Good for the site owner. The last ten years has been a fantastic run. He's been putting up a great show and ars has a great forum. Hope CN don't make it a corp shill.
I don't see any reason to suspect they would. They've been good (from what I can tell) to the reddit folks and know ars technica's value comes from the existing format.
First thing I did when I read this was think about killing my forum subscription. Conde Nast will definitely ruin the Ars forums and I wouldn't be surprised if the recent forum problems were somehow related to this recent news (e.g., testing integration issues of some sort). I might have to return to AnandTech forums.
I was afraid of that too. But I think in the absence of a precedent for spoiling things, CN should be given a chance. Wired is a glossy for techies. Ars is different, thankfully. They have a lot less leeway in playing with Ars's format. Of course, they could throw the established format for all it's worth, but I hope they won't. AT's also a great site. Too many flash ads on the main page but thankfully adblock takes care of it.
This is what will happen. Ars' articles will be integrated with Reddit comments. As soon as the founders have transitioned the company and it is running smoothly under control of CN, the forums as we know them will be shut down. I wouldn't be surprised to see self Reddits replace the threaded forums too.
I agree 110%. Ars has produced some of the best writeups I've seen; I'll cry if they turn to shite when a bunch of jockeys ruin the site just to pump out articles about products they'll probably never use.
While we're on the topic (and since it seems this went almost unnoticed on HN yesterday), CBS announced its intent to acquire Cnet for $1.8 Billion yesterday:
I agree. It seems that with print magazine sales on the decline, Conde Nast might be looking at ways of increasing their online presence in the same space as Wired.
http://www.parislemon.com/2008/05/brief-update-on-ars-situat...