and morganwood, terrydoolittle, ridinghood, etc...........
Y'know, if there's anyone not here who you'd like to see here, you can send them a topic. Just click on tell a friend and email a topic to them (it doesn't need to be this one, of course). :-D
What contributed to Abuzz's problems? Man, lots of things. One was definitely an assumption that fewer and fewer moderators (eventually, none) could handle the membership. Another was failure to work with and acknowledge notes to Support, either in the sense of reports of improper content or technical difficulties. In short, management became unresponsive and aloof, after having been fairly approachable. Trolls took advantage of management inattention, and the problems began, and then they began to multiply.
Another factor was database corruption, as Craven points out. Their server does not seem to refresh properly, hence the outages. When outages became a fairly regular occurrence, they should have been fixed and the membership should have been clued in as to what was happening. While it's possible that the former has been accomplished, the latter never was. Hence, you had people complaining of censorship.
I'm sure the NY Times didn't want the Abuzz they got. And I don't mean Abuzz right now, I mean the Abuzz of 2 years ago, and earlier. They were probably looking to sell knowledge management services. Instead, they ended up with a chatty Internet community. They were unprepared for what they got, they didn't want it, they couldn't sell any part of it, and they eventually abandoned it as a nice idea that failed.
I strongly suspect that Abuzz will cease operations at the end of a quarter in the near future. Whether that's the end of this quarter, or next, or even 2 years from now, I don't know. But I believe it will be seen as the non-moneymaker/extra server burden that it is, and the plug will be pulled by a cost-conscious manager.
That's right Jespah. Lightwizard brought me over.
There is one thing that sticks in my craw. AB2L is superior to abuzz in ALMOST , every way. However, when I get an e-mail notification from abuzz, there is a highlighted, direct link to the topic. With AB2K I have to travel a more circuitous route. Why is this?
Booman, A small price to pay for 1) more reliability, 2) no invectives, 3) no personal attacks, 4) no imposters, 5) graphics capabilities, and 6) 20 smilies and/or emoticons. c.i.
I rarely read all the posts in a lengthy discussion, but this time I did because this is an issue I've thought about, too. Just about everything I can imagine about why Abuzz went wrong has been covered here, but I do want to thank those who created (and are maintaining) Able2Know.
OK, OK, I will say one thing about Abuzz: Can't, for the life of me, figure out why the NY Times hasn't pulled the plug. Because, with the Times' logo there, surely it must be a corporate black eye to have a site featuring so much nonsense, obscenity and bad behavior. They'd never let their newspaper deteriorate like this; I wonder why they're so nonchalant about a web site they sponsor (albeit minimally)?
Not to mention, I just lo-o-o-ve my birdie! (hee-heee)
Booman wrote:There is one thing that sticks in my craw. AB2L is superior to abuzz in ALMOST , every way. However, when I get an e-mail notification from abuzz, there is a highlighted, direct link to the topic. With AB2K I have to travel a more circuitous route. Why is this?
This is because I have not set up the email updates to use HTML email. I will do this soon.
Craven,this doesn't surprise me at all.....I'm gonna' have to put you on my Hero List.
Booman, We owe Craven and jespah more than putting them on our "Hero List." I think the members of A2K can come up with some real good ideas. We should start another forum to discuss this - don't you think? c.i.
I second the motion......Let me get this straight, are these the two people responsible for this forum, period?
They have done the lion's share, but there's a host of helpers, with fishin' and Phoenix occupying pride of place (as Moderators) and a bunch of Forum Guides as well.
Okay, how about this... While we're waiting for you* to set up the new link, singing all their praises, why don't we all just flood the mailboxes of these two, with PM's, stating, simple, personal, thank you's. (Shhh...don't tell 'em it's coming
)
...*Why you? Because it's your baby, and you know, exactly what you have in mind.
Ironically, the only "imposters" that i ever ran across appeared long before the AFUZZ madness, and likely resulted from the site having no code to prevent multiple instances of the same user name. After all, i can't be the only person with access to the www who knows about Setanta.
