The Guardian shuts down its Talk boards as of 17.34 today

[NoSleep]

So I guess you'll be seeing more of me here from now on, at least until their new forum opens, if ever.

I didn't see notice of this; I was posting there earlier today; and then I came back a few moments ago, to find this in its stead:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/2011/feb/25/talkboards

After a period of review, it is with great regret that we have to say goodbye to the Guardian Unlimited talkboards. We are unable to continue to support this separate platform.

Community is a vital part of our service at guardian.co.uk and we hope to be able to introduce forums on that platform in the coming months.

It's been more than a decade -- you all practically invented social networking. Thank you for all your contributions.

Luckily I have a few phone numbers and email addresses as well as there being a LastFM GuardianTalk group. Bloody hell.

[Funcrusher]

Oh wow. I only really lurk these days, but it's a big talkboard and that's very sudden. Can't believe it's all gone just like that, it was operating as normal only a short while ago.

It suffered from a fair bit of cunty trolling, but still, bit of a shock.

[Uncle TechTip]

Yes, that's rather a shock, it's probably the leading newspaper discussion board. I don't buy the "can't support it" line, they upgraded it not long ago. Maybe they can't support the moderation any more, but I don't see how that can be avoided in the future.

EDIT: Hold on, this isn't the story comments they're on about? What is the talkboard? Have they closed something I've never encountered?

[The Duck Man]

Yeah, I've never heard of it either. There's a Guardian messageboard?

[NoSleep]

It was getting so as you'd only find it if you knew it was there. It was probably not quite the board they saw fitting their image, I can imagine.

As funcrusher said, there were some cunty trolls about the place, and the moderators were probably juniors in some office somewhere. There was certainly no involvement in discussions or familiarity with regular posters on their part, as people had been banned on the say so of a troll reporting somebody for, say, linking to a racist site, whereas they were merely providing the link to show people where the troll had been getting their information from. Of course the regulars, both trolls and decent posters would just come back under a different name the next day.

I tended to stay in Music and a couple of other "folders", whilst avoiding "International" like the plague as it was a battleground between pro and anti Israel factions and never really managed any pitch other than a shrill one. Also, years ago, some bright spark though it would be great sport to link to a site called Free Republic and get loads of posters to troll their board; great; the "Freepers" were much stronger in retaliation and lessons were learned.

I guess I haven't painted the rosiest of pictures above, but I had some good friends on the board and we'd had some successful meets in London & other places, so it's pretty fucked that suddenly it's not there.

[NoSleep]

From the guardian.co.uk Wiki entry (still there, for now)

In February 2011 The Guardian closed down their talkboards which had been online for over a decade. This was viewed as worse than a thousand Hitlers and widely regarded as being the internet equivalent of what Thatcher did to mining communities in the eighties.

It was also the view of most that The Guardian in closing down the talkboard without warning or consultation were a bunch of gritpypes.

[Jollity]

It's a pain in the arse, those boards were a fun way to waste time.

Well, sometimes fun. Sometimes full of trolls.

[Funcrusher]

There's a temporary alternative up:

http://wc6.worldcrossing.com/webx?14@@.1de78ef8

[NoSleep]

...and that place is shutting down on 15th April this year, itself.

[NoSleep]

This one's been going for a while. There was a period a few years back when Guardian Talk shut down temporarily and The Talkboard was opened then. And it appears it has continued on since then.

[Funcrusher]

Yup, the worldcrossing one goes in April, but the guy that started it (Tasslehoff) seems to have well advanced plans for a more permanent one.

[NoSleep]

I'm in the new one already.

I wonder if there'll be any copyright fallout over its name?

http://guardiantalk.proboards.com/index.cgi

[NoSleep]

Somebody emailed the Guardian and received this reply:

I'm replying to your email on behalf of Alan Rusbridger.
We're truly sorry for the shock that you and your friends felt on Friday when we had to close the GU Talkboards so abruptly. We didn't support them for over a decade lightly or casually, and we didn't close them suddenly in that vein either.
We also know how much they meant to the community - over the weekend we've seen them described on Twitter as "Web 2.0 social networking before Zuckerberg was a Harvard freshman" and been reading blog posts about how people met their partner through the boards.

Worse still, we have to be mysterious about it. We can't discuss the reasons behind it, save to say that it wasn't possible to give you advance notice of the closure, but we will be opening a thread on guardian.co.uk on Monday where we hope you'll be able to find each other and regroup.

There are already several sites we have found where GUTalkers are gathering together http://www.thegraun.com/

http://guardiantalk.proboards.com/index.cgi
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ancientsofgraun/
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_154073141315522&ap=1

I hope you can find your friends there in the meantime.
We do hope in the coming weeks to be able to offer forums on guardian.co.uk where we can support continued conversations between old friends, should you still feel so inclined.
I know this was far from ideal.
With best wishes,

Janine Gibson

I wonder if it was something legal? Others think not, as they "pulled the plug" temporarily on that account before now, and would have done so immediately there was a problem; not wait until 5:00PM Friday.

[mothman]

That's a bugger, when we were expectant parents the Haven Pregnancy forum was a must-read.

[Ambient Sheep]

Somebody emailed the Guardian and received this reply:

...Worse still, we have to be mysterious about it. We can't discuss the reasons behind it, save to say that it wasn't possible to give you advance notice of the closure,...

