The Visions of Trebel

Written by Trebel Team

The interest in the new scene-archive Trebel seems to grow more and more. Maybe because Scene.org has been down for a while, and more people feel that the scene needs a "new Hornet".

Well, that's what the Trebel-team intend to do. A new and improved "Hornet". The actual archive is yet not opened, but there are the Trebel-news-groups (alt.trebel.*), and if you're on IRCnet and want to catch one of the team-members, go to #trebel. There is a temp-site up at http://www.trebel.org, which soon will be replaced by the actual Trebel-page.

To clear a little to the scene who are in the Trebel-team, and WHY they're in the team, we decided to make an "internal-interview". But first some historic facts:

It all began when Tonic / Comic Pirates posted a message in news.scene.org / #trax. Here's the message:

I am in talks with a provider in FINLAND to provide a ftp/web etc. place for trax related material to replace. Basically, I know it won't go down, and the admins are scene-friendly.

Heck, they're ex- and current scene folx.

And I have a 9 gig drive to start the space, and so on. I could use any help here anyone wants to donate.

I will ALSO BE DEVOTING MUCH OF MY TIME ON THIS TO THE CODE SECTION; I could use help with the TRAX and GFX sections.

Dunno what's up with Hornet but we need to keep a spot for y'all to use.

Write me with support/comments/hate mail/etc:

tonic@scene-central.com

I asked Tonic why he formed the Trebel-team:

Tonic: "Why did I FORM the Trebel-team? Because I love demos. Always have. And I remember what it was like trying to figure out how to do demos when no one else around me wanted to even SEE or TALK about them. Hornet was going away; I wrote to Snowman to see if I could help salvage it. That wasn't an option... I don't know why. (I suppose it may have had something to do with the scene.org deal.... which fell through as scene.org apprently didn't anticipate the amount of bandwidth this would require... but I digress."

As a follow up to this I asked HOW are you going to maintain all the data that will flow on Trebel. I got a quite cheap answer. :)

"Hard work. (CHEAP GENERIC ANSWER #1!)"

Hehe, well:

Tonic may have been the founder of the archive, but without some help from other people he wouldn't have pulled it of. (No, not even Tonic can do that!) So I asked the team why they joined in?

Tommy: "Uhm. Well, I've been using Hornet's services quite a while when rumors came up about shutting it down. When it became official that Hornet was closing, Tonic asked our Comic-Pirates Crew to continue their work. I subscribed to the TRebel-Messageboard (hm, at this time we did not have a name for the archive yet) and it was real fun to re-build -at least a working- archive."

Skin: "I've always been active with spreading and download demoscene releases. At the beginning of 1998 I heard the news that Hornet was going to quit, a real shame, but the Dutch demoscene had it's own 'home ftp' (Skynet). I tried to get some info about scene ftps around the world and found out that there was no real scene archive with a lot of international releases. Some months later the idea of Trebel started (scene.org was already online but never responded to my mails if they needed help). I just wanted to help brainstorm and get the scene a new 'home'."

N.R.T.H.: "I read a news in Orange Juice, telling that Tonic was planning to do an Hornet-like archive. It was at the end of summer 1998 if I can remember. Of course, as for all demosceners, Hornet was a paradise site for me, and I really wanted to help the ways I could (not a lot...) to bring Trebel to its release. And since I've got some time to give to the demoscene, and the will to have fun there ... here I go!"

The D: "It all began with Hornet. I've always been fascinated that there's such an overwhelming good archive for the whole scene. But Hornet decided to go offline. It were sad days for me. ;) Yeah, and after some weeks I heard of TRebel, a possible successor of Hornet. After a look on their webpage I decided to get in contact with them because I wanted to take part in such a great and important project for the scene. One day I met Tommy^CP on #trebel and we talked a bit about TRebel and finally I send him a mail from me which he forwarded to the TRebel team. Two days later I was accepted into the TRebel team. A dream had come true. *g*"

Eggbird: "Tonic asked me. :) And I thought it would be great fun, and I liked to do some more pr/links/whatever work for something _big_ instead of those two tiny groups I'm in. :)"

