At it's best, It was very good.
I appreciate Christian for that.

As to the cause of the downfall, I hope
it's something we can all learn from.

LyleHaze

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question=(2b||!(2b))

Im no visitor of Ann.lu but i feel sorry for them closing down.
You can also look on the bright side. AW will probably get more
of their users ;)

Very sad news! I visited ANN from all over the world over the years and _still_ hit it almost daily... Heck, I use it at work a lot as a quick IE/network check on the systems I work on. (Guess I can still do that, but w/o the possible news updates it won't be the same.)

I will miss ANN, but nothing is free. I appreciate the dedication over the years and well...

THANKS CHRISTIAN KEMP!!!

YOU-DA-MAN IN MY BOOK BROTHER !!!

_________________
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill

@amigr:

Ann.lu lasted for 11 years because the trolling that killed it only started about 4-6 years ago. I can believe that, once, it was a good site to go and catch up on news. However, I don't believe the theory that what killed it was lack of things to talk about. Ann.lu hadn't been just a news reporting site for years, so it was essentially another amiga portal. I've just had a look at morphzone, aros-exec and a couple of other amiga sites and they don't seem to have the same problems ann.lu does (in fact, the norm seems to be for people to register on several sites). It's far more likely that Christian realized he had a problem too late, and his attempts at fixing the problem just made things worse. He could have tried to promote his site, but I can imagine that this would have been quite an uphill battle (for me, ann.lu and moobunny will always be Troll Central and I bet I'm not alone in this) and from his goodbye post one can see that he was just not into it any more.

I predict amiga.org will be next site to close down.

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

And why is that, exactly? Amiga.org is probably the most active Amiga site, at the moment.

_________________

Yeah, if anything I'd expect this site to close down before amiga.org does.

You could also visit Amiga News Network
http://amigann.com/

They seem to monitor news coverage and download websites, and so provide an unusual blend of information for visitors.

AF

Sad news... Two years ago ANN.lu was for me the first Amiga site to visit everyday, linking to other sites from there, it was my main source of Amiga info, but I gradually started to visit it less and less, due to increasing level of trolling, it was not fun any more. Now I was going there maybe once or twice a week, not more, and only to read, I have not posted there in two years, IIRC...

I don't agree with what Christian Kemp says about the causes for closing the site: it's not that users have left Amiga platform, and I'm sure many have, but, as some has already said, that ANN.lu became a "troll fest", making normal users to go away from there. When he took some action (registration), it was simply too late, I guess people migrated to other not-so-aggressive sites. And Christian having a dispute with some known individuals and deleting some links from his links bar was something that brought a lot of trolls to ANN.lu, or made some users to become more aggressive.

As lylehaze says, we all should take this as a lesson.

Christian, THANKS A LOT for ANN.lu, it was my favourite Amiga site. Please keep it as archive, it is a great source of what has happened these years in the Amiga world. If you ever close it forever, please consider to give the database to some other people so it is not lost.

Saluditos,

Ferrán.

_________________
Amiga user since 1988
AOS4 Betatester
Member of ATO Spain
A1 Cfg
OS4 SCR
A1200

I wouldn't call myself a troll, but I believe that ANN.lu letting only registered users to post without transforming the site into a portal was a huge mistake. The form ANN had the last years made no sense to me.

sad to see it go. but to be frank, I have not used it for a loooong time..

_________________

Sad news, I think that ANN was one of the first Amiga related sites I went to when I got internet access at university 10 years ago - maybe the Amiga Web Directory and CUCUG were there first, but I guess I've been reading that site on and off for pretty much its entire life - far less recently because the volume of news posted died down and I couldn't be bothered to find my account password for the site. I remember the 'good' old days of 300+ post threads which were mainly flamewars between the two factions. Damn lot of good they did anyone.

I'm not much of an Amiga person now, I check the sites to see if anything has happened and it is sad when the big news of the week is an update to a bloody font rendering engine. I'm a Mac user now (something I never thought I would be back in the day, when Macs were horrible) and happy with it.

Tis an awful shame

ANN was usually the first website I looked at after booting up and had been for some years. But to echo what many have said, I haven't really done so for some time.

There's always a harsh "stabbing in the chest" feeling when something that has been around for so long comes to a close, especially in this community.

Even if I didn't frequent ANN much anymore, it'll be sadly missed - just knowing it has closed.

Long live Amigaworld (one of the reasons I stopped visiting ANN in the first place)

Steve

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A1200T - OS4.0,OS3.9: 603e PPC 200mhz,060 50mhz, 256mb ram, FastATA MK-III, BVision, 160gb,20gb HDDs

A1200 - OS3.1: Blizzard IV 030, 64mb ram, 400mb HDD

OS4.x - Flying the AMIGA flag

DiscreetFX would be willing to take over this site and we are not into censorship.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

A shame to see this site go. I used to visit it almost daily until about two or three years ago at which point I stopped because I couldn't be bothered to wade through the trolling anymore. Reading the comments on this thread, seems others felt the same way and this lead to its demise.

