It's time to say goodbye, and this was not an easy choice. Please forgive me.

I was thinking about the current situation regarding international legality of content moderation this morning, and it's more than I can handle.

I don't mean that to sound dismissive. I don't want it to seem like I don't care. What I mean is-- I genuinely do not know what I need to do to comply with the constant evolution of laws, and the consequences to me as the maintainer of the website are to a point where this escalated far beyond what I had ever signed up for as a human just trying to create a space to connect humans.

I'm going to make an announcement soon, and it shouldn't come as a surprise, but I have to shut down Refsheet. This goes against my promises to offer a way to migrate and distribute content, and my final desperate plea to the community is a plea for forgiveness. I simply do not have the resources I once had, nor the emotional stability, to continue being able to maintain this website, and now I am receiving very real legal threats over the content hosted on it that I cannot fathom a way to handle.

This entire time it's just been me trying to do something cool, but the very real stress and pressure that was put on me for having a community site has taken a toll I cannot hope to describe.

My endless gratitude goes out to the patrons, without their support it would have been impossible to pay for the hosting to date.

At the time I'm writing this, their contributions helped provide a home to 154,700 users, 547,494 characters, and storage for over 2,274,841 images. Refsheet has been online since 2016.

I'm sorry to have disappointed all of you. This goes against my wishes to find a way to distribute the website and shut it down gracefully, but I am, at present, terrified of the unforeseen consequences of continuing to operate it without some serious moderation changes. Either way I shape these changes, this is a task I am not capable of handling, and it's time that I admit that I cannot continue.

Since this decision is made primarily to protect my declining mental health, I'd like to request users refrain from venting their inevitable frustrations on me, and instead focus their efforts on downloading and migrating their character profiles to alternative websites.

Refsheet.net was founded in 2016, and though I may not be accurate to the month, I would like to keep the website operational until 2026 in a read-only state, which will have been close enough to 10 years. I think that's a fine accomplishment for any human in this world to have done.

Go in peace.

-- Mau