ple try to build a com­mu­nity upon in unusual ways and means. After run­ning a Tremont gallery for sev­eral years and then own­ing my own for a few; I say you get sick of the fin­gers in your face telling you what you should do while you try to keep a func­tion­ing effort alive & ener­getic. All neigh­bor­hood frac­ta­tions of Cleve­land hoods have their issues and kudos for you for try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence. With a grow­ing fam­ily and your time shrink­ing, you should sell it to the neighborhood.

    Cleve­land Learn­ing Moment :
    A beau­ti­ful case study of a per­son want­ing to make a dif­fer­ence where they live, obtain­ing sup­port from the com­mu­nity by mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact and now it may be time for the com­mu­nity to adopt it if they still need a space to hold hands. Buy it now.

  6. Tim

    Adam,

    Thanks for all the work on Tremon­ter. It was one of my most vis­ited book­marks for years. I think that we’ll miss the site in the com­mu­nity, but the recent tone and com­ments became too much to let it con­tinue. I think that the voices that over­took the site had a point at the root, but their tac­tics and tenor were self defeat­ing. They also libeled and per­son­ally attacked peo­ple too quickly. The site was becom­ing over­run with accu­sa­tions and inco­her­ent rants. It is unfor­tu­nate that the peo­ple who abused the site will never real­ize that they ruined the FREE (to them) com­mu­nity ser­vice that allowed them to ener­gize their voice. They have since moved to Real­NEO where they have been wel­comed. Hope­fully they’ll wake up and real­ize that posts are pub­lic and peo­ple from the neigh­bor­hood, like myself who ini­tially agreed with some of their points, can­not con­sider them a sound or sober voice in the com­mu­nity. I can only imag­ine the frus­tra­tion you endured wait­ing for the Tremont com­mu­nity to post and clar­ify the con­fused voices. Thanks for wait­ing as long as you did. We’re lucky yo have you here in Tremont. You’ve done you’re fair share already, but I’m look­ing for­ward to your good work in the future.

  7. Jill

    Adam, I am so sorry except that to do what you think needed to be done is more impor­tant than keep­ing some­thing going which became some­thing other than what you wanted. I didn’t fol­low Tremon­ter much but I remem­ber when Organic/​Mechanic came to my atten­tion when I first started blog­ging. I wish you the best of luck how­ever things online shape up — if at all — or re-​shape. I totally under­stand the gelati­nous way in which blogs seem to morph — it is excit­ing and frus­trat­ing. I’ve def­i­nitely been in a mode about it for a few weeks now myself.

    Best of luck and happy new year.

  8. jb

    Thanks

    Hit you ear­lier by email.

    If it is any con­su­la­tion many of us who have invested in Tremont find our­selves on the receiv­ing end of “no good deed goes unpunished.”

    But do know there are those who appre­ci­ate your time and efforts.

    I never had any expec­ta­tion that Tremon­ter would be around for­ever. Seemed like some­thing you were using to enhance some of your own under­stand­ings (as you seem­ingly express above).

    Was fun to watch and engage.

    Thanks

  9. Jeff Schuler

    Hey Adam,

    I still haven’t come to any strong con­clu­sions, but I want to speak before it’s moot or the issue fades fur­ther from memory.

    First, thanks so much for your con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­nity. You were one of the first folks I met here, (hav­ing moved to the hood around the same time,) thanks to your Guin­ness Pub Crawl. Hav­ing a web front-​end to the neigh­bor­hood was essen­tial to a geek like me, and though it def­i­nitely changed, it remained high pri­or­ity in my feed-​reading and always a back-​pocket ref­er­ence, (even if the bar­ber­shop hours weren’t kept up-​to-​date ;)

    I’m sorry that we, the bene­fac­tors of your ser­vice, didn’t com­pen­sate you enough in deserved respect, or support.

    My #1 con­cern is that the site con­tent stays avail­able. Can you give us some word on that? Even if you lock out logins, I think it’s really impor­tant that the sto­ries that have been told on Tremon­ter remain avail­able. (And no, I don’t believe the Inter­net Archive suffices.)

    I am offer­ing to help fix issues that arose from the upgrade, and to re-​work a newer theme (to have a sim­i­lar old green look as pre­vi­ous,) and help with host­ing — if any or all of those will keep the con­tent up.

    Thanks again…

  10. Adam Harvey

    Hi Jeff,

    Thanks for your com­ments. At this point, I haven’t thought any­thing fur­ther about what I’m going to do with Tremonter.

  11. Debra

    I would like to point out that the rea­son I came to start read­ing and post­ing on Tremon­ter, a lit­tle over a year ago, was because a friend of mine (we’ll call her “Z”) was being attacked on the Tremon­ter. A cer­tain poster (we’ll call him “A”) even went so far as to say she was a pros­ti­tute and posted sur­veilance video of her on Tremon­ter, pri­mar­ily because she shunned his wildly inap­pro­pri­ate advances. She was rightly upset, men­tioned this to her girls, and we came to her defense.

    What is relevent here is that these wild attack posts went on for over a month. The were never cen­sored. They were never banned. “A” was sub­se­quently banned, at a later date, but I do not believe it was in rela­tion to this series of incidents.

