Shame as it used to be a great place full of lively discussion and interesting debate.
While I think Christian did a superb job at trying to serve the community, the problem he faced was many fold, a lot of the same problems we face here with Amiga.org.
ANN really became a matter of the two edged sword.
Before the registration system, ANN was completely overrun with trolls and anonymous posters. It had also been rumored to have been hacked by certain people who could pretty much man-handle anything they wanted, taking control of the software (potentially) away from Christian if they'd wanted to at any time.
This brought on the NEED for user authentication. I say need, because ANN had become the bastion of trolls everywhere (myself included) and the signal to noise ratio for ANY subject was fodder for more and more argument until lots of people (myself included) just stopped showing up.
Enter the mandatory registration. All of the trolls who felt the need to go there and act like true asses couldn't be bothered to sign up and *shock* be manually approved, so they scurried off to Moobunny.
Now, the same troublemakers who caused havoc on ANN sit over on moobunny patting themselves on the back and thanking god for "the freedom" to say what they want, when they want without the fear of reprisal.
Don't get me wrong, Moobunny can be a great source of entertainment and on a rare occassion, even knowledge.. Several of the posters there are incredibly intelligent, insightful people, but -- falling back to the ANN topic -- the anarchistic tendencies of anonymous posting bring out the worst in people.
Such was the case with ANN. With the Amiga all-but-dead, and Christian rather wandering off from the Amiga over the last few years (as I have also done), I can see where it was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for ANN.lu.. I even urged him about a year (or was it two now?) to remove the registration, if for no other reason than to get his ad revenue back up. The site would become uncontrollable and troll-infested, but hey, he'd at least have an income from it.
In the end, both ANN and Christian will be missed and I'm sorry to see it, but I cannot say it was either surprising or unexpected. I sincerely wish him the best of luck.
Wayne
