Do you enjoy digging through the Webarchive?

[PsychoticThoughts]

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit of a turbo nerd... and so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that I have spent more than a couple of hours clicking random profiles, pages and links on the archived versions of sites I visited/knew about during my early internet days (2004-8).

One thing that gets me right on the feels is the amount of untamed creativity that seems to exists all-around those early sites... people's profiles were both their homes and their statements, and there's really not two alike, despite the fact that they were all made on a template. I also love how keen they were in adding all those early aughts details, like gifs, personality tests, and adoptable creatures. Pair that with some less-than-pleasing color schemes and an utter disregard for grammar and spelling, and I'm drawn like a magnet. My own profiles were exactly like that, too.

The usernames were insane, too. Loved the random capitalization, overabundance of "X" and "_", and references on them.

And while I do understand why this is no more (good call, really)... blatant advertisement of one's own e-mail and social media pages was so "old internet" it hurts.

And you know what? My very first English post was webarchived too :O

Anyway... I REALLY enjoy taking some trips down memory lane through the Wayback Machine. What about you?

PS: I love that Flash has barely survived even there. Its crimes against humanity sentence seems to be upheld XD

 

[PGen98]

Yes!! I've been posting on forums for over 25 years at this point, sometimes it nice to go back and see the older places again, places and software that just doesn't exist anymore, at online aura that doesn't exist anymore. The wild west of the day, it was so fun!!

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

Yes!! I've been posting on forums for over 25 years at this point, sometimes it nice to go back and see the older places again, places and software that just doesn't exist anymore, at online aura that doesn't exist anymore. The wild west of the day, it was so fun!!

Nice! I remember when vBulletin was all the rage, and how the owners of the largest sites (like Retro Junk and VampireFreaks) would even write their own forum software.

One thing I miss is the ability to HTML edit your own profile... it was so amazing doing that.

 

[PGen98]

Nice! I remember when vBulletin was all the rage, and how the owners of the largest sites (like Retro Junk and VampireFreaks) would even write their own forum software.

I used to enjoy seeing sites that did that, or that would take software and hack it to pieces so it still looked like phpBB or vBulletin, but it was so modified there wasn't a shred of original code left, like SomethingAwful or GaiaOnline, those look like vB2 and phpBB, but they're totally unique. Incredible

vBulletin was such a sad story. All the makings of greatness if they just hadn't sold on. The second you take a great product and sell it to a large entity is the second you sign its' death certificate, it's why Proboards will die off soon.

One thing I miss is the ability to HTML edit your own profile... it was so amazing doing that.

So true! Even basic CSS edits would be nice, like EZBoards used to give us!

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

I used to enjoy seeing sites that did that, or that would take software and hack it to pieces so it still looked like phpBB or vBulletin, but it was so modified there wasn't a shred of original code left, like SomethingAwful or GaiaOnline, those look like vB2 and phpBB, but they're totally unique. Incredible

vBulletin was such a sad story. All the makings of greatness if they just hadn't sold on. The second you take a great product and sell it to a large entity is the second you sign its' death certificate, it's why Proboards will die off soon.

So true! Even basic CSS edits would be nice, like EZBoards used to give us!

I think you and I are gonna be VERY good friends ;D

(Excuse that I don't quote you all neatly... I'm having to hook up a keyboard to my phone and it's obscuring half the screen).

I loved sites that messed with the code of their software like the ones you mentioned, and I truly consider it an art form on its own... and it also makes it all the more tragic when you see the plug being pulled on the whole thing. I'll never really forgive the owners of VF for doing away with years upon years of posts and threads just because it wasn't profitable anymore (they couldn't archive it?), specially considering that VF started out AS a forum!

