Why did Answerbag shut down?
Answerbag existed as a Q&A site from 2003–2015. Without warning, in the middle of December 2015, Answerbag gave us a notice saying the site is no longer available, and thank you for your patronage.
Why didn’t AB even warn us of an impending shutdown?
By the way, what led AB down a downward spiral towards its eventual shutdown anyways?
Also, besides buying the domain for $100,000, what will it take to make Answerbag a competent and powerfully useful Q&A site again?
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I really doubt it will ever come back, considering the creators just stopped giving a shit.
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.
@jerv I mean they just stopped caring all at once, not that it was recent.
@jerv Maybe that passive-aggressive, manipulative old lady in Hemet, CA died which finally released her thoroughly dominated son from his guilt-fueled obligations to her.
The original owners Joel and Rich sold it to Demand Media. Demand Media basically “new coked” it by destroying the camaraderie that had built up by the regulars over the years. They “upgraded” it with a clunky new look-and-feel that made it difficult to follow conversations in the chat threads.
Unlike Fluther, answers weren’t a conversation under the question, but rather answers had to be to the point and answer the specific question, and answers moved up and down relative to each other based on votes. The chronological chit-chat took place in a separate chat thread under each answer. This made the answers helpful, specific, and on topic, while also promoting camaraderie and friendship.
The “upgrade” basically destroyed the way Answerbag worked. We all jumped ship and went to many different Q&A sites. I guess Answerbag was no longer viable and they refused to return to the previous software that proved to be successful.
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