I’m not sure exactly what led to the shutdown, but I have my suspicions. A look at Alexa shows that traffic there had been on the decline for a while.
I don’t know why they didn’t announce it, but I do know that they had a bad habit of not announcing things, most notably one thing that started the downward spiral.
Back in December 2009 there was an unannounced format change. Many AB-ers fled, and a few had conflicts with the staff on their way out. Without naming names, I can tell you that one senior person on the management side of AB had no reading comprehension skills, no site design skills, no sense of humor and a huge ego. Between that major disturbance, a page layout that was hideous and looked a little like it was made in 1986, insulting senior members of the AB community, and having an influx of people that few sane, intelligent person could tolerate, AB went downhill pretty fast.
What would it take? You’d have to erase a lot of people’s memories of the events of December 2009. If you got the site up and running, you would be unlikely to get many of the old crew back, though you might get a lot of the people that made other people want to not be there and just winding up shutting it down again.
@XOIIO Just? I thought they stopped giving a shit about seven years ago.