What bought you to a2k?

Not a fistful of dollars...

Mmmmm If I may...

Definately appreciated it as you do, thinks because you want to, care, etc, anyways from our American Owner, $25 Amazon Voucher as a thank you for the year was my takings

The owner has an MSN site called ravensrealm. He built this site for practice, and as support for language students, if I recall correctly. His name was Craven de Kere, or something like that. He is now Robert Gentel. Whatever his name was, he invited me.

I was addicted to the defunct Abuzz site. It was decaying rapidly. The late Joane Dorel invited me to a2k. When I checked it out, I saw the Abuzz folks I admire and love were leaving me behind. So I came over here.

Change 'has' to 'had.

I was "definately" " bought " here by roger when his underwear temperature reached "sell see us".

it's all her fault...

Yep, it was me.

CdK said, "I want to develop a PHP forum, but I don't feel like dealing with the people. Wanna form an unholy alliance?" And I said sure, thinking there would be, perhaps, 20 people and it would last about a month.

We have, what, over 200 kilomembers and in August we will be here for 10 years.

This is why you should never take stock tips, weather forecasts, Nostradamus-type stuff or any other sorts of prognostications from me.

The devil.

Mmmmmmmmmmm . . .
Devilled rabbit.

Like some others, I was a member of the Abuzz forum and then joined
this one as Abuzz made its way to Hell in a handbasket.

I like playing around in sites when they're in beta so I followed the computers in.

Then roger arrived ...

GWLightwizard, of abuzz, moved to a2k as Lightwizard quite early on. He emailed me several times about joining a2k and I didn't check it out for a few weeks, finally did, was immediately hooked. I knew/liked most of the early members, though didn't know all, and liked the site.

I had been a member of Raven's Realm too, but I'm not sure I ever posted - couldn't figure the site out easily (I'm one of the original luddites from outer space). I've gotten better at that, now in the slightly lesser luddite category.

I have a faint memory that Jespah sent me an email re a2k as well.


May Lightwizard rest in peace. Wonderful man.

The story starts with me working full-time in California, pregnant and leaving soon for another state where I'd transition into full-time motherhood. I wanted some sort of job that I could do from home, hopefully with limited, flexible hours.

A friend of mine told me about job opportunities at a new NYT website called Abuzz. I applied, and got a job as one of the moderators there. The job included starting interactions, making reports, and getting rid of spam and flames.

In addition to my official identified Abuzz account (it was a different color font, or something, I forget now how the staff were demarcated) I started another account -- sozobe -- to just goof around. Originally I was didn't say whether I was male or female and was assumed to be male for a long time.

After about a year (? six months?) of working at Abuzz, the tech bubble burst and there was less and less money to go around. There were rounds of layoffs, which I kept surviving, until I was part of a skeleton crew. The skeleton crew was not enough to adequately moderate all of Abuzz (a large and active site), but we tried for a while.

Then there wasn't enough money for us either, and that was that.

One of last staff members, on her way out (absolutely nobody was left on staff, the NYT left Abuzz up but nobody was being paid to do anything with it) went ahead and allowed me to keep my moderating permissions even though I wasn't being paid anymore. (She was not supposed to do that, but also cared about Abuzz and didn't want to see it go completely belly-up.) I then tried to pretty much single-handedly keep Abuzz going, for a long time.

You might remember various things I did like the Hotlist to find good threads (a replacement for the automatic featured threads that ended with the end of paid staff), and Tilting at Windmills (a way for people to report things so I could find 'em and zap 'em).

There were a couple of other people who still had mod tools too but they were around less and less.

This was all pretty stressful, and as it got to be more and more work (unpaid mind you) for less and less return, I started to finally back away from trying to do it all.

I then started spending more time on other sites, like parenting sites and Les Anarchistes Artistiques (with Tsar).

Then Robert started this site, and invited various old Abuzzers on board. I came on over.


(Some people know this but not that many. For a while I was careful not to say anything, partly to protect the Abuzz staffer who kept me going, now there isn't really any reason not to.)

I think I found A2K by accident while searching for something else. But it's too long ago to remember.

The absolutely abysmal state of the language/grammar advice being perpetrated upon native speakers and second language learners alike.

Fascinating.

Soz, I had no idea...
I joined abuzz at the end, it was chaos. I commend you for your efforts. Someone sent me an invitation to join Raven Realm, I sadly forget who, and then another invitation for here.
Boring, I admit...

I blame Jespah . . .



(Mostly 'cause i don't think she'll hit me . . .)