When did you join A2K (or Abuzz)?

Lol...the politeness didn't last.

I recall getting really irked by all the "Traitors!!! You are deserting!!" and the crazy venom directed at Craven for "destroying Abuzz".....it kind of ended an off-Abuzz Abuzz group I was sort of part of for me...or it was the final straw..when a couple of people in that group became hysterically anti CdK. Like...blame the perp here, the NYT, already!!!

Funny to think back to that Sturm und Drang.

Somehow the net seems a particularly apt medium for Sturm und Drang.

Yes! Yes, it's all coming back to me now ....!

The folk who swore they would NEVER desert Abuzz, despit it having gone completely nuts & off the rails & NYTs management not giving a ****.

And I recall all those attempts of ernest, committed Abuzz members, trying, trying desperately to alert management, trying to salvage something important ...
God it was distressing.

Yeah...I was a particularly hopeless draftee of a particularly good and deeply earnest group (I am still surprised when I discover new Illuminatii to have been guiding geniuses that I had no idea were).

I had no hope, and little time...and was forever being hounded that I had not met my quota of initiated threads on Abuzz, designed to test hypotheses about "what the NYT wanted and might save Abuzz if they got".


Oh my, how the eggs of threads spurted from me when I was sufficiently shamed and guilt-ridden!


But...I always thought: "This ain't never gonna woik, goils and boils".


But....bless them and the horses they rode in on for trying.

They know who they were.

Yes & some of us on the fringes (pulling out hair out! ) know who many of them were, too!

We should (finally) say thanks for trying, you good guys! You did your very best!

... Perhaps they should now (finally!) all stand & indentify themselves, so we can hold an appreciative party for them!

What is abuzz? I typed it into google but couldn't find anything.

it's like atlantis or lemuria, before our time, a mythic place that stands now only in legends, it was rumored to be message board in league with the new york times, but this information is hazy at best

I joined abuzz on Christmas day in 2000. I was led there by an e-mail from a Star fighter who warned me not to engage the earthlings in their games. We had many quests of note and several great battles with the forces of Arhennia. I salved my wounds and entered many a noble fray with several of those who shall remain nameless except in legends recounted about the counsel fires.

The crazy ones of the Zinger and Dominic John families , had begun to strike repeatedly at the vital parts of abuzz and through constant worrying a vital extremity, they brought it down, not by a final wound but by thousands of bleats and "**** yous" .
Actually I never liked the news column format of abuzz.

Just ignore djjd.

Once upon a time (late 1990s, to be precise) in a galaxy far away (NYC and Boston, mostly) there was a website/message board somewhat similar to what today is A2K. It was called Abuzz and was owned and operated by the New York Times and, later, the Boston Globe. Many, many of the old-timers on A2k first encountered each other on Abuzz. When it became known that the powers that be (NYTime Digital and Boston.com) were going to shut Abuzz down, some Abuzzers decided to start their own site. It was to be called Able2Know. The moving forces behind this movement were Robert Gentel (then known as Craven deKere) as the techie webmaster and Jespah for control of the content. Both had been active on Abuzz. Many Abuzzers joined the new site imediately. This was the genesis of A2K.

Today, if you mention Abuzz, people like Frank Apisa and ehBeth and farmerman and yours truly and too many others to mention by name get a tear in their eye.

Come to think of it, djjd isn't far off in that Atlantis-like description.

don't make me talk about the lizard people

January 1st 2008!

Heck... been here pretty much every day since then.

I joined Abuzz in 2000 maybe but 'talk7' was taken so it was 'talk72000'. Drat, Gore was so stilted.

I joined 'Buzzards' Roost' run by 'maggincat' and from there I learned of A2k and joined in 2005.

At Buzzards there was not enough variety i.e. all were Liberals so there was no vigorous arguments and an amateur historian with limited international knowledge but didn't want to offend him so I left.

I went on Buzzards Roost, but could never get acclimated there. Same with seattlebuzz.

Immediately after the Abuzz demise, anon made an effort to create a new Abuzz. It apparently proved to be too much of a task, because it never got beyond the planning stages.

Ah, thanks thats really interesting, I didn't know that.
I also didn't know craven and robert gentel were the same person.

How did Abuzz differ from a2k content-wise?

Instead of bring you with nostalgic reminiscences - have a look here:



Several days/sites are stored at the Internet Archive, e.g. the one above: http://web.archive.org/web/20010301082600/http://www.abuzz.com/

Browising arround, Abuzz seems so outdated now! It had way too many features, even if some of them were nice, and you were forced to navigate and navigate to get where you wanted.

BTW, what's playing at the Shell?

Thought it was the other way around, Andrew. Not that these details matter a great deal now! Gone, all gone with the wind! <sob>

The Duck Tour.