I actually have my very own horror story with vBulletin and I think that it served as a cautionary tale for everyone else looking to move into the platform:

There was this HUGE Spanish Abandonware site that was in the process of moving its phpBB2 board over to vBulletin, but then something went deeply wrong and everything that could break, broke. Admins were being locked out of their accounts, mods posted as guests, regular users gained access to the staff forum, special ranks were all messed up. Newcomers would show up as guests and would require an e-signature being sent to their legal guardians regardless of the age they had entered in order to fully use their accounts (and the message would never go away even if they did do that). And then... the main account died. No root access anywhere on the integrated site. Can you even begin to imagine how much of a nightmare that was? The only one capable of doing ANY kind of work on the site was a co-admin who still had access, and the board banned her thrice because reasons. Eventually everyone got tired and left.

And now the forum has been taken over by rows of bots, except for one trooper that keeps posting tutorials and helping the random newcomer that still drops by from time to time.

I don't know exactly what went wrong and I don't think it's fair of me to actually blame vBulletin on the matter... but something broke and not even the support forum could tell the owner exactly what.

Also, the reputation system caused the very first drama I had ever witnessed !

 

[PGen98]

I think you and I are gonna be VERY good friends ;D

I got all the time in the world, all day every day for someone who loves forums!

(Excuse that I don't quote you all neatly... I'm having to hook up a keyboard to my phone and it's obscuring half the screen).

No worries there, lol

I loved sites that messed with the code of their software like the ones you mentioned, and I truly consider it an art form on its own... and it also makes it all the more tragic when you see the plug being pulled on the whole thing. I'll never really forgive the owners of VF for doing away with years upon years of posts and threads just because it wasn't profitable anymore (they couldn't archive it?), specially considering that VF started out AS a forum!

I probably have no room to talk as I was a Community Administrator of a very large gaming forum that shut down and disappeared, but I wasn't the owner and I had no control over the actual data of the forum. I tried to haggle with the owner to get control of the database so we could save it, but it wasn't going to happen. I did start up a phoenix forum a few years later, and it's doing fairly well, thankfully, but losing all of that history really hurts.

That's what those forums never think about. It's not THEIR data, as much as they own the place, it belongs to the people that helped build it, the community. It's a history, it's friendships, relationships, a living, breathing archive of peoples lives. It deserves to stay where it is.

I actually have my very own horror story with vBulletin and I think that it served as a cautionary tale for everyone else looking to move into the platform:

There was this HUGE Spanish Abandonware site that was in the process of moving its phpBB2 board over to vBulletin, but then something went deeply wrong and everything that could break, broke. Admins were being locked out of their accounts, mods posted as guests, regular users gained access to the staff forum, special ranks were all messed up. Newcomers would show up as guests and would require an e-signature being sent to their legal guardians regardless of the age they had entered in order to fully use their accounts (and the message would never go away even if they did do that). And then... the main account died. No root access anywhere on the integrated site. Can you even begin to imagine how much of a nightmare that was? The only one capable of doing ANY kind of work on the site was a co-admin who still had access, and the board banned her thrice because reasons. Eventually everyone got tired and left.

And now the forum has been taken over by rows of bots, except for one trooper that keeps posting tutorials and helping the random newcomer that still drops by from time to time.

I don't know exactly what went wrong and I don't think it's fair of me to actually blame vBulletin on the matter... but something broke and not even the support forum could tell the owner exactly what.

Also, the reputation system caused the very first drama I had ever witnessed !

Oh geez, that sounds awful! Did they not do a test migration first? Or take backups so they could go back to the phpBB? That would have helped them iron out some of the kinks first, that's really unfortunate! It sounds like a nightmare scenario all around!

The reputation system was a great way to cause drama, lol, saw that many times!

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

I got all the time in the world, all day every day for someone who loves forums!

No worries there, lol

I probably have no room to talk as I was a Community Administrator of a very large gaming forum that shut down and disappeared, but I wasn't the owner and I had no control over the actual data of the forum. I tried to haggle with the owner to get control of the database so we could save it, but it wasn't going to happen. I did start up a phoenix forum a few years later, and it's doing fairly well, thankfully, but losing all of that history really hurts.

That's what those forums never think about. It's not THEIR data, as much as they own the place, it belongs to the people that helped build it, the community. It's a history, it's friendships, relationships, a living, breathing archive of peoples lives. It deserves to stay where it is.