    So, how is it that now the Tremon­ter takes on an air of sen­si­tiv­ity? “Z” is just a friendly beau­ti­ful young artist. She’s not on any Boards. She’s not a big shot lawyer or banker. She’s not employed at TWDC. And she cer­tainly did nOT receive pro­tec­tion from those inces­sant posts.

    So why do they shut it down now?

    My guess is that there is infor­ma­tion they do not want revealed. My guess is that some of the objects of the recent polit­i­cal posts were very uncom­fort­able. My guess is posts that did not fol­low the rah-​rah men­tal­ity of the Tremont Lead­ers were unfairly char­ac­ter­ized as “neg­a­tive” and per­haps the “slan­der” went the other way.

    It is not neg­a­tive to reveal infor­ma­tion that shows the fund­ing, assets and com­mu­nal trust given cer­tain mem­bers of a neigh­bor­hood, mem­bers in posi­tions of “lead­er­ship”, are being mis­used for per­sonal profit and gain. Per­haps that is incor­rect — I would cer­tainly hope so. An open dia­logue, in a com­mu­nity forum might dis­prove that, no?

  12. TCJ

    Good job Adam. Set­ting it up in the first place and putting it out of it’s misery.

    As to what to do with it now? Sim­ple: 1. lock the name up so no one else can use it. 2. copy the whole damn thing and put in a lock box some­where. 3. Pub­licly burn the web­site, as lit­er­ally as you can fig­ure out how to do that. Throw a party and burn it. The flames can burn online till…

    Think about it. Fire is very cleans­ing. Tremont renews through fire.

    TCJ

  13. SnogAsh

    Adam,

    Tremon­ter was my first link to this neigh­bor­hood, but it’s hasn’t been the same for almost two years. I will miss it, but hope to see you around some­time. :)

  14. jerleen1

    Adam,
    I first started post­ing on Tremon­ter about the time the stepped up hous­ing code enforce­ment started — and it was in reply to some other post I read on Tremon­ter — but what I find most inter­est­ing is that this com­mu­nity is in need of major lead­er­ship changes and whether it is Tremon­ter, Plain Press, Sun News, REALNEO, Chan­nel 19, Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Sys­tem, or a Xerox pham­plet rub­ber banded to everybody’s door knob, we are no longer going to sit by and just accept what is dolled out by those that are put in place to be of assistance.

    There is a lot of neg­a­tiv­ity, because we are deal­ing with a lot of neg­a­tiv­ity in the neigh­bor­hood right now. A lot of unfair treat­ment and unequally bal­anced rep­re­sen­ta­tion — and, oh yes, I am so sure, that if we only wrote rosy poetry and bragged about the good deeds that the fine do-​gooders were doing every­body would be happy and all would be well — but instead, we are expos­ing the ugli­ness of what goes on that nobody wants the rest of the world to know about — and by clos­ing Tremon­ter because we were bring­ing the nasty truth to light — it is no longer a secret that we have fine peo­ple that take away peo­ple homes — that there are rich peo­ple liv­ing in our mist that want the home­less removed from our soci­ety — that some of the do-​gooders mis-​use the sys­tem while the poverty level and needy — have a hard time receiv­ing assis­tance — that the very orga­ni­za­tion cre­ated to look after those less for­tu­nate isn’t even run by it’s own guide lines.

    There are so many that read Tremon­ter that did not post — I’ve had peo­ple ask me how do we find out what’s going on now — we counted on you to fight for us — well — I will con­tinue the fight — the only thing you have done — given us the rea­son to do our own thing. There is noth­ing wrong with healthy debate — with dif­fer­ent opin­ions — so we’re cre­at­ing our own web­site — and we’re post­ing on REALNEO.
    We still have the Plain Press — and so we’re still going to speak out.

  15. QUEST, ministries, guy templeton black

    adam you were called a racist because you deleted my
    barack obama, for pres­i­dent posts — and than you banned me–
    you stated you were only going to sus­pend me my post­ing for a week–
    to pun­ish me — you never let post after the week.
    anger comes from guilt and fear–
    so don’t let your guilt and fear ratio­nal­ize cen­sor­ship and your polit­i­cal
    favoritism for the sta­tus qua–
    i don’t judge you for get­ting a county job from poli­cal favors–
    but dont’t belive you own lies — because its called psy­chotic behav­ior–
    self descep­tion leads to destruc­tion because you think or one thinks that the ones above them with money and con­tac­tions know more then you do–
    as we can see with the world con­di­tions — this isn’t the fact — truth–
    eter­nal thanks for the most of posts that you posted that helped
    the com­mu­nity–
    all the luck in the world for you and the misses and new born–
    eter­nal thanks, yogi and guy

    ANTI-​SPECIESISM
    SPECIESISM:
    1. A PREJUDICE OF ATTITUDE OF BIAS TOWARD THE INTERESTS OF MEMEBERS OF ONE’S OWN SPECIES
    AND AGAINIST THOSE OF MEMBERS OF OTHER SPECIES.
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  16. Sandy

    Adam, you rock. Thanks.

  17. guess what it's not required

    FUCK ALL OF YOU IF YOU DONT LIKE HOW WERE OUTSPOKEN THEN GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD YOU SO CALLED RICH BITCHES!

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