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DPreview Closure Theory )

But the thread was on dpr closure theory. What’s your theories? I agree with Serge, someone randomly decided, they don’t really know. It’s actually quite crazy.

Before I retired, I was an auditor working on a number of large US corporations. Many of them own a number of businesses, subsidiaries, etc.. From time to time, they look at these businesses and decide if they are still a fit with where the corporation wants to go. If they are profitable then they might look to sell them. If they aren't profitable or marginally so then they might just close them.

So my closure theory is that Amazon looked at DPreview and decided it wasn't a fit with their strategic direction and wasn't profitable enough to be sold or bought out by its own management. So they decided to close it. Maybe they even made a loss on the closure which they can write off against tax.

There is probably a group somewhere in Amazon that is in charge of acquisitions and divestitures (most large corporations have them). That group will have made the proposal to someone in senior management who looked at the numbers in the proposal and rubber-stamped the decision. In that sense, I don't think it was random but rather it was standard procedure.
 
I think it is quite simple. The staff are in tidy-up mode pre-closure and the forum practically runs itself using honorary moderators. So which there is life the forum is being left to continue. I have made a commitment to keep moderating as the task to which I made a commitment. For how long? - even the moderators don't know.

I have noticed that my two small forums there are effective on the point of being defunct as the members are presumably now posting on new pastures. The very busy M4/3 forum is probably down to about 50% of its usual traffic but there is still the odd new member and new threads are being started.
 
Before I retired, I was an auditor working on a number of large US corporations. Many of them own a number of businesses, subsidiaries, etc.. From time to time, they look at these businesses and decide if they are still a fit with where the corporation wants to go. If they are profitable then they might look to sell them. If they aren't profitable or marginally so then they might just close them.

So my closure theory is that Amazon looked at DPreview and decided it wasn't a fit with their strategic direction and wasn't profitable enough to be sold or bought out by its own management. So they decided to close it. Maybe they even made a loss on the closure which they can write off against tax.

There is probably a group somewhere in Amazon that is in charge of acquisitions and divestitures (most large corporations have them). That group will have made the proposal to someone in senior management who looked at the numbers in the proposal and rubber-stamped the decision. In that sense, I don't think it was random but rather it was standard procedure.
That sounds about right.

But the original announcement was to close the site April 10th (presumably meaning no more forum posts and no more staff reviews) and then only a short time later for the servers to be turned off. There was no mention of an archive and certainly there seemed to be little or no recognition of the impact the site’s closure would have on the photo enthusiast community.

Now it seems there’s some back-pedalling. The site will remain as an archive it seems so the servers (and storage) won’t be turned off. I assume this it to preserve the review library, but I do wonder what additional effort it might be to keep the forum open. If it’s not a lot then maybe they might keep it running? But who will be picking up the bills for the servers and ongoing maintenance?

For sure there is a change of plan happening, but the lack of any coherent information about the new plans tells me that it’s all being done ad hoc with probably a large element of rethinking going on. Maybe they will try to sell what’s left to someone (Vertical Scope anyone? ).
 
That sounds about right.

But the original announcement was to close the site April 10th (presumably meaning no more forum posts and no more staff reviews) and then only a short time later for the servers to be turned off. There was no mention of an archive and certainly there seemed to be little or no recognition of the impact the site’s closure would have on the photo enthusiast community.

Now it seems there’s some back-pedalling. The site will remain as an archive it seems so the servers (and storage) won’t be turned off. I assume this it to preserve the review library, but I do wonder what additional effort it might be to keep the forum open. If it’s not a lot then maybe they might keep it running? But who will be picking up the bills for the servers and ongoing maintenance?

For sure there is a change of plan happening, but the lack of any coherent information about the new plans tells me that it’s all being done ad hoc with probably a large element of rethinking going on. Maybe they will try to sell what’s left to someone (Vertical Scope anyone? ).
From what I can tell they are merely archiving the forum posts and sending them out to members that have requested them. Presumably Amazon is keeping the staff employed to do this and also to keep a skeleton site going. I have asked that part of the archive be a condensed selection of member's bookmarks as an archive in itself - thus making a smaller searchable archive of posts members have thought important. No promises but the message was passed on to the archival team.

No idea, but moderators did get a message that the fora side was now going to be continued whilst whichever archiving was still in progress.

What might happen to any archive(s) created I have no idea but I would be sure that this does not mean that the site will remaon alive or there will be any staff monitoring it.

As noted - as long as the shop doors are open the forum section can bumble along with the help of the unpaid moderators and not a lot of intervention needed by the paid Admin staff. The big issue will come when the moderators start signing off as it is surely going to be trolled and spammed to death very quickly afterwards.

A long shot for speculative conspiracy theorist might be that Amazon might be negotiating with some unknown party to take over the site and is leaving it to bumble along at idle capacity whilst negotiations take place. But I would not take any bets on this - the karma I get is of a place in the throes of wind up.
 
It's strange that the forums are still active & operating despite the April 10 closing date announcement. To me keeping it open w/o announcing anything further just makes it look worse. They need to get it done with or make an announcement if it's been extended. Was bad enough to begin with, but don't keep dragging it out.
 
It's strange that the forums are still active & operating despite the April 10 closing date announcement. To me keeping it open w/o announcing anything further just makes it look worse. They need to get it done with or make an announcement if it's been extended. Was bad enough to begin with, but don't keep dragging it out.
There is an announcement that site will be active until archiving is finished.
 
Most things end at the end of the month. I don't look for any changes until May 1st.
 
It's strange that the forums are still active & operating despite the April 10 closing date announcement. To me keeping it open w/o announcing anything further just makes it look worse. They need to get it done with or make an announcement if it's been extended. Was bad enough to begin with, but don't keep dragging it out.
It is obvious by the fact that smaller forums have almost stalled and that even the busy M4/3 forum is now down to less than 50% of its former posting volume.

Instead of waiting for the 10 April party on switching off the lights the forum membership is jumping off the bus whilst still in transit.

Fond farewells have been replaced by a simple realisation of 'not here any more'.

No big bang finale - just a whimper ....
 
It is obvious by the fact that smaller forums have almost stalled and that even the busy M4/3 forum is now down to less than 50% of its former posting volume.

Instead of waiting for the 10 April party on switching off the lights the forum membership is jumping off the bus whilst still in transit.

Fond farewells have been replaced by a simple realisation of 'not here any more'.

No big bang finale - just a whimper ....

Yep, that's me. I only really hang out on here now.
 
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