_________________
Snowboarder, Airsofter, Programmer, Writer and AmigaOne XE G4 owner.
Experienced applications developer and part-time snowboard instructor

I find this obsession with "trolls" (a definition commonly used here to describe people with different views) among certain people here a little sad, and quite annoying. Sure, there were some *real* trolls there (quite a few of them are now at amigans.net BTW, and some I have seen posting in this very thread earlier, and by that I meant to say that not all trolls are "blue"), but suggesting that ANN.lu was only visited by "trolls" (and that when the "trolls" was made to register the site died), is IMHO deeply shameful, disrespectful, and throwing filth on ANN's memory that way at this point is pure ugly IMHO.

ANN.lu was an institution in the Amiga community. I can't think of another english language site that has made a bigger contribution than ANN.lu did during the ten years its service was open. Quite often, ANN was the english speaking place where news were posted first, and then leached off to other sites from there.

ANN was the first site I visited every "browsing session", and I reloaded it many times a day (or many times every hour even). I know that the majority of people that has been here from ANN's birth did the same. This can't be forgotten.

It was sad to see it decline during the last two years, but what's the value of an "Amiga News Network" when there hardly is any news anymore? Compared to the past, pretty much nothing happened to the Amiga scene during the last two years. This is a fact, and you should keep this in mind.

Before 2004 there were some enthusiasm about the future for the platform and community. Genesi and Hyperion/Eyetech had things going with MorphOS and OS4, and there was this general feeling that something is finally about to happen with this old but beloved platform, that there is a plan. Then came the Amiga Inc crisis, the Genesi/MorphOS crisis, the MAI/Eyetech crisis, the OS4 situation became clear to people, and it also became clear that no-one is really in charge anymore, there is no plan for the future, no strategy, no real hope to speak of, no-one at the steering wheel.

Since around 2004 I think many people have done what Christian is doing now; forgetting about Amiga, leaving the community, and simply moving on with their lives. Who can blame them really? Turning off the ability to post without signing in *surely* contributed to the reduced traffic on ANN (it's all about site traffic), but I also think that the general community shrinking and reduced interest/hope after 2004 (or before even, but at a greater pace after) made its undisputable contribution as well, and in a far more fundamental way.

Thank you Christian Kemp for these many years of support to the Amiga community.

ANN.lu meant a lot to many people individually, as well as to the community at large. Your effort with ANN.lu deserves a medal. It will not be forgotten.

@CodeSmith

Quote:

That's what happens when you don't moderate your site.

Not true, *there were* moderation on ANN.lu.

Traffic reduced greatly when people was made to sign in in order to post. Please note that this is exactly what people like you called for a long time, stricter posting policies. This is what happens when that is enforced, when moderation tightens up. This leads to a conclusion that is the very *opposite* to what you are saying. This is what happens to traffic when you put up virtual obstacles for people that wants to make posts, instead of making it as easy as possible.

Take a look at "amigans.net" for a current example. This was supposed to be a new exodus for people demanding a step back to "nazi-moderation". The result was *a complete flop*; only some 350 members after all this time (I bet amigaworld.net has had about the same amount of new members since the last clean-out of inactive accounts alone), which is only a fraction of the results from the last exodus pulled off by the very same group of people. 350 people is a fart in space, and the inbreeded discussions (the ones that are allowed) clearly reflects that. You see a handful of people talking to themselves, though they have not much to say really, with the only purpose of increasing post counts and projecting an appearance of a vivid "community".

People *does not want* nazi-moderation, they *don't want* to see posts or entire threads deleted on *highly individual subjective grounds* like they had never existed, or users treated the very same way. People doesn't want a "1984" society. People are generally a lot more thick-skinned than you obviously think, and more intelligent, and most of us actually have the ability to make up our own minds about what is posted on message boards. People wants to discuss things freely, they want to see (and be able to respond to) *any* and *all* kinds of views. This leads to high traffic, which leads to a vivid community, which then leads to even higher traffic, which then brings an even more vivid community, etc, etc.

Mikey C always liked polls back when he posted here, especially polls about a certain subject. He initiated many polls in order to "prove" that what people really wanted was a policy like the one over at "amigans.net". Well guess what, the final and *ultimate* poll has been made, and we now have the results. The votes were in favour of amigaworld.net with the counts of 2.826 against 351.

So anyone going to buy the ann.lu domain and bring it back?

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

@takemehomegrandma
Quote:

People *does not want* nazi-moderation

I understand what you mean, but sh*t happens. For example, people also don't like a few individuals breaking with violence a 10.000 workers demonstration, or some stupid, violent hooligans hitting other people in a stadium full with 50.000 normal, non-violent people and, back to topic, some *real* trolls constantly mudsliding, breaking topics with tens of normal posters, *whatever they opinion is*. Why do you thing the "signing-before-posting" was introduced? Because all was nice and happy? Come on...

And before you ask, no, I'm not in favour of the nazi-moderation, so some sort of compromise must be reached, measures must be taken to assure that different opinions are allowed but without trolling, but IMHO when measures arrived it was too late, first because people migrating to greener, more peaceful prairies, and second because the signing proccess was clunky and hindering.

Saluditos,

Ferrán.

Last edited by Ferry on 01-Jan-2007 at 12:42 PM.
Last edited by Ferry on 01-Jan-2007 at 12:41 PM.

_________________
Amiga user since 1988
AOS4 Betatester
Member of ATO Spain
A1 Cfg
OS4 SCR
A1200

Yeah, ANN was my favorite site a long time ago. But, after using Amigaworld, I never have reason to go back to ANN or Amiga.org. - Lars

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