Oh geez, that sounds awful! Did they not do a test migration first? Or take backups so they could go back to the phpBB? That would have helped them iron out some of the kinks first, that's really unfortunate! It sounds like a nightmare scenario all around!

The reputation system was a great way to cause drama, lol, saw that many times!

!

You make a really good point that I think we should all be aware of: it is US who make the sites soar or sink, and I don't think it's fair for the owners or the admins to do away with all that history without, at the very least, give us a chance to archive what we had. I had tons of awesome PMs and back-and-forths on a couple of early aughts (paid) forums that are now completely inaccessible to me because the owners decided that enough was enough. As you say, it really does hurt... especially as the memories fade and because of knowing full-well that WebArchive is not going to have those threads saved.

I'm glad your current forum is doing well, but it sucks that you had to even create it in the first place. Still, glad to know it's in good hands now.

I'd love to tell you exactly what they did with that broken migration, but they were being VERY secretive about it (likely because of the thousands of exploits that had surfaced now that everything was upside-down). If any back-ups of the old forum were actually made, they either got corrupted or the new system wouldn't allow them to be implemented, which is something that actually happened to me on an SMF forum that was being migrated from ZetaBoards after the TapaTalk fiasco... thank God my tech guy was such a legend (perhaps one day I'll tell you all about those sleepless nights we shared while drinking vast amounts of coffee and talking endlessly about hockey and baseball to keep our morale up while cleaning everything and ironing out the bugs and conflicts between the databases).

No joke... the first forum that had vBulletin's reputation system had to make it anonymous, then remove it entirely within a month because people were being downrated left and right XD!

 

[PGen98]

!

You make a really good point that I think we should all be aware of: it is US who make the sites soar or sink, and I don't think it's fair for the owners or the admins to do away with all that history without, at the very least, give us a chance to archive what we had. I had tons of awesome PMs and back-and-forths on a couple of early aughts (paid) forums that are now completely inaccessible to me because the owners decided that enough was enough. As you say, it really does hurt... especially as the memories fade and because of knowing full-well that WebArchive is not going to have those threads saved.

Yeah, that's it right there, ALL of those PMs, that history, it's just gone. It needs to be preserved, and it's a shame it can't be when they just vanish like that. Efforts need to be made, or services setup that will archive forums at no or little cost to the owners to preserve that history. No new posting, but you can sign in and access your content or visit old threads, posts, etc. Stored forever for preservation. It's content that we, the community, built up over days, weeks, months, years, decades. It should be saved for us to enjoy long into the future. "Remember when? Oh yeah! Wonder if that still exists? Well, let's check? Oh, there it is!" It would be amazing.

I'm glad your current forum is doing well, but it sucks that you had to even create it in the first place. Still, glad to know it's in good hands now.

Yeah, it's nice to have a lot of the same people coming back and joining in again, it is a shame we had to rebuild, but at least we have that chance. So many others don't get that chance once their community goes under.

I'd love to tell you exactly what they did with that broken migration, but they were being VERY secretive about it (likely because of the thousands of exploits that had surfaced now that everything was upside-down). If any back-ups of the old forum were actually made, they either got corrupted or the new system wouldn't allow them to be implemented, which is something that actually happened to me on an SMF forum that was being migrated from ZetaBoards after the TapaTalk fiasco... thank God my tech guy was such a legend (perhaps one day I'll tell you all about those sleepless nights we shared while drinking vast amounts of coffee and talking endlessly about hockey and baseball to keep our morale up while cleaning everything and ironing out the bugs and conflicts between the databases).

Ah, fair, it's entirely possible their backups were corrupt, which is unfortunate for sure.

EWWW, Tapatalk. That name will forever send shivers down my spine, lol. Terrible platform!

No joke... the first forum that had vBulletin's reputation system had to make it anonymous, then remove it entirely within a month because people were being downrated left and right XD!

We had to do the same thing on the forum I mentioned, people would "neg" rep people into oblivion because they didn't like them or because they were new, it was awful! He wound up hacking the rep system to remove values and it basically became a quick comment system, lol. No positive or negatives, just a way to leave a quick message about a post.