I wonder if it was something legal?

It certainly sounds that way...maybe it was being used by terrorists in lieu of Puffin Party?

[NoSleep]

Some people on the new boards think it might be a "super-injunction".

Anyway, that email response I posted above is now heading an article where comments have been enabled on the Guardian site:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2011/feb/28/guardian-unlimited-talkboards

And now there is another alternative for Talk refugees which is looking remarkably similar to the original. Hopefully, bandwidth availability is also up to scratch. In the meantime, I'll be popping into all three:
http://guardiantalk.proboards.com/index.cgi
http://www.thegraun.com/
http://www.notthetalk.com/

[Ambient Sheep]

Some people on the new boards think it might be a "super-injunction".

Ahhhh, that would make sense.  Maybe there was frequent discussion of such things and the people who take them out, and one of those people applied for another s-i.  In which case we'd better be careful 'round here too, given the discussions about recent Private Eye articles about such things.

I notice they've edited that email for the posted version, especially the bit that might point towards an injuction, i.e. "Worse still, we have to be mysterious about it. "

[Ambient Sheep]

Heheh, a comment on that Guardian article:

KojoBeng
28 February 2011 10:12AM

if there is no superinjunction, then you could say so.

If there is, and remaining silent about it gives that away, best make up something else quickly.

:-D

Trouble is, as people have pointed out, the original statement said they were being closed "after a period of review".  Which doesn't sound like an super-injunction at all...unless it was deliberate obfuscation to try to hide the latter (and the period of review was the few minutes following the lawyer's letter!).

If it is a super-injunction, then surely there has to come a point where someone calls "enough", or we'll just be marching straight behind a new Iron Curtain.  Hopefully the closure of the boards might be something big enough to do it.



Meanwhile, the sad thing for me is that, thinking about it, I found them years ago, probably about 2001-2002 or so, liked what I saw, maybe even posted once or twice; but I'd also not long found this place (the blueness) and liked it just that bit better.  Being employed back then I didn't have time for both.  Then a few years later, when I stopped work, I'd mostly forgotten about GUT, and -- as it seems I was supposed to -- I assumed that the myriad Comment Is Free pages had replaced it.

Reading eulogies like this make me sad for what I seem to have missed out on.  Perhaps once they've all decided which of the various new sites they're going to end up on, I'll sign up.

[Ambient Sheep]

Hmmm, a possible hint here:

Also worth noting: the discussion platform which supports all conversation around content on our site is home-grown (rather than licensed from someone else) and is gradually being expanded to enable more discursive/less content-focused/more user-initiated conversations. This isn't a replacement for Talk, of course, but as some of you have asked, I just wanted to share that we hope eventually it'll be possible for users to initiate their own discussions...

(emphasis mine)

The original closure message said something about "no longer being able to support this separate platform" which at first sounded like monetary issues.  But now they just can't talk about it.  Pure conjecture: maybe the supplier of the software objected to the content, withdrew their licence, and somehow they're not allowed to talk about that.  Hmmm, sounds unlikely.  It's all very strange.

[Lee Van Cleef]

Maybe they just wanted to shut it down, and in order to withstand the response left subtle hints at something greater so people could create their own conspiracy theories?

I love a good mystery, me.

[Funcrusher]

After getting a bit nostalgic about it, reading some of the temporary board and today's CIF thread is reminding me why I stopped posting.There are some insanely vengeful and poisonous individuals over there. One of the main ringleaders posted a great tirade against another poster, then ran off to announce the fact on Twitter for a few high-fives from his mates. Due to the lack of moderation it tended to be survival of the cuntiest. Not to say there weren't plenty of decent folk on there too.

[NoSleep]

It cuts both ways. People who have been nothing but cunts in discussions, only days ago, are being friendly now, too

[NoSleep]

Bit late in discovering it, but there's a "wake" for the board upstairs at The Chandos, London 7pm, tonight. I'll be going up there.

It seems there might be an explanation emerging, too. Some writer has been gloating on their Facebook about getting a published apology from the Guardian and alluding to people "posting elsewhere" that this might be a costly business. I checked his wiki entry and that looks like it's been nuked, too. I won't bother mentioning the cunt's name.

[Funcrusher]

That guy is pretty mentally ill and a bit of a fantasist, so I'm awaiting proof.

[NoSleep]

I spoke to various people last night and was filled in about the above-mentioned "writer" and I doubt it's due to him, either.

[Funcrusher]

How did the meet go? Good turn out?

[NoSleep]

Reasonable turnout, considering how lackadaisical the publicity was for it. I don't think it was announced in a thread of its own on any of the new forums; merely mentioned as an aside amongst other business in other threads. I found out when somebody asked was I attending "the wake" - "tomorrow"; assuming I already knew about it, somehow.

Most of the people there were from something known as "The Running Thread" in The Haven, which I've never before peeked into, but is actually about running & exercise, although it also ran forever. So most of the people there I had never bumped into. I used to post mainly in the Music & Media folders so there were only very few posters whose names I had even bumped into before. Chatted mostly with uberpedant & kurwamac (AKA berlinparallelechoes) and the husband of a Running Thread devotee who had not been a member himself.

[NoSleep]

Both thegraun.com people and guardiantalk.proboards.com have announced that everyone should make the move to JohnnyTheSailor's www.notthetalk.com.