Alan Gould replied to:

Franz Heymann who asked
What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong recently, that all happened early in 2001. There are
widely differing opinions about it and the history of the site was being
re-written before it had been made.

Basically, EG was originally 'headed' by a charismatic, somewhat
egocentric and unrealistic Californian who loved the idea of being 'in
charge', but had few leadership skills and even less business acumen.
A series of disastrous decisions (including the move to using
Lightmaker - crap, unreliable and inflexible software) brought about
his rapid removal and the instatement of a management company to run
the site. Ultimately run by Jonathan Lander (a name respected in 'the
City') the team dissolved in part and was finally disbanded leaving EG
to its own devices. Lander and his men may have been good with dosh
and investments, but they had no idea what they were getting into and
were incapable of giving honest and straight responses to reasonable
requests.

It did however provide an
interesting lesson about human, technical and communication failings.

Agreed - most if not all of them firmly at the feet of Jonathan Lander
y amigos.

The one thing which triumphed above all was the quality of gardening
discussion and urg contributors can take credit for a lot of that.

Well it was good when the whole team was taking part, but I've
occasionally looked in over the past couple of years and the general
quality of posting was reduced to being mediocre.

Its a great shame. The concept was brilliant and it worked so well
with a stunningly good team, but for too short a time. Sadly
management failings brought about a series of resignations from
arguably the most talented team members. An even bigger shame is that
the archives contain some superbly expert contributions from the likes
of Tim Longville, Einion Hughes, Tony McCormack etc and all of these
will be lost.

Dave Poole
Torquay, Coastal South Devon UK
Winter min -2°C. Summer max 34°C.
Growing season: March - November