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We would like to inform the forum members of our intention to close the L.U.G. We will shortly switch to read only, leave the forum up in this state for a while, before finally taking it offline.
Here are the reasons:
First and foremost, traffic: In a nutshell, the forum has been extremely quiet for several years now. The writing was on the wall many years ago when we faced competition from growing use of Social Media as a vehicle for user support. We believed forums could endure that as we can offer a lot more than those platforms with regard to easily searchable archives.
Next we noticed that being found in search results was getting harder and harder as Google favoured YouTube videos, Reddit and now AI "answers/solutions" directly at the top of the search page. People are getting answers without having to even click through to a website. We won't go into the validity of many of those answers, perhaps one last discussion here about that …
Even standing still, a forum such as ours does require upkeep, and there are costs involved. While the LUG has always been a labour of love for those who have helped keep it running for the many years it has been in existence, paying in order to keep software up to date, for provider services and so on has to be dealt with. The small amount of advertising revenue does go some way to helping cover these costs, but ultimately, given the lack of activity we feel there is little point in maintaining a resource that is not getting sufficient use to justify the work involved.
Of course this will be sad news — and the three of us are very sorry to see what has been an internet home from home for many coming to an end. We would like to express our profound gratitude to the thousands of logic users who provided such fantastic information and discussions over many years and thorugh many iterations of the LUG, starting as a university mail server, continuing with email, moving to Yahoo, then switching to an online forum. It has been quite a journey. We wish everyone we had the pleasure to meet and get to know every happiness for the future. Most especially, our former moderator and admin colleagues, going all the way back to Fokke, as well as the many helpful emagic and Apple employees who continued to take an interest and provide their invaluable help.
We may in the meantime be contacted via the contact link at the bottom of the page, or per PN.
Many thanks and best regards
Mark Cahill, Peter Ostry and Pete Thomas
Here are the reasons:
First and foremost, traffic: In a nutshell, the forum has been extremely quiet for several years now. The writing was on the wall many years ago when we faced competition from growing use of Social Media as a vehicle for user support. We believed forums could endure that as we can offer a lot more than those platforms with regard to easily searchable archives.
Next we noticed that being found in search results was getting harder and harder as Google favoured YouTube videos, Reddit and now AI "answers/solutions" directly at the top of the search page. People are getting answers without having to even click through to a website. We won't go into the validity of many of those answers, perhaps one last discussion here about that …
Even standing still, a forum such as ours does require upkeep, and there are costs involved. While the LUG has always been a labour of love for those who have helped keep it running for the many years it has been in existence, paying in order to keep software up to date, for provider services and so on has to be dealt with. The small amount of advertising revenue does go some way to helping cover these costs, but ultimately, given the lack of activity we feel there is little point in maintaining a resource that is not getting sufficient use to justify the work involved.
Of course this will be sad news — and the three of us are very sorry to see what has been an internet home from home for many coming to an end. We would like to express our profound gratitude to the thousands of logic users who provided such fantastic information and discussions over many years and thorugh many iterations of the LUG, starting as a university mail server, continuing with email, moving to Yahoo, then switching to an online forum. It has been quite a journey. We wish everyone we had the pleasure to meet and get to know every happiness for the future. Most especially, our former moderator and admin colleagues, going all the way back to Fokke, as well as the many helpful emagic and Apple employees who continued to take an interest and provide their invaluable help.
We may in the meantime be contacted via the contact link at the bottom of the page, or per PN.
Many thanks and best regards
Mark Cahill, Peter Ostry and Pete Thomas
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