AAJ Forum R.I.P.

[Hot Ptah]

Has this been posted yet on this board? The All About Jazz Forum was discontinued this week.

https://forums.allaboutjazz.com/

 

[uli]

2 hours ago, Hot Ptah said:

Has this been posted yet on this board? The All About Jazz Forum was discontinued this week.

https://forums.allaboutjazz.com/

 

yep.

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/80121-jazz-forum/#comment-1526721

 

[Scott Dolan]

I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. Outside of here and the Hoffmann forums, forums in general are a dying breed. 

I think Ron still has Jazztalk up and running, but last I checked there was almost zero traffic there. 

Sign of the times, I guess. 

[clifford_thornton]

so the o-board has outlasted AAJ and JazzCorner, right?

[Scott Dolan]

Absolutely! Nothing wrong with that. We've got some really smart and knowledgeable cats here. It would be nice to see that braintrust last as long as possible. 

[CJ Shearn]

And no more wacky stuff going on

[JSngry]

[jazzbo]

That was the only forum I was ever banned from. . . sort of wish it were still around.

[Scott Dolan]

You were banned?! For what?! You're one of the most polite persons I've ever met online. Even when you're pissed. 

[page]

2 hours ago, jazzbo said:

That was the only forum I was ever banned from. . . sort of wish it were still around.

That must have been before my time but I do remember your presence there after that. You inspired someone to start a poetry thread, so you did make a good impression and so not just with me.

[Scott Dolan]

2 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:

And no more wacky stuff going on

Missed this. 

I concur. 

[page]

I have a bit of trouble with the "R.I.P." in the title of the thread btw, it is as someone has died for real.

[CJ Shearn]

Lon you  were banned at AAJ?  The forums that were always hairy for me were Jazz Central Station (yes, I joined jazz BBS's at 17 when I got my first PC) and Jazz Corner.  The latter with the whole DEEP stuff, that was just insane, but I do think that if you spend too much time thinking about a forum in actual life, it's a problem.  I'm a member of other forums for other interests I have, like shoryuken, a famous site for competitive fighting video games and some people take it way too serious, the keyboard warrior thing is at a premium on a site like sherdog, which covers mixed martial arts and boxing, that place I lurk but don't post.  This board has been really great with the exception of the incident between me and Joel, there's a lot of people here with wide musical tastes which is great.

[Dmitry]

We're sorry to report that after nearly 20 years, our beloved jazz discussion forum is no more. As much as we tried to keep it going, the escalating costs and maintenance simply made it untenable.

I run a small specialized phpbb-based forum, and the expense is not great at all.

[Teasing the Korean]

3 hours ago, jazzbo said:

That was the only forum I was ever banned from. . . sort of wish it were still around.

Several key contributors were banned from AAJ, which is why I stopped participating ages ago.  

I'm sure it is preserved on the Wayback Machine, if anyone is feeling nostalgic. 

[Scott Dolan]

2 hours ago, Dmitry said:

We're sorry to report that after nearly 20 years, our beloved jazz discussion forum is no more. As much as we tried to keep it going, the escalating costs and maintenance simply made it untenable.

I run a small specialized phpbb-based forum, and the expense is not great at all.

I did, too. And while I concur, it can get quite pricey depending on how intricate you choose to make it. 

[Dmitry]

2 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

 

I'm sure it is preserved on the Wayback Machine, if anyone is feeling nostalgic. 

Members

12,684

Active Members

702

First time i used the way back machine, this is the tally from sometime last year. A VERY healthy count. why would someone just turn around and drop it?! Doesn't make sense to me.

[Scott Dolan]

How many new posts, though? 

[Dave Garrett]

7 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. Outside of here and the Hoffmann forums, forums in general are a dying breed. 

I remember the pre-web days, when Usenet was the king of online communities. Soon enough, forums were the ascendant new kid on the block and Usenet had entered a decline that it never recovered from. Things have changed a bit since then. 

[jcam_44]

I used to love AAJ. After it went down a couple years ago for extended periods I started to visit less and less

[Jim R]

7 hours ago, Dmitry said:

We're sorry to report that after nearly 20 years, our beloved jazz discussion forum is no more.

