PlanetAnnihilation restoration.

Now before anyone who reads this will assume that there is something hostile going on here, let me explain the situation:

Planetannihilation has not updated their news since May the 28th 2004 and quite recently in this topic, the leader of PA, Dark Youth has recently left a rather depressing post concerning the recession of the TA community. "THe principle difference is that the news page wont be there any more, and besides that, I dont think anyone would notice another difference.", he said, implying that PA will no longer provide any TA-related news and through that mainly leaving their hosteds stranded.

Through DY's changed personality behaviour rougly two years ago, the activity ratings of both hosted sites and the forums have been on a steady decline and there are a number of people that believe DY's odd attitude problems and inability to handle people are the main reason to this recession. The problem in this situation is that PA still attracts a lot of newcomers, but fails to take care of them properly, whereon many of them get the impression that the TA community is as good as dead and leave the scene almost certainly forever.

In light of this, we want to take action to salvage what possible of the previously great PlanetAnnihilation supersite. Again, I'm restating it. We want to SAVE what can be saved on PA, wherever that means the whole site, the hosteds or at least the newcomers and other forum members. This is NOT an action of hatred, jealousy or any other negative emotion stirred up in TAU, TAD or TAF. This is a desperate action of help.

There are three possible goals and we want to achieve at least one.

1. To convince Dark Youth to appoint several people that are willing to repair and maintain PA, even if that would mean a total design makeover to attract and keep more members.

2. If DY can not be convinced to such action by himself, we can to, through GameSpy, cut him off the FTP access and hand over the power to a coalition of competent, commited members of the community to make the mentioned repairs and routine checkup anyway, but without his help or opinions. This is in my opinion quite easily done: GameSpy is a profit-directed company that gives ou webspace in exchange for visitors (and through them commercial views - profit). If we can convince them that they will ... at least somewhat increase their revenues on the TA community by kicking off a loon that doesn't care, I think they'd listen.

3. If option 2 fails as well, the only thing we can do is to redirect. We might be able to get one of their staff posting a newspost about it; we can post in all of the somewhat active forums with a topic named "PlanetAnnihilation is redirecting" or something alike that explains the current situation and points newcomers to TAU (or TAD and TAF... they are still more active than PA) where they almost certainly will get their qustions answered and their creations commented on; and/or we can look out for and reply to every new guy with a somewhat good answer and a suggestion that they also try their luck in another community forum where there are more people to answer the questions

Despite the recession, PA is a still large supersite, which is why I believe it is possible to ressurect it and return some of it's former glory. Just admit it, you wouldn't like to see another TA site go down, especially any of the sheer size of PlanetAnnihilation. I personally don't want to let PA fall down in flames without at least trying to do anything in my power to save what possible.

Yours truly - Storm