Welcome to Sox Machine. For a bunch of you, it's welcome back to Sox Machine.
The backstory, in case you don't know the timeline: This was my original White Sox site, which I launched back in February of 2006 as a response to circumstances (I'd recently moved to New York just as people were talking about the Sox). After nearly five years here, SB Nation recruited me to take over South Side Sox after The Cheat departed, so I closed this thing down in January of 2011.
And now I'm back here six years later, and nearly 12 years since originally launching. Some of you have been there from the very beginning, and that's pretty cool.
To acknowledge the question with a maddening lack of specifics, it just stopped making sense to continue writing for SB Nation. I'll miss the community and the platform that made such deep/worthwhile/silly/absurd discussions possible, and I feel just a little bit selfish for returning to Sox Machine because of that, but a move is better for my motivation. If you've been a regular SSSer -- or even a lurker -- hopefully you'll make the jump, too.
Speaking of which, Josh is bringing the (newly rechristened Sox Machine) podcast, and pnoles is aboard as well. Billy O'Keefe provided his services for the graphics. You should check out his other work.
You may have noticed the Patreon links. Here's the deal with that: Tips are appreciated, but not expected. If I wanted a great return on my time, I probably would have stopped writing halfway into the 2007 season.
The deal is that you'll get some extras -- giveaways, post requests, mailbags, etc. You'll also get an ad-light site experience. It's currently an ad-free experience, but my goal is to supplement reader support with advertising that is relevant and unobtrusive. If an advertiser happens to be a business I like, I'd prefer to present them in ways that won't make you hate them.
Maybe that sounds overidealistic, but I'm willing to give it a shot.
That's the new deal for the new year and beyond. Here's a separate post for site thoughts/requests/issues as I scrape off my site tech rust. Also, I have my pre-2011 posts content backed up, and I plan to re-import posts like the Mark Teahen flowchart and the AL Central Trail, but after enough time has passed that a whole bunch of posts from 6-8 years ago won't confuse the hell out of the newcomer.
tl;dr: Meet the new site. Same as the old site, except this one can actually be accessed on a mobile phone.
Thanks for reading this, and thanks for reading everything else.
Happy New Year, and in multiple senses of the phrase.
-Jim
