Chapter 11Killing Your Community…Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn comes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

In the year 2001, there was an endless parade of dot-coms going belly-up. One after another, websites with high hopes and tenuous business plans went down, leaving a trail of disappointed users and 404 pages.

But what happens when the site going offline isn’t just a pet store or a clothing catalog? What happens when the site is a community of users, who have contributed to the site and invested themselves emotionally?

All good things must come to an end. But when you ask your users ...

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