MindZine
An online mind sports magazine formerly at http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/ (archived here), published by Mind Sports WorldWide. Due to funding difficulties, it ceased being updated in April 2001. The Go Section (archive) was at one point one of the best English language sites for Go news and articles before it got shut down. Some of the articles published there by Charles Matthews and Pieter Mioch at least are also available from GoBase.org now.
It may seem odd that such an extensive web site would remain accessible online several years after it ceased being a going concern, but apparently the Mind Sports Olympiad has continued to be held annually since 1997. The Mind Sport Olympiad section had been updated until 2005 while the other sections, like MindZine, remained stagnant, yet still available until 2011-06-08 or later; the section was unavailable from 2011-09-27 or earlier until 2016-04-28 or later; since 2019-03-07 or earlier it has redirected to a generic “page not found” page at the Mind Sport Olympiad site.
Comments
John F.: The bulk of the Mindzine material is on the GoGoD CD where it is also regularly updated. The website belongs to a company that was not directly connected to Mindzine and they have been happy to keep it up as a public good, but how long for only they know. All the material is now the copyright of the individual authors.
MattNoonan: Charles, would you be willing (if you know the history!) to tell us a little about the rise and fall of the MSOworld site? For a while there, it was by far the best place to get Go news in English. Did funding evaporate? Was it a vast right-wing conspiracy?
Charles Matthews: I became involved January 2000, at which point John Fairbairn was already putting essentially all his free time into the news and features there. The whole MSO organisation was already a bit shaky at that point; MSO5 absorbed the available cash (and then some, I guess, but I was never management). The web site continued for another six months into 2001, but eventually it became clear that those working on the site were doing it as volunteers. MSOW Ltd. filed for bankruptcy around May 2001. So the MindZine hit the dust, as essentially every e-zine worldwide did around then.