If the end is coming it would be worthwhile to somehow permanently preserve all the posts & comments this site has generated during all those years.

We're all growing older - perhaps more tired as well. But I still like to be prompted to think about something I hadn't thought about and to give my more or less uneducated take on it and then, later on, to look back to determine how much I missed the mark.

That becomes more difficult for me when I run out of powder and of things to care about while the site runs out of fresh users. How much traffic/users/activity does the site have nowadays?

_{Schengen is toast!}

After reading your statement, rereading it several times one important argument stood out ...

"Even Brexit and the Ukraine war couldn't save us indefinitely."

The main events of tearing the community, society of the European Union apart, definitely.

This has been a slow but steady proces since 1999. The global events of 9/11, the financial crisis, new world order of neocons to remake the Middle East to suit Israel. The Iraq War caused a split between Old and New Europe, was eased by giving NATO a greater role for the national interest and "security" of the EU?

Steadily Brussels gave benefits to former Soviet bloc states for joining the economic bloc. The defense pact of NATO expanded in step, often a bit ahead of wisdom.

In short this decline in ET readership as in tread with the clear decline of the European Union ... the war in Ukraine sealed its fate. The EU has close cultural ties with the New World. The huge influx of refugees from war torn states in the Middle East (and poverty stricken Africa) has exacerbate the political split in the EU between East and West. The EU failed to work for its own national interest and offered much for multinational corporations in trade talks and treaties. Impunity for failings ...

With the digital revolution came an expansion of means of communication, except the willingness to listen petered out as the search engine provided all answers to our questions of doubt. Why debate issues anymore.

Fortunately in time of real crisis as the pandemic, in the local community there was a helping hand, especially from the younger generation. A form of solidarity we are all in it. However the gap in generations also plays a role for blogging.

ET offered a trusted community where one could debate issues, not so on social media in forums. At least in the Dutch scene writing short comments one gets butchered just because "they can". Lack of responsibility and caring for one another. A bit of hooliganism and meanness inside all of us. ☮️ 🙏🏽

'Sapere aude'

I won't protest if Eurotrib goes into permanent read-only.

I find less energy to write these days. I have been thinking about a series in the structure of the US empire and how this reflects in its decline (the structure gives the failure mode), but I haven't had energy to get going on it.

Perhaps, if the decision comes down on closing we could have a thread on where (if anywhere) future writings can be found.

I've been here before. A site I co-founded  (I wrote the code) to replace a forum shut down by Microsoft (we launched exactly one year before 9/11), with thousands of users and thousands of posts per day for several years. Overall quality not as high as ET in its heyday, but a lot of wonderful things, and high quality human interactions.
The decline commenced with the second Gulf war, a clear left/right split, and the right founded their own site and left a couple of years later. The site was still viable until its 10th birthday, but after, it limped on as a club for old members for a few years (good for poetry and literature), then died.
Last year one of the participants asked me if I could put it back up, so that she could recover her writings from fifteen years ago, for her Ph.D in education. We managed to do that.

For me, social media killed the whole notion of a specialised forum site. Personally I have never been able to separate the personal from the political, and in fact I still feel that it is fundamentally unsound to do so. I was a latecomer to ET, but I enjoyed the crossover in that respect. I tried sporadically to follow the migration of the personal side to Facebook, but that platform has always filled me with horror and dread, and I have long since abandoned it definitively. Which leaves me as something of an orphan, currently.

But I'll get over it, I suppose.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

I am very much in favour; from time to time, I delve into old diaries with wonder and delight. Most recently, after Carrie's thread, I've been revisiting Helen's abundant output, full of wit and wisdom on so many topics, and cherishing her memory.

I would suggest leaving one permanent "open thread", if that's feasible (how hard can it be? har Colman) so that people can drop in and give news, ask for contacts, or whatever.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

From a technical admin point of view, what is the difference between read-only with an open thread and the current "limp mode" where people can still publish occasional diaries and comments with not much of a front-pager or moderator input? I've checked out of the open threads for a long time now. Would they be missed if not renewed every month?

I think there is still value in the occasional diary, even if discussion is limited. But I can't say I miss the open threads. But does that mean all remaining sense of online community is lost? Or is it past saving?

Index of Frank's Diaries

Once AI has become a Force, what is the purpose of writing overall and especially on blogs seeking to find facts behind news and political decisions. Today algorithms are used on local and state level of government. Soon phone calls will be answered by robots and one needs to pay a fee to get a humanoid on the line.

DEEP FAKE NEWS

The large-scale use of synthesized voices for phishing is only a matter of time! This is the first deepfake video that is voice swapped from the same source video to the best of our knowledge. @NinaDSchick @HaoLi81 @daniellecitron

HD: [_link] #voiceswap pic.twitter.com/FiXkeTxMKm

— deepware (@deepwareai) January 29, 2021

Democracy as we know it too will have passed, fallen on the wayside. History doesn't repeat itself but moves from one revolution to the next. My fear has been portrayed in Hollywood ghastly films, the world separated in haves and have nots, not just within a community, but for whole nations and perhaps a permanent global divide.

'Sapere aude'

As Colman is the guy who has the hassle of providing tech support, I will leave the ultimate decision to him. The consensus here seems to be that closure at some stage may be inevitable, but that it would be nice to maintain some way of keeping in touch, perhaps by being able to post links to blogs published elsewhere. I don't know if that saves him much in the way of tech support work.

For as long as it remains possible, I will keep on publishing the odd diary as time and energy permits, but most of the discussion on my posts is now on Slugger O'Toole. As much of my enjoyment of blogging is in the discussion afterwards, my writing will tend to be geared to an Irish readership.

It would be wrong not to acknowledge Jerome a Paris' enormous contribution to getting European focused blogging started, and particularly his ongoing contribution to sustainable energy blogging. Other giants of the genre include Afew, DoDo, Fran, Migeru, Melanchthon and of course the sadly deceased Helen and ARGeezer. I'm sure we could all name others who had a major influence on our thinking, and perhaps on our lives.

My thanks to all who made this great experience possible. And my enduring sadness that it may soon be no more.

Frank

Index of Frank's Diaries

But it's also undeniable that our user base has been ageing, dying off, and not being replaced by a younger cohort.

Like many other specialist websites, this site was hallowed out by the social media era. The "next generation" never knew about this site in the first place.

Remains to be seen if some form of these sites will come back in another form; the impetus is there with facebook being abandoned by most and twitter devolving since that guy bought it.

you are the media you consume.

This just happened to catch my eye while I was saving the images I once put on this website from the greedy paws of Photobucket...

The last diary I put up here will be 10 years old in a few months. There's a certain irony in it that it covered citizen participation (or lack thereof) at the EU level. A few weeks after writing that diary my wife discovered she was pregnant of our first child, the rest is history. It took me nearly 8 years to realise that time for blogging (or writing in general) was gone and not coming back any time soon.

Although I don't think the original European ideals have lessened for the younger generation (if anything, the war in Ukraine has brought these back to the fore) the online media usage has incontrovertibly shifted to different, faster platforms, and even while typing this comment I see how the ET platform is no longer a competitive match compared to Substack or Discord platforms.

Of course I'd much rather see the site return to its former glory, but imo an influx of more active bloggers and a technical upgrade would be a prerequisite. If all things must end - to cherish this place and keep treasuring the good times (and remember a few of the bad times), I can also support putting the website moving into read mode and keep it as a bastion of knowledge.