Long-time Rubyist and the community's own resident crazy genius, whytheluckystiff (a.k.a. _why) seems to have gone missing. Not only has he deleted his Twitter account (@_why) but his Github repositories and all of his great Ruby related Web sites - poignantguide.net, hackety.org, whytheluckystiff.net, and shoooes.net are all down and not even resolving at DNS level.

The Poignant Guide, Hpricot, Markaby, RedCloth, Shoes, Camping, and Try Ruby (a Web version of irb) are considered important by Rubyists not only for their usefulness but for their significant contribution to Ruby's culture, and if _why has truly fallen off the grid, it's a big deal. That said, this appears to be either a deliberate attempt to disappear or a major hack and not just a bunch of coincidental outages. In either case, hopefully he'll be back soon.

What's the motive? We have nothing definite, but Hacker News user fizx quoted a recent tweet from why before he deleted his account:

programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more.

Meanwhile, Twitter users are going bonkers over the news:

Do you know anything or do you just want to show some appreciation to why (he used to read Ruby Inside so he might see this)? Leave a comment! Lastly, if you're reading _why, I hope everything's okay and if you want to release any sort of statement through us, just get in touch.