Apple on Tuesday abruptly placed the Apple Support Community into a read-only state and announced that the forums will be permanently closing on Friday, November 20 . Those who contributed to the site — some for more than two decades — were blindsided by this decision and had no chance to post farewell messages. Even if you felt the Apple Support Community contained too many generic or unhelpful answers from users trying to boost their post counts and earn points , the people volunteering their time to the site still deserved a proper goodbye. Below, we have highlighted some of those people and their experiences. Jeff Donald from Florida was a member of the Apple Support Community since November 2000, when the forums were still known as Apple Discussions. This past year, Apple recognized his efforts by inviting him to the Apple Community+ program , which launched in 2022 and provided members with a few extra perks and experiences. Leroy Douglas was a member since July 2009. He said he was a bit shocked to see Apple's sudden announcement, but he saw the writing on the wall. Here is a fun fact that you might not have known: In addition to English, Tobias Steen in Germany said there were also Apple Support Communities in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish . For some reason, the French and German versions do not have closure notices, but we are told they will meet the same fate. The forums brought together people of all ages, from 16-year-old Evan Bato Rousseau in France to 83-year-old Nobel Prize winner Sir Tim Hunt in England, who told us he found it to be a helpful resource, even if some of the answers were wonky.