So. Foxblock and I have been talking about this via email, and we've been preparing a joint statement. Or more accurately, Foxblock prepared a nice statement and was waiting to hear back from me to fill in some blanks before he started a thread. Our email conversations move at glacier pace, and we probably should have done this a few months back. The time seems to be now so let's give it some closure (apologies foxblock for laying your efforts to waste here).
Just a bit of history and dispensing of due credit: The blog was started
way back in 2008 by mazza558. Back then, there were no official news posts, not even an official blog. Just forum posts scattered around GP32X, and one pinned thread where guys like Chip and Squidge maintained a list of tidbits and links. So mazza registered a Wordpress blog, and a few bright eyed Pandorians signed up to post stuff.
Time frames escape me and I don't fancy trawling for them right now, but in what seemed like no time, interest from the blog maintainers (including mazza) began to die off. But I was having a grand old time chasing a Pulitzer, and took over as admin when it looked like mazza was dropping out of the scene. Other writers continued to contribute, some staying longer than others. For a long time it was just me, and it was at a point in my life where I had all the time and energy needed to do it.
Eventually I became short of time (and inclination, to a degree). By then, foxblock was on board. When I dropped off the face of planet Pandora for a while there, foxblock took the reins and kept the blog alive beautifully. We had both spent time trying to recruit more writers, and we did get some help at different stages (thanks to all who got involved!) but it was hard to keep a regular team together.
The official news sources got better. A new site, new official blog, status page, and a dedicated news forum. Copy-pasting ED's official news posts seemed increasingly redundant, when you remember that the reason the community blog started was that there were no official news sources. The ideal path for Pandorapress was to move towards other content; software reviews, interviews, tutorials etc. All the ideas were there, but none of the manpower. Foxblock couldn't sustain it single handedly any more than I could, and based on history it didn't seem like yet another recruiting drive was going to solve the problem.
So we have decided together, that it's pretty much the end for Pandorapress. We provided a service when it was needed the most. Perhaps the official news sources still aren't perfect, but things are much better than they used to be. And I can't speak for foxblock, but if I sit down to write something these days, Pandora production numbers are the last topic I want to write about.
Both of us still enjoy writing, and will continue to write. Now the scene has Inside The Box (in one form or another) which the two of us have written for, and would like to write more for. Topics of our choosing, on our own schedules, much more fun that way.
We're both disappointed to be wrapping it up, but we've tried to breathe life into it enough times. Pandorapress has had its run. We will keep control of the domain and hosting, and the blog will stay online as an archive.
So, from your Pandorapress admins, thanks to all the contributors, thanks to all the readers for the flaming (and) support, thanks to the OP team and every dev great and small for all the blog fodder, and thanks for all the fish.
[edit] There will be a farewell post on the blog, which foxblock will take care of. Once he gets my glacial email reply...
