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[Mystvan]

Unfortunately, nothing in this world is really free to use. *shrug*

Any and all products and services need to be maintained either through donations, through advertisements or other ways of earning income (Hello, Facebook and Google! $$$$$)...

Well, I think it is better to be pragmatic than dogmatic... *shrug* In other words, we should fit the circumstances in the best possible way since we cannott fully control events... *shrug* Money rules this world! *shrug* That is the life! *shrug* And it is just my opinion.

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally Posted by Mystvan

Unfortunately, nothing in this world is really free to use. *shrug*

While you are right in general, Mystvan, there are some fine details.

- Site have the long list of ads at the right side of the page. Almost every page, actually.
- Site have nag screen on the every download with "please support us with money".
- After Wikipedia decided to ask for donation, many years ago, someone found it a brilliant, and added the same nag screen at the Abandonia. Wiki removed the ad after one week. Abandonia keep it.
- And now we have the news that are not a news, and looks like your neighbourghood spammer decided to hack the site.

Ok, let it be. Site is semi-dead anyway. Full dead is close, it seems.

[Mystvan]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

While you are right in general, Mystvan, there are some fine details.

- Site have the long list of ads at the right side of the page. Almost every page, actually.
- Site have nag screen on the every download with "please support us with money".
- After Wikipedia decided to ask for donation, many years ago, someone found it a brilliant, and added the same nag screen at the Abandonia. Wiki removed the ad after one week. Abandonia keep it.
- And now we have the news that are not a news, and looks like your neighbourghood spammer decided to hack the site.

Ok, let it be. Site is semi-dead anyway. Full dead is close, it seems.

Yes, in that case, I agree with everything you wrote above. Including the post of the Latest News on the Homepage.

Quoting your post, “even if it has not much with old games in general. Seems, this the way to support the site, so we have to accept it.” *shrug*

[Igorovics]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

Ok, let it be. Site is semi-dead anyway. Full dead is close, it seems.

I feel sorry for this site. I haven't logged infor years, but started to visit again few weeks ago, and found that even the founders left it. Abandonia became AbandonEDia in a way. I remember the days when we had good conversations in Hungarian translations forum a lots of years ago.

It's understandable though. The generation who played with these games became old, has family and stuff. And also, on smart phones there are games which are much more easy to play, look better, don't need to use DOSBox, and so on... But still, I miss the times when Abandonia was full of life.

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally Posted by Igorovics

I feel sorry for this site. I haven't logged infor years, but started to visit again few weeks ago ... But still, I miss the times when Abandonia was full of life.

Well, main reason is that Kosta sold site and left ten years ago. Then some part of community left as well. Then Abovo decided to "improve" the site - and badly damaged translating base and functions in process. Then some more usuals left... Old generation, just like you, haven't time for this anymore, and younger haven't interest... So we are here. Some of us, at least.

[Japo]

The website was remade at the same time and as part of the deal when Kosta sold it, so it became as broken as this at that time, and the very moment the deed was done, no more work would ever be allowed for developing bug fixes or enhancements. The buyer was not Abovo but another company called Studentis, iirc also Swedish. A couple of years later Studentis went bust and Abovo bought it out, or something like that, it could've been just a rebranding, I don't know the legal details.

Afaik they wanted to remake the website because it was considered dated and the new one would be an improvement. The only things wrong with the old website were: content management was too manual; and the layout didn't scale to wide screens. And it looked old/retro, as opposed to this "nice" white-on-white theme we now enjoy. But this website doesn't scale wide either -- which is of course an opportunity to stylishly cram ads to the right. And the attempt to build a proper content management system based on Drupal was apparently aborted early, so we now have at least as much manual file management work, and many more bugs and pitfalls.

People have been leaving continuously, long before and after these events, more or less regardless of them. It is normal and expectable that people leave. The reason why the community has shrunk is because there haven't been enough replacements. Part of that can of course be blamed on the bad state of the website, but it's likely also because many fewer people are now interested in abandonware. The games that still fall in our turf amd haven't been taken by GOG.com are now too old to generate traffic.

[Smiling Spectre]

Japo, what I mean is that there are too many "shrinking" events, but close to nothing "expanding" ones. When engine was changed, we lost ton of non-standard-ASCII translations that never was fixed afterwards. Hardly working tag system added to this too. So, I believe, we own a lot of translators loss to that.

When most contributors/editors left (soon after that), it added to the site visibility too. I dunno why it happened, but it was negative.

Site owners totally _could_ improve state of it. Participating, fixing engine, communicating with admins, etc. Instead, they considered site as crumbling house: let's use it for advertising, and what's good else in it?

So we have archaic site, close to none new reviews, no translations and almost extinct community. *shrug* Well, I am still here, and you too, so at least it's not our fault, right?

[kemo]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

So we have archaic site, close to none new reviews,

Users can't submit reviews because the system is broken... at least, I can't submit reviews.

[Japo]

Originally Posted by underdog

remember how they initially claimed it was a non-profit site? at least they removed THAT bit of ... creative reality... *ahem*

Do you think they're so evil...? They were just so lazy that they copy-pasted the Wikipedia blurb literally. Kind of dishonest, but if God favors the prepared, it makes sense that the Devil favors the lazy.

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

Japo, what I mean is that there are too many "shrinking" events, but close to nothing "expanding" ones. When engine was changed, we lost ton of non-standard-ASCII translations that never was fixed afterwards. Hardly working tag system added to this too. So, I believe, we own a lot of translators loss to that.

When most contributors/editors left (soon after that), it added to the site visibility too. I dunno why it happened, but it was negative.

Site owners totally _could_ improve state of it. Participating, fixing engine, communicating with admins, etc. Instead, they considered site as crumbling house: let's use it for advertising, and what's good else in it?

Indeed, I did not mean that disaster had no negative consequences in traffic too... I mean not 100% either way... anyway never mind what I said.

In my paranoid opinion, Studentis had the idea to turn the website into an advertisement billboard from the very beginning, and they care nothing about anything else. Likely the only problem they saw with the old website is that they couldn't fit enough ads into the every single page. So that's why they invested work in changing it, but after they were done hanging the ads and the website became non functional, they or Abovo never saw any need to spend a cent in fixing it.

So we have archaic site, close to none new reviews, no translations and almost extinct community. *shrug* Well, I am still here, and you too, so at least it's not our fault, right?

But if WE are around and the place is shit, maybe it's OUR fault?

[Smiling Spectre]

Um, I am always over-optimistic, and always give second chances, until I have any hope in it. So while site is still alive, it's hope!

Yes, yes, I know. :|