Cabbages and Kings
Author: Peter Kaminski Issue: 2025-09-03
Cabbages and Kings
by Peter Kaminski
“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things…”
Let's take a break from the regular Plex posts to talk about our own version of “sealing-wax, cabbages, and kings.”
It’s been my honor and pleasure to run CSC Mattermost, an inter-community chat server, and to publish the Biweekly Plex Dispatch, an inter-community newsletter, since November 2020 and February 2022, respectively.
The time has come for me to move on to other things. I’m planning to wrap up and publish the final issue of Plex on September 17th, 2025.
My plan with CSC Mattermost is to start to notify folks, export channel data, and to shut it down by early October 2025.
Both services have had a good run. They’ve helped connect people, form groups, and provide community scaffolding. Thank you so much for being part of them!
But neither service has developed the kind of larger-scale inter-community engagement I was hoping for. Neither service is too much of a bother, but getting the newsletter together twice a month or for Mattermost, keeping the server running, making sure the software and the OS are up-to-date, and stepping in once in a while to solve problems, it’s not zero, either. It’s feeling like time to put these loads down and to pick up others.
Also, for chat, the landscape has changed. In the intervening years since 2020, along with the OGM mailing list that existed then and now, I feel like some additional alternatives have gotten real: Signal, Discord, Mastodon, Bluesky, Matrix. It’s not like folks don’t have places that fit their needs, probably better than CSC Mattermost.
You know the saying, “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness?” I’m glad I lit these candles, and they have been beacons in some amount of darkness. But these candles are not in the spot to help the most people any more. These days, I need to find better ways to help.
The fact that it stings a little to think about shutting them down tells me they mattered. Maybe that’s how you know when something was worth trying.
For CSC Mattermost, I can imagine an option for a group of community stewards to rally and help me keep the lights on. But I’m not holding my breath on that, and I’m genuinely at peace with wrapping it up. I’m also pretty sure any effort to reinvigorate CSC Mattermost would be better spent adopting community on Signal, Discord, or Matrix. Let me know if you’d like to talk more about that.
Dear Plex readers and CSC Mattermost members: Thank you SO much for your readership and support along the way. It’s meant a lot to me, and I truly appreciate it.
Yours in community,
Pete
Related:
- Peter Kaminski (author)
- 2025 (year)
- Topics: Tools and Platforms