after a lot of pondering, during the past few months, and also some recent chats with a couple of the appletalker regulars, i’ve come to the decision to shut down the appletalker forum.

the appletalker forum was launched on 9th february 2006, as a refuge for a group of regulars from the macNN forums, at a time when there was a lot of discontent over there. from the outset, appletalker was intended to ‘discuss different’; we would have no moderators, we would try to avoid personal fallings out and, in our writing and posting, we’d strive for quality over quantity.

in the intervening five-and-a-bit years, i’m pleased to say that we managed to adhere to those principles pretty well; we’ve had some great discussions, some great laughs and even a few fights,  but we’ve always ended up still being friends.  and it’s as friends that i’ve come to think of quite a few of you over these past years, even though we’ve never met in ‘the real world’©

ultimately however the appletalker forum itself has failed.

five years on we have a membership of several hundred people but barely half a dozen regulars and even we [the regulars] are posting less and less frequently. i think it’s time to face the fact –sad though it may be– that the appletalker forum is dead and has been so for a long time.

i’ve never been able to understand why appletalker could never attract new users; it was an intelligent forum, we were friendly people, collectively there wasnae much we didnae know about apple gear. in addition i regularly tried things like adding extra features such as the scrapbook, the shops, and the ATPS, tweaked and hacked the original board software over the years to make it as useful as possible. and of course recently transitioned appletalker to a new board software with added iphone goodness –all in the hope of attracting more people. but contrary to the old slogan, “i built it, but they didn’t come!”

so, i think it’s time we moved on. i’ll hold onto the appletalker domain for a bit and see if i can think of something to do with it.  as you can see, at the moment what used to be the old scrapbook is now the entire appletalker site.  i may just keep it at that; a blog where i occasionally post my thoughts, rants, reviews… whatever on the world of all things apple, without the pressure of having to worry about visitor numbers, daily post counts, new user registrations and all the other depressing vital signs which running a dying forum requires you to monitor.

if i do retain the appletalker.net domain as a tech blog, any of you old regulars who fancy submitting articles or anything else are more than welcome.  just get in touch.

in the meantime, i thank you for your loyalty and support over the past five years, bid you all a fond farewell and trust that our paths will continue to cross, at least occasionally, out there in cyberspace.

cheers,

madra.