the end...of...AoF

Why is AoF going offline at a time when the World came back to life?

The decision to take AoF offline is not a reflection of AoF's opinion about the new Scritti artifact 'Anomie & Bonhomie' - love it. Rather it's to do with AoF's increasingly limited resources.

AoF believes hosting a site carries with it the responsibility to facilitate exchange of good quality information. That means time and money devoted to developing, maintaining, moderating resources. That also means responding to enquiries promptly.

Having been in the position of not knowing many Scritti scholars offline, AoF sympathizes with those who, having discovered the web of online Scritti resources, thought they have at last found people with whom they can share their enthusiasm for Scritti Politti. But tardy or even lack of responses to enthusiastic enquiries can dash those hopes and be quite disillusioning.

Unfortunately, there have been changes in the circumstances of the staff at AoF. So the conditions for the creation and administration of AoF no longer exist. The current staff no longer has the time and energy to respond enthusiastically and promptly to enquires, nor to develop, maintain, and update resources.

The release of the new album, while much welcomed, unfortunately exacerbates the problem as there are more information to be disseminated, more interest and therefore enquiries to respond to.

So the decision to take AoF offline is a question of managing expectations: As the current staff of AoF cannot cope with meeting the expectations, the current staff is resigning. The current staff apologizes for any inconvenience and disappointment caused by AoF's closure.

Skipping a beat to tomorrow...

It's not so bleak, really. First and foremost, there are other Scritti Politti sites around, most notably Unofficial Scritti Politti UK Website hosted by James Lawrence. There is also the Scritti Politti Onelist Mailing List hosted by Gareth Williams. (More are listed on Other Fansites and Mailing List in the Methodology:Online Resources section.)

A couple of scholars have already approached AoF about the possibility of taking over the site. AoF is in negotiation with them about how best to hand over the site. Another scholar is also working on a Japanese/English Scritti Politti fansite and has approached AoF about inheriting some of the information currently hosted at AoF.

So there's a chance the information hosted by AoF will resurface in one form or another, somewhere, managed by new staff. If you are likewise interested in hosting a Scritti Politti site and would like a non-exclusive piece of the inheritance pie, please email AoF before 31 March 2000 at aof@doubt-beat.com for more details.