I miss good people, like Ridinghood, SheBears, and that German kid (whose name escapes me at the moment--old age is embarassing more than anything else). I don't miss the nastiness, of course, and i don't think that it contributed to the "liveliness" of the site. I recently looked at a single thread there, there were negative ratings all over the place, only one person had addressed the topic of the thread, and had been deluged with nasty comments. One old joker i never liked over there came in and listed, in very negative terms, all the "types" of people who had the opportunity to post there. Apart from being a very incomplete list, one had to wonder which invidious category that man fit into.
The rating system, i have been told, was a result of the software type which was being tested. Ostensibly, this was software designed for long-distance "brainstorming" by corporate employees--so "valuable" and "not valuable" ratings would have made sense. Like so many things designed by engineers and code-writers, however, it was devised without due consideration of human nature. Even in its intended use, such responses would tend to bother those getting "not valuables." Furthermore, it is also human nature to act the lynch mob in situations in which it appears that there will be no repercussions. The ratings system was what appeared to be a good idea, unworkable in practice.
As for how AFUZZ fits into the NYT, i don't believe they are really paying sufficient attention to the possible consequences of that free-for-all. In a magazine which UPS sends to all account holders, i read a brief article about "knowledge sites." AFUZZ was at the top of their list. Two things immediately occurred to me. The first was that whoever wrote that blurb for UPS had not, in fact, investigated the site, or they likely would not have touted it. The second was that the NYT must not being paying sufficient attention, because it's a "no-brainer" that this gives them a very bad image with those people for whom this is their first exposure to the organization.
I believe it was PC World that listed Abuzz as a resource site, also. But this was early in the year prior to its going downhill. At that time I think it still was an interesting, educational, humorous forum.
Prior to the 'valuables' and 'non-valuables', wasn't there something labeled 'applause'? I believe I remember that method being as useless as the current one.
Booman, please don't do that. Their mailboxes are constantly being filled. I echo the sentiment, but participation and a note on the boards is really the best appreciation. Anyway, they both deny having done anything special.
Mustang, prior to AFUZZ, the old Abuzz had two features. The individual creating the thread could give a star to those responses s/he considered valuable, and could convert one or more responses to "green text," which indicated that the response was considered the most valuable, or among the most valuable. People regretted "losing their stars," and, for a time, would give their name and a number of stars after, as in "MassCass*798*" which meant she had had 798 stars awarded before the change. I don't know the exact figure, and hope she'll not come after me on this one, she is here at able as well. But that wasn't meaningful to newbies, so people dropped it, or carried it to the ridiculous. MarleyFrances put some number after her name, and i would respond to her posts by calling her "MarleyFrances*1000*" and then "MarleyFrances*100000* and finally, "MarleyFrances*1000000000*. She finally incorporated the joke into her screen name. The old system had its flaws as well--for example, some people would post, agreeing with the threads author, just to get stars, or the coveted "green text." But, at the least, there was no way to get a negative rating. It's all crap anyway, the judgment is very subjective, so invidious situations can arise too easily.
Abuzz was never what The NYT intended it to be, it failed to become what so many of us tried to make of it. Perhaps A2K is a monument to "The Abuzz that Never Was"
timber
As several people have now mentioned, the Abuzz software wasn't designed for the way it ended up being used. I don't know that that was a fault of the NY Times but early on the site got away from being a "specific answer" sort of knowledge resouce and more of an opinionated and philosophical site.
The same type of rating system works well on other sites were the types of questions are more direct. The original "Beehive" (the original name of the software and the company that was absorbed by Abuzz) developers envisoned questions like "What is the correct torque setting for the cylinder head bolts on a 1972 Chevy Nova with a 350 c.i. engine?" instead of what they got - "What is the nature of man?" (or "How do I get to the Hatched (sic) Shell? lol). One type of question lends itself pretty well to ratings, the other doesn't.