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

Yeah, that's it right there, ALL of those PMs, that history, it's just gone. It needs to be preserved, and it's a shame it can't be when they just vanish like that. Efforts need to be made, or services setup that will archive forums at no or little cost to the owners to preserve that history. No new posting, but you can sign in and access your content or visit old threads, posts, etc. Stored forever for preservation. It's content that we, the community, built up over days, weeks, months, years, decades. It should be saved for us to enjoy long into the future. "Remember when? Oh yeah! Wonder if that still exists? Well, let's check? Oh, there it is!" It would be amazing.

Yeah, it's nice to have a lot of the same people coming back and joining in again, it is a shame we had to rebuild, but at least we have that chance. So many others don't get that chance once their community goes under.

Ah, fair, it's entirely possible their backups were corrupt, which is unfortunate for sure.

EWWW, Tapatalk. That name will forever send shivers down my spine, lol. Terrible platform!

We had to do the same thing on the forum I mentioned, people would "neg" rep people into oblivion because they didn't like them or because they were new, it was awful! He wound up hacking the rep system to remove values and it basically became a quick comment system, lol. No positive or negatives, just a way to leave a quick message about a post.

Yeah, it should be a given that that IRREPLACEABLE data be kept somewhere safe and accessible to those who made it... but sadly, that's almost never the case, and it irks me to no-end. And even when archiving is possible, sometimes the companies/owners make it all but impossible to do so -- people were trying desperately to get Geocities, Yahoo! Groups and VampireFreaks archived and the servers had barriers in place to prevent anyone from grabbing stuff, even though those responsible for that decision knew that that data was going to be lost to the void. It's maddening. Even RIGHT NOW (and after having lost a lot of data to a crash years ago) the pioneering Canadian site Nexopia is down (and has been for months) without a single post being accessible from the outside.

That's why I had mad respect for a guy who kept his gigantic Abandonware site (which started in 2003 and closed in 2015) archived in a way exactly as you described, with posting disabled but with every post (except those on the staff forum) available to read from the outside. He had paid money out of his own pocket to keep all that history afloat and ready to be revisited by anyone who actually lived it or was just curious about it.

Maaaan... TapaTalk killed SO.MANY. of my favorite forums, like you wouldn't believe it. Did anyone actually like that stuff?

Great call with the reputation system there... it got so out-of-hand on another board that the staff had to create a "Cop" account so warns would be handed by an anonymous mod.

 

[PGen98]

Yeah, it should be a given that that IRREPLACEABLE data be kept somewhere safe and accessible to those who made it... but sadly, that's almost never the case, and it irks me to no-end. And even when archiving is possible, sometimes the companies/owners make it all but impossible to do so -- people were trying desperately to get Geocities, Yahoo! Groups and VampireFreaks archived and the servers had barriers in place to prevent anyone from grabbing stuff, even though those responsible for that decision knew that that data was going to be lost to the void. It's maddening. Even RIGHT NOW (and after having lost a lot of data to a crash years ago) the pioneering Canadian site Nexopia is down (and has been for months) without a single post being accessible from the outside.

Yeah, it's ridiculous that we keep losing decades worth of data to the void when these sites go bye bye. As much as I respect the owners of the sites for what they've built, it needs to be respected that they aren't the only ones responsible for the site being where it is. Like the people that built Gaia -- Great job, it's a technical marvel that it is what it is, BUT, Gaia doesn't exist without the people that use it and put decades of their lives into it. Gaia is just another forum on the internet without that. So if someday it becomes unprofitable for them to keep operating Gaia I sincerely hope they keep that in mind before just shuttering the doors and throwing it away. These giant forums don't belong to them anymore, as much as they might "own" them, they're products of the people, as they should be, they are simply the stewards ushering it on to the next group to keep it going. I'll even use this forum as an example, @Nebulous is the rightful owner of Off Topix, it was his baby from the very start, but he recently resigned to enjoy his life with his family and to tend to other things, but he still stops by and so on. I am, technically, the current "owner" of Off Topix, but essentially I'm not, I'm it's current caretaker, I am here to ensure Off Topix is here for people to enjoy. I can't claim ownership over Off Topix, it doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the people that built it over all this time. If Nebby decides to return properly to OT, wonderful, I'll hand the keys back over to him happily, and if not, I'll be here for a good long while doing my best to keep things chugging along until I can eventually find the next caretaker to carry on the work. So it should be with all forums.

