He claims all people left Amiga and that's why ann.lu's traffic has declined so much, but I have two other explanations:

1. When they locked out the trolls, it wasn't fun to throw mud there anymore so the trolls left.

2. Those who are still really into Amiga moved to this site, just like I did

So I don't think that many people have left the Amiga world as ann.lu's figures shows.

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- Don't get fooled by my avatar, I'm not like that (anymore, mostly... maybe only sometimes)
> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

Yes I agree!

I stopped reading the site myself as no comments where made on anything the last year.

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/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

To me, visiting ann.lu was an afterthought...or I also viewed it as the site that tried to be cool like Amigaworld.net :) hehe

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-- --
aka Tony Rocks

That's too bad. I checked this site's news items on a regular basis. But I guess it is a sign of the times. After all, there just aren't enough users left in the community to support the number of sites that we see Today. It is kind of sad to see never ending splits in the community over the past 10 years, some people have become so intolerant of anything that doesn't follow their "official" Amiga party line, whether this might be Classic, AmigaDE/AmigaAnywhere, AOS4, MOS or AROS to them. This serves nobody in the end, at least IMHO.

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When swimming with sharks, make sure to bring lots of band-aids...

Good bye Ann.lu

Last edited by tomazkid on 28-Dec-2006 at 10:49 PM.

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Site admins are people too..pooff!

Can your news acrchives be made available somewhere?

It would be nice to preserve that perspective on Amiga history over the last 10 years.

Regards



Rich

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Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

Quote:

After all, there just aren't enough users left in the community to support the number of sites that we see Today.

'
No, Deniil175 is exactly right. When the trolls had to register the site died, almost overnight. Anyone who used to frequent the site will tell you that.

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...wait... what?

All the trolling on the site killed it popularity, nothing else, and when they enforced stronger moderation it where to late all ready.

The rest is just a poor mans excuse.

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http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

It is a shame when an iconic and significant resource disappears. ANN was the first Amiga board I read regularly.

The Amiga scene has indeed shrunk alarmingly, but I had long since no longer bothered to read or post there, in favour of this site. The reason was the impossibility of actually having a conversation about anything at all without the thread turning into a troll-fest. I've seen some of those same trolls now post here with the standard "brainwashed blind followers" line, and protesting their disruptions are valid and harmless, etc, etc. Hope you're happy now.

I don't take it as a bad news. As said, it became useless and too much trolling were there.
The people behind ANN should join forces with current Amiga websites.

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Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

Always a shame when a long-lived website closes, even though I never visited ANN much (especially in it's wilder days).

The very last news article was about the release of OS4; I supect that'll now be preserved on the front page for the next few years (it's being kept going as an archive).

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ANN tried to fill the gap that was left when Amiga Web Directory closed and places like A.org and AW.net where yet to come. For many years Christian did a great job. But as Amiga users and news declined and troll activity increased, I visited less and less also. I wish him well in the photography field. Maybe he'll still visit here once in a while.

Plaz

Even though ANN became less relevant in later years, it's always been an important part of the Amiga community. I rarely visited in the last couple of years - because of the trolling and later on because of the decreased activity.

I think most people spread out to other boards - especially here. It has helped the climate change a bit. These days you really only see the ANN level of trolling on moobunny and amiga-news.de (of the sites that I read once in a while at least).

I will miss what ANN was in its heyday. It was the first site I checked in the morning and I kept checking it throughout the day. It was the center of Amiga news and it was great. I hope a full archive can be preserved permanently. It looks like wayback machine only has a partial archive. If not the comments then at least the news items themselves. It's a solid record of Amiga history over many many years.

Thank you Christian for your work over the years and for keeping it running after you lost interest yourself. I wish you well in future endeavors.

Quote:

Can your news acrchives be made available somewhere? It would be nice to preserve that perspective on Amiga history over the last 10 years.

That would be a good idea if at all possible. I would be a shame to see all of it disappear forever.

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When swimming with sharks, make sure to bring lots of band-aids...

ANN had to close, there where no reason to keep it alive IMHO.

I have visited ANN from day one and it has probably been the single site I have visited most on the Internet but the past two years I have only visited once a week or so and then asked myself what I was doing there.

Try to compare the comments section from today and five years ago, nothing there lately!
Fact is there's absolutely no activity on the site apart from the relatively few news that gets added no community news site can live with that.

I feel a bit sad over the loss of ANN but must admit that it is probably the right decision Christian have taken.

Thanks for all the time you have put into ANN and good luck with everything. Also thanks to everyone else who contributed to ANN.

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It was the first site on internet ever I had written comments on!

It helped so much me to improve my english!

I hope that Christian could change his mind, perhaps with some external help...

Sure it was so lonely dealing with only pure HTML and no avatars and image linking!

(this is one of the reasons of its decline...)

Trolls (the best part of people visiting ANN) vanished when access was limited to registered users.

(to be honest... this was another cause of decline)

Also AmigaONE users migrated themselves on Amigaworld.net and Pegasos users migrated to MorphZone.

Many amiga users switched thru years into other systems.


But if we ask all toghether to Christian to keep alive ANN, sure he will listen our prayers.

Maybe he will not changes his mind... But who knows!

Let us show all our love and all our apprecciation to Chris, for his job for Amiga community and his loyal service to us all readers of ANN all thru these 10 years.

Write him a letter!

mailto:ckemp[at]ann.lu

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"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

That's what happens when you don't moderate your site. Trolls move in and take over, and anyone who's not interested in trolling just goes somewhere else. If you then decide to lock out the trolls, well then you're locking out the only people left in your site. I guess the tumbleweed and crickets had all the freedom of speech they needed...

One thing can say sure PRO ann.lu.

It was full of trolls but at least ANN was REALLY free for ALL.

I can't say the same for other computer sites known for censoring comments.

Last edited by Raffaele on 28-Dec-2006 at 10:25 PM.

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"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

Quote:

Poster: CodeSmith Date: 28-Dec-2006 22:02:50 That's what happens when you don't moderate your site. Trolls move in and take over, and anyone who's not interested in trolling just goes somewhere else. If you then decide to lock out the trolls, well then you're locking out the only people left in your site. I guess the tumbleweed and crickets had all the freedom of speech they needed...

Not exactly true, for a very long time, ANN.lu was the place where every developer and major figure in the Amiga market posted, with or without the trolls. Be it the MorphOS developers, the AmigaOS 4 developers (and other people from Hyperion), even Fleecy had posted there and was known to follow it. The site did not die because it scared everyone and then locked the trolls out as well, the site died because there is hardly anything left to discuss in comparison to, say, 4-5 years ago. The trolls *helped* kill it but were not the major reason. The main ANN.lu posters did have accounts there, although the registration system was a manual kludge (you had to send Christian an email with your nick and password) and kept posting until there was nothing to post about.

Had non-moderation been the reason ANN.lu died, it would not have lasted *11* years.

Last edited by AMiGR on 28-Dec-2006 at 10:26 PM.

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Quote:

the site died because there is hardly anything left to discuss in comparison to, say, 4-5 years ago

That didn't help but I believe that CodeSmith is more on the mark for me. Ann IMHO died at about the time AW.net started. It had turned from a really good news site into totally childish troll site. This in turn created AW.net as people looked for somewhere sensible to view news and views. This is why I stopped viewing it and came here instead as it became pointless.

Moderation came in way too late.

There were other factors, such as Ann.lu's low tech front end and clunky registration feature but hey-ho that's how it goes.

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Sam