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by RodgerTheGreat 596 days ago
I think it's also worth lauding their approach to a shutdown. They informed users it was going to happen nearly a month in advance, and the userbase proceeded to use that time to mourn, celebrate, exchange contact info with their friends, help one another build personal sites and/or organize taking refuge with other websites and communication tools. At the beginning of October the site was "frozen" and every user was emailed a link for downloading machine-readable archives of every post, comment, and user preference from their accounts. Cohost remains read-only browsable until the end of the year, after which the founders intend to forward their domain to an archive.org-hosted snapshot of everything public.

These days you're lucky to get a few day's notice and a "thanks for the incredible journey, now get the hell out" email when a site folds.