That's why I had mad respect for a guy who kept his gigantic Abandonware site (which started in 2003 and closed in 2015) archived in a way exactly as you described, with posting disabled but with every post (except those on the staff forum) available to read from the outside. He had paid money out of his own pocket to keep all that history afloat and ready to be revisited by anyone who actually lived it or was just curious about it.

Yeah, that's exactly how it should be. Keep it afloat as long as humanly possible.

Maaaan... TapaTalk killed SO.MANY. of my favorite forums, like you wouldn't believe it. Did anyone actually like that stuff?

I can't believe anyone actually like Tapatalk, it was such utter garbage. To merge Zetaboards in with that crap, ugh. It was doomed from the start, though. They bought out Yuku at first, which was the remnants of the old ezBoards, who should never have sold. ezBoards was an amazing platform in its time up until they sold it to Yuku, then Yuku destroyed it, turned it into a sub-part platform that Tapatalk then bought, turned into a WORSE platform, and then merged with Zetaboards to make the clusterfuck that it became. It is literally where so many amazing forums died.

Great call with the reputation system there... it got so out-of-hand on another board that the staff had to create a "Cop" account so warns would be handed by an anonymous mod.

Yeah, the reputation system was a big weak point with vBulletin, sadly. Swing and a miss.

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

Yeah, it's ridiculous that we keep losing decades worth of data to the void when these sites go bye bye. As much as I respect the owners of the sites for what they've built, it needs to be respected that they aren't the only ones responsible for the site being where it is. Like the people that built Gaia -- Great job, it's a technical marvel that it is what it is, BUT, Gaia doesn't exist without the people that use it and put decades of their lives into it. Gaia is just another forum on the internet without that. So if someday it becomes unprofitable for them to keep operating Gaia I sincerely hope they keep that in mind before just shuttering the doors and throwing it away. These giant forums don't belong to them anymore, as much as they might "own" them, they're products of the people, as they should be, they are simply the stewards ushering it on to the next group to keep it going. I'll even use this forum as an example, @Nebulous is the rightful owner of Off Topix, it was his baby from the very start, but he recently resigned to enjoy his life with his family and to tend to other things, but he still stops by and so on. I am, technically, the current "owner" of Off Topix, but essentially I'm not, I'm it's current caretaker, I am here to ensure Off Topix is here for people to enjoy. I can't claim ownership over Off Topix, it doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the people that built it over all this time. If Nebby decides to return properly to OT, wonderful, I'll hand the keys back over to him happily, and if not, I'll be here for a good long while doing my best to keep things chugging along until I can eventually find the next caretaker to carry on the work. So it should be with all forums.

Yeah, that's exactly how it should be. Keep it afloat as long as humanly possible.

I can't believe anyone actually like Tapatalk, it was such utter garbage. To merge Zetaboards in with that crap, ugh. It was doomed from the start, though. They bought out Yuku at first, which was the remnants of the old ezBoards, who should never have sold. ezBoards was an amazing platform in its time up until they sold it to Yuku, then Yuku destroyed it, turned it into a sub-part platform that Tapatalk then bought, turned into a WORSE platform, and then merged with Zetaboards to make the clusterfuck that it became. It is literally where so many amazing forums died.

Yeah, the reputation system was a big weak point with vBulletin, sadly. Swing and a miss.

I gotta say that I love how passionate you are about a topic that's obviously so important to you... kudos, mate! I wish every owner was like that.