Does anybody know when the AAJ forum actually began?  I don't think I was aware of it until about 15 years ago.  Never really thought about joining until the BNBB went down, and then I joined both AAJ and the Big O, gradually tiring of the atmosphere at AAJ probably some time in the course of 2003 when this place picked up steam and proved itself to be the better option.

Maybe others can help fill out the forums timeline here...

I got online in 1998, and soon joined in at Jazz Central Station (JCS).  It was a bit of a decaying zoo at that time, and as I recall it didn't last very long after that.  I think I migrated to Jazz Corner for awhile, but didn't really feel at home there either.  Then I remember joining Jazz Online (JOL), and posting there for a year or three (?) before it too went under (a couple of format changes occurred during that time, as well as fluctuating activity levels).  Overlapping in that period of time was the Blue Note board, which as I recall had a primitive software system and layout, which was changed to a more functional and modern type somewhere around Y2K (?).  I spent way more time at the BNBB than anywhere else until it folded up and Jim opened the doors here.

Verve also had a forum, which was not exactly a hot spot.  It was well moderated for awhile, and then sort of became a ghost town.  There were two other forums I remember... one was associated with "A Great Day In Harlem" and the history around that (pretty much a ghost town);  and the other was "Jazz X", with "X" being a number which I'm currently blanking on.  I feel like I might be forgetting about one other one similar to JOL, which was fairly active...

 

Edit:  Not "Jazz X".  The one I was thinking of was "52nd Street Jazz".

Edited January 28, 2017 by Jim R

[Big Beat Steve]

11 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Several key contributors were banned from AAJ, which is why I stopped participating ages ago.  

 

That was about my impression too. I joined there about the same time I came here (discovered both of them at roughly the same time - about 2005 or 2006). Pretty soon after I got there I had to witness a feud between some member (who by coincidence was rather much into swing-style jazz, just like me, so we exchanged repeatedly, even off-forum) and the powers-that-be (probably including both "senior" members and the admins). I canot remember the exact cause but apparently that cat spoke out publicly about certain tendencies in the jazz scene at large that seem to have gone against the grain of some who had a (business?) stake there and eventually he was banned. As I had witnessed similar confrontations on another forum - that relatively soon led to that forum becoming a "ghost town" - in a totally different field of interest at about the same time (and was personally affected there too) this was rather off-putting.

Another reason I went there less and less was that for quite a time almost any new discussion that came up in any field of the long and widespread history and styles of jazz was a kind of "Hey I have to do a paper on XXX in jazz at school. Can you fill me in on ..YYY?" Way too much of this. Total clueless and inane stuff where you have got nothing to start with in any way of sensible discussion and exchange of insights. All in all I found the Org people here to me much more knowledgeable overall almost from the start. And the Lester Young corner they had there (one of the highlights) in the long run wasn't better than the one here either IMO.

I think the last time I regularly checked AAJ was around 2010. Only very brief and sporadic lurks afterwards, and none for several years now. So - no, it is not missed, except for that lady from the West Coast (Saundra Hummer) who had been around in the heyday of West Coast Jazz and had repeatedly been pleaded with by numerous forum members to write down her memoirs (her reminiscences often were priceless). And then - all of a sudden she had died. A real loss ...

Edited January 28, 2017 by Big Beat Steve

[Scott Dolan]

Saundra Hummer join Jazz Corner at one point and started spamming my pm inbox with all these really bizarre stories and rants. She would talk about her friends as though they were my friends, ask me if I remembered things we had allegedly witnessed/done together in the past. She even sometimes did it publicly on the forum.

It was all very confusing to me, but I played nice because she seemed like a perfectly harmless person. Sorry to here she passed away. 

[Big Beat Steve]

Maybe this was in her latter days (she passed away in early 2011).

https://auraladdict.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/rip-saundra-hummer/

The stories I read on the AAJ forum in the years immediately after 2006 all were very clear and down-to-earth and in fact to me they sounded like coming from a much younger person (until I realized these were personal eye/earwitness memories).

Edited January 28, 2017 by Big Beat Steve

[Scott Dolan]

The majority of the time she was telling me about her husband/boyfriend as though I knew him and she was catching me up on how he was andmwhat he was doing. Very odd encounter, but as I said, she seemed like a very nice person. Just a bit confused at that point. 

I'm thinking this was somewhere around 2008 or 2009?