no but while - it's not necessarily - like we can't say with 100% certainty, the last year paints a pretty clear picture. To me at least.
I mean - it was clear that after Lithium they were dead set on a message board. Because they actually had a deal in place, and they abandoned that because the entity couldn't produce a working message board as part of the package. My understanding is that's basically the only reason they abandoned that.
So - at least at the start, they were pretty much sold on keeping a message board.
I think the problems came when - first of all - when you shift software packages - there's going to be problems. There are going to be technical issues, and people aren't going to like it at first. So - none of that was really taken into account. They had execs poking their noses in and being all "artistic visiony" about it. Which - as soon as I first heard the phrase, I sensed we were in trouble.
So - we had new software, that handled differently - a new layout, which nobody was going to like or want to use, and - on top of that, the switch coincided with basically the last of the admins being shipped off to other projects. So - none of the admins we previously knew were connected to the boards anymore.
So we had entirely new people, that had no idea what the board was or what the community was or how it worked, basically completely changing the board and then - just - probably not happy with the reaction they got.
I get the impression that - well there was a clear investment in an aesthetic. One that nobody wanted. And I think the perveyers of that aesthetic possibly tended to blame the users maybe? The only other option would be to - admit the aesthetic didn't work. Which is kind of like admitting failure.
And in the past, that's kind of how things rolled. It was like "okay hey let's do this" "It's not working" "eh okay let's try something else".
NodeBB was a complete departure from that. It, and the new admins, were basically "we're doing this, we're doing it this way, so suck it audience".
And it didn't work.
And I think - with Lazzo in charge, he - obviously, he's open to the boards existence, or he would have scuttled it back when he took over. But I think there were always, not just one, but multiple admins around to act as a buffer between Lazzo and the community to sort of provide the arguments for its existence.
With all of the old admins gone, I think all that left was a combination of people who were so green they didn't know anything, and people who had clearly mishandled the project such that it probably would be easier to end it than to continue to wear it around their necks like an albatross (since they seemed unable to yield to changing it such that it could actually be successful again).
So when the subject came up - it was probably like "well so what to do about this message board", the answer was "devote more resources to it/put somebody on it that can actually fix it" or something along those lines or "axe it and move on".
And I think, with nobody left to make the cogent argument for the board, business-wise, there's not a lot of - room for speculation there to me in terms of - it's more like "why wouldn't they axe the board". There just was literally no reason not to.
My take on it is that - I think Lazzo would have gone for a board if the switch had gone better and been handled better. Because - there was a commitment going into Nodebb to maintain a message board for Adult Swim.
But to facilitate that, I think there probably needed to be some sort of voice there that no longer existed to suggest or point out the reasons for continuing to have a board.
with no such voice, I don't think there was much room for a decision to continue it. It might have been different if there had been a Humbug or a Drew around to help it along. But without that, it was kind of just stuck in a ditch.
And it could have been unstuck, but to do that, they would have had to put somebody capable on it. And I don't think they had anybody that wasn't otherwise engaged in other duties.
so - I ultimately think it ended just because "wrong place/wrong time". That and the inability of execs to adjust to what users actually wanted.
If there'd been a more of a spirit of commerce in the sense of - like instead of that rigid "this is what we're doing because artistic vision", more of an ability to go with the flow and adapt to the audience in order to expand the audience, it may have been different.
But we had inexperienced project managers that didn't understand the board, at the worst possible time for that, coupled with fairly disastrous top down decision making that strangled board traffic.
That's how I see it anyway.