Oh! Wanna hear something funny? My original "stomping grounds" from when I was learning the English language was a phpBB forum... like, the first version, and it belonged to a FrontPage Express site. So, that surely means that this was around the year 2002 or so, right? No, I actually didn't even start learning the language until 2014! Yeeep, this was an original phpBB forum attached to a FrontPage Express site that was chilling and still active around ten years ago. Isn't that amazing? And the best thing was that it had quite a few members still around, including two of the original mods and the webmistress herself. I will never NOT have a smile on my face whenever I think about those guys and their super encouraging posts as I stumbled my way through this language and discussed 80s cartoons and weird trivia games with them to the best of my ability.

This site and forum are sadly not around anymore, but they were great fun while they lasted!

But you know what's something that I don't miss at all? Extremely small font sizes on forums and webpages! That's the one part that I hate when going on a WebArchive journey... 8px text that's barely distinguishable from the background was a thing of absolute madness, and I don't even know how I put up with it for so long

 

[PGen98]

I gotta say that I love how passionate you are about a topic that's obviously so important to you... kudos, mate! I wish every owner was like that.

I've always loved forums, lol, I want to see them succeed.

Oh! Wanna hear something funny? My original "stomping grounds" from when I was learning the English language was a phpBB forum... like, the first version, and it belonged to a FrontPage Express site. So, that surely means that this was around the year 2002 or so, right? No, I actually didn't even start learning the language until 2014! Yeeep, this was an original phpBB forum attached to a FrontPage Express site that was chilling and still active around ten years ago. Isn't that amazing? And the best thing was that it had quite a few members still around, including two of the original mods and the webmistress herself. I will never NOT have a smile on my face whenever I think about those guys and their super encouraging posts as I stumbled my way through this language and discussed 80s cartoons and weird trivia games with them to the best of my ability.

Wait, a phpBB 1?!? in 2014?? That's insane! I loved phpBB 1 it was a nice and simple platform. The Finn certainly had a good thing going there .

Must've been a really fun way to learn English, and it clearly worked, you speak/type like a native speaker/writer!

This site and forum are sadly not around anymore, but they were great fun while they lasted!

But you know what's something that I don't miss at all? Extremely small font sizes on forums and webpages! That's the one part that I hate when going on a WebArchive journey... 8px text that's barely distinguishable from the background was a thing of absolute madness, and I don't even know how I put up with it for so long

lol, absolutely agreed! We had smaller resolutions back then, so we dealt with smaller font sizes, but looking back at them now it was absolutely awful to read a lot of the combinations that were out there!

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

I've always loved forums, lol, I want to see them succeed.

Wait, a phpBB 1?!? in 2014?? That's insane! I loved phpBB 1 it was a nice and simple platform. The Finn certainly had a good thing going there .

Must've been a really fun way to learn English, and it clearly worked, you speak/type like a native speaker/writer!

lol, absolutely agreed! We had smaller resolutions back then, so we dealt with smaller font sizes, but looking back at them now it was absolutely awful to read a lot of the combinations that were out there!

You are very kind, my friend.

Here, I'll show: this is the thread that started it all.

I made that topic out of necessity, after having spent the previous FOUR YEARS looking for that elusive cartoon (turns out it was an anime from 1974 that was sold only to Latin America and western Europe). Had they not replied, I probably wouldn't be here today.

(Wait! It was archived SEVEN TIMES?! XD).

I really wish I could talk to those guys again.

And yeah... we should have become the BLIND GENERATION with those sizes, color schemes and resolutions lol

 

[PGen98]

You are very kind, my friend.

Here, I'll show: this is the thread that started it all.

I made that topic out of necessity, after having spent the previous FOUR YEARS looking for that elusive cartoon (turns out it was an anime from 1974 that was sold only to Latin America and western Europe). Had they not replied, I probably wouldn't be here today.

(Wait! It was archived SEVEN TIMES?! XD).

I really wish I could talk to those guys again.

And yeah... we should have become the BLIND GENERATION with those sizes, color schemes and resolutions lol

Ah, ok, so it's a phpBB 2, but still amazing to look back and see, and that's one clean looking install!