Makke: "Tonic asked me, and I thought it could be cool to see an FTP-network be born. I didn't plan to get as involved as I did, but now I'm there and I'm doing my best. :) I also saw this as an opportunity to help influence the archive to be more newbie and non-elite-friendly. No big archive today is that. I wanted everybody to be treated the same. I wanted my own songs stored in the same folders as Keith303. ;) Hm - well, maybe not really like that, but I didn't like the 'I'm elite, and you're not'-attitude that many scene-archives have, and I want to change that. And, well: I saw the chance of seeing my name neon lights. :)"

Hamster: "Well, like most of the scene, I was most dismayed when I loaded up netscape in september and found out that hornet.org was shutting down. I was somewhat crushed... Hornet had been _the_ center of the demoscene on the Internet (not to mention where I had first gotten my start appreciating demos). Then I saw Tonic's announcement on Orange Juice and knew that I had to join. Previously I had been nothing more than an avid demo fan. I've never been to a party, I don't track, and I don't code (demos anyway). I saw the Trebel project as being a chance to give something back to the demoscene which given me so much pleasure over the years."

Of course everyone was welcome to join the Trebel-team, but only as long as they could contribute something to the archive. So therefore I asked what each has done for Trebel, and what they will do in the future.

Tommy: "I will do my best to make TRebel a replacement for Hornet. Well, I offered several servers, did some sites, I'm working on a search engine, managing IRC stuff, and we all bombed each other with hundreds of emails with good ideas."

Skin: "Getting more mirrors/people involved with the project, upload releases, check out stuff and even do some rating.... time will tell."

N.R.T.H.: "Like you Makke. ;) I hope we'll manage to maintain the music section the best way we can! And of course, I'll do anything to help Trebel!!"

Tonic: "I'll contribute... well hopefully a bit of a vision. And a LOT of Public Relations, some coding items, and some hardware... But hopefully a vision." (Hey, you founded it, so I guess you already contributed a vision ;) /Makke)

The D: "I'm TRebel's HTML design dude. It's my job to create and design the TRebel pages. I'll have to maintain them and check that everything's working. And from time to time I will give TRebel another layout. But that's far away from now.....So I could be called the HTML webmaster of TRebel. ;) In addition to that I'd like to be the org of the info section. But that's not clear at the moment."

Eggbird: "I will do the talking. :)) I'm quite familiar with smart linking systems, organising things (like compos and stuff like that) and, of course, with music, because the musicscene was my link to the demoscene. That means I'll probably maintain the links section, partly the music section, inform the rest of the scene of Trebel (*grin*) and be a good overall organiser."

Makke: "I'll do some PR things, answer questions and 'maintain' the music-section with N.R.T.H. and Eggbird."

Hamster: "Well, I think that mostly what I have provided the team with a non-scener's viewpoint. Unlike the rest of the team, I have never been involved with a demo group. I view myself as the average user of Trebel with the chance to put some input into the forming of a great new page. What will the future hold? Well, I hope to be with the team for a long time to come. We'll just have to see how it all turns out. I will definitely continue helping the team out as fully as I can. =)"

Many think and hope that Trebel will be the new Hornet, what do the Trebel-team think? Will Trebel be as good as Hornet?

Tommy: "I think this is one of our jobs. We need several gigs of diskspace for several mirrors worldwide, an we need a good interface. Yes, I do think we can manage that and become as successful as Hornet. We are a big team and my email account is flooded with new ideas every day."

Skin: "In the beginning we will probably have some problems (like all starts of groups/ftps). But in the future we hope to be a stable home ground."

N.R.T.H.: "For sure it will. :) Though it will take some time ... Hornet wasn't made in one day, and we'll have to add things by things to reach the quality of our great ancestor! I hope we'll manage to maintain an archive as useful as Hornet was, and then add few stuffs to give to Trebel its own life!"

Tonic: "No, I think it will be better than Hornet. Which will be a challenge, as Hornet did do quite well. However, there were some things I didn't like particularly; mostly dealing with voting... but everyone had their ideas on how it should run. And that was the idea behind getting a lot of folks involved at the start - make it something that the SCENE defined itself. Not that Hornet wasn't SCENE - it was just one group doing it. And, not to slam folks from the states, but it was a U.S. group... and the SCENE hasn't been too strong in the states. So I feel it didn't represent the European/South American/Japanese/Aussie/S. African scene too well..."

