The reason I'd chosen to do this when I did was because over the past month or so the site's been falling completely off of its' base after certain people left the limelight and others entered. I will not be naming any names, but it's pretty much common knowledge who I am talking about these days.
It was getting to the point where the pleasure/pain balance had been out of wack for many weeks and recently I'd barely even looked at the site, let alone was engaged in its' activities. I wasn't interested in the latest pursuits, statistics noted that over the past 30 days before this decision was made that our traffic level'd literally dropped in half. A couple people tried to encourage me to leave everything well alone, but the drop in traffic, the change in scenery, and the recent goings-on had made it really difficult to just ignore it and keep going with the chan's operation.
So, at this point I'm left with half my normal traffic on a project I'm burned out on, twice the work as normal, and it seemed like all the site had become was a soapbox for actions that I neither agreed with or thought were amusing.
I really wish it didn't have to be like this, but the truth is; running a site like this is only really an internal pleasure, it's not something that I can normally share with others or be outwardly proud of except in some stupid online echochamber. And that's fine, it's what it's always been and I didn't expect anything more. But, when things really get down to brass tax, it's pretty much up to things being worthwile for me. Some people may disagree with this mindset, but it is what it is.
I made a few cool friends doing this, and I love all of you the same even though this's happened, and I hope you all understand, and I see why you wouldn't, but honestly this has been in the wings for many months now, it's just needed to hit rock-bottom.
I'm sure there's a fair few people right now who are reading this who had their info on the site. I'd like to take this time to encourage all of you to turn your lives' around in some way. You all know who you are, and who I am talking to. If anything good comes out of this, I'd hope it to be that.
<3, seanie