The D: "I'm completely convinced that TRebel will be as good as Hornet and perhaps even better. We have everything (or even more?) Hornet had: enough files, mirrors, space, bandwidth, etc. a good design (made by me *g*) and a really motivated team!! So we can already say that TRebel will probably be one of the best scene archives! I do not think that it'll be easy to be the best, but _WE_ will also do our best. ;)"

Eggbird: "Better. Because it is new, all features of Hornet have been thought over, filtering all bad ones (i.e. only 5-star rating and no comments on that rating) and implementing/improving the good ones (i.e. a search engine and a www-based 'version' of the ftp-site for fast browsing), as well as adding some new features (i.e. public voting/rating system)."

Makke: "I don't know what to say here. Well, it probably will be just as good as Hornet, but I don't know if the ELITE scene will accept it as a worthy follower of Hornet. As everybody will be treated the same, some people probably will think that they deserve better than Gary, 14 years old from Birmingham do!"

Hamster: "This is a tough question... I would certainly like to think that Trebel will succeed as highly as Hornet did. Hornet was the original center of the scene on the web, and I think it will be difficult to top its success. With a lot of hard work and cooperation from the scene, I think that Trebel should fill Hornet's void nicely."

Well, as you can see, the team is pretty convinced that this is "nema problema". But does the scene really need this new archive? There are a lot of local, and global FTPs that deal with this (like Skynet and Scene.org).

Tommy: "YES! Every institution needs a kind of an archive! Bad enough the scene did not have any kind of archive that long. And as far as I know, scene.org is 99% down..."

Skin: "At this moment the scene needs a nice archive with a lot of releases. People on several IRC channels are complaining about finding the new or old releases. Trebel will try to support that search for new and old demos with a big archive and a good search engine."

N.R.T.H.: "Scene.org is down, and it seems that they have no physical access to the machine hosting scene.org, so the situation might not change. Other ftps are good, but the demoscene needs a home, that's what Trebel should be. Furthermore, homepages are homepages (what a Sherlock Holmes!), i.e. they mostly show you the products the group mainting the site is releasing. At Trebel, every demogroup will have its files available for download, every musician his tracks, every pixeller ... you know what I mean!"

Tonic: "Nope. We don't need anything. We've survived, changed, mutated, and evolved to the Scene we are today, not by needing anything, but by being. I don't think Trebel is the scene, either. It will be a part of the scene, and I would like to see everyone have a part in it... Another way of putting it: Do we need The Party '99? No. But it's going to happen. And those who experience it will experience it. Trebel will be experienced as well."

The D: "Yep, the scene really needs TRebel! Hornet and Scene.org were really great but what will remain in some months??? Hornet will finally go offline and nobody knows what's happening with Scene.org in the future so the scene needs another great archive. I know that there are also many other scene sites, ftps etc. but they're not that important in my opinion. We'll try to provide everything a scener needs. And nobody else (as it seems at the moment) will be able to provide that."

Eggbird: "Yes. scene.org is down and most other archives contain only a bit of scene productions (for instance only from some specified country) and have no other services like a search engine and stuff like that. Hornet was the centre of the scene, introducing it to newbies and helping the experienced. Trebel will now take over that function."

Makke: "As I said, I think too many archives do too much of the ELITE-bizz, and that newbies get pushed away (Gee! I must sound like some sort of priest or something). And the scene needs a place where you can go to get quality downloads, and good service. Let's see if we succeed. If we don't, we're not needed. So why not help us to help you. :)"

Hamster: "I think that the scene really does need something like Trebel. It provides a central archive of everything that the scene has produced. It can introduce people to demos who might now have seen them otherwise (like Hornet did for me). Trebel has the potential to do everything that hornet did for the demoscene and more. With the demise of hornet, there is a vast hole in the demoscene, and I believe that Trebel has the potential to fill it."

One more important thing before we quit this article. Trebel is NOT A GROUP! TREBEL HAS NO INTENTION OF RELEASING A DEMO (though it might happen)! TREBEL IS A TEAM OF ORGANIZERS, SYSTEM-ADMINs AND SCENERS IN GENERAL!

YES, WE'RE JUST LIKE YOU. ;)

We're always looking for more mirrors, so if you've got a well kept FTP we'd love your help. If there's anything more you'd like to know, do drop an email to anyone in the team.

Trebel-team:
Tonic - tonic@trebel.org
Skin - skin@trebel.org

Put together by Makke, with help from the rest of the Trebel team.