That's the beauty of old school internet forums summed up right there. Brings us all together over a shared interest and helps us embrace or expand on it in the best ways possible. I had a similar experience with a cartoon when I still lived at home in the UK there was a series called The Hurricanes about a football team that went on almost Scooby Doo-like adventures before they played matches, it was quite wild, but almost no one had watched it when I asked about it. Finally managed to track it down through a forum, as well, and found a few episodes through...the internet...ahem...and it was nice to reconnect with the show again!

Hurricanes (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[passenger]

So Zetaboards was such a "happ'nin'", lively, successful, appreciated & happy place - IMO. Aside from just outright lying = one day Brandon was saying that he was not going to sell Z-board & then selling it the next day to Tappacrap; does anyone know what his motivation was to sell? Just a huge payout?

I don't think that anyone will EVER forgive him.

 

[PGen98]

So Zetaboards was such a "happ'nin'", lively, successful, appreciated & happy place - IMO. Aside from just outright lying = one day Brandon was saying that he was not going to sell Z-board & then selling it the next day to Tappacrap; does anyone know what his motivation was to sell? Just a huge payout?

I don't think that anyone will EVER forgive him.

No chance anyone forgives him, that was the worst move he could ever have made. It destroyed a good platform and any chance at any good will. There's no way you can convince anyone it was for anything more than a payday. Tapatalk offers nothing, at all.

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

@PGen98: Funny thing... I hadn't heard about that show until two weeks ago, now you are like the third person to bring it up to me XD

Ahhh... that's a beautiful take indeed.

I joined my first forum on August 12, 2004 (yes, I still remember the date exactly) and I must have made around 7000 posts on it through 2014 (but, as it was the style of the time --*cue Grampa Simpson*-- posting on the off-topic board didn't add to your overall count, so I probably made double that amount of meaningless one-liners). The sense of community was intense and I just really enjoyed coming back for more, even if all we would ever talk about was "Secret of Monkey Island" and its three sequels until there wasn't a single combination of words left to input. It was a glorious time, and I'm glad to have been part of it for as long as I did.

The forum still exists, but its later years weren't happy... so I just left.

@passenger: I could understand why Brandon would want to sell his incredibly successful product and make a profit out of it (that's just normal)... but I just can't forgive him for the way he addressed us, the people who made it into something worth buying in the first place. We were left adrift, and had to try our very best to come up with alternatives to save our communities from total TapaTalkation.

It's a shame that it didn't occur to me to back up the Brandon flogging that was the announcement thread on the ZB Support Board. It was such a massive massacre of character.

 

[PGen98]

@PGen98: Funny thing... I hadn't heard about that show until two weeks ago, now you are like the third person to bring it up to me XD

lol, I keep trying to find people that have heard of it, but it seems to be on the rarer side, nice to know others have spread the word!

Ahhh... that's a beautiful take indeed.

I joined my first forum on August 12, 2004 (yes, I still remember the date exactly) and I must have made around 7000 posts on it through 2014 (but, as it was the style of the time --*cue Grampa Simpson*-- posting on the off-topic board didn't add to your overall count, so I probably made double that amount of meaningless one-liners). The sense of community was intense and I just really enjoyed coming back for more, even if all we would ever talk about was "Secret of Monkey Island" and its three sequels until there wasn't a single combination of words left to input. It was a glorious time, and I'm glad to have been part of it for as long as I did.

The forum still exists, but its later years weren't happy... so I just left.

I would hate to sit down and really sort out how many posts I've made across all forums I've been a part of, lol, it has to be a very high six digit number, and that is a scary thought! I know of several forums where my postcount is over 25,000, and this one is very quickly approaching it, too, lol, so I'm sure if I did the math it has to be well into the 5, 6, 700,000+ post range and that is terrifying to think about, even over a 25+ year span, lol.

@passenger: I could understand why Brandon would want to sell his incredibly successful product and make a profit out of it (that's just normal)... but I just can't forgive him for the way he addressed us, the people who made it into something worth buying in the first place. We were left adrift, and had to try our very best to come up with alternatives to save our communities from total TapaTalkation.

It's a shame that it didn't occur to me to back up the Brandon flogging that was the announcement thread on the ZB Support Board. It was such a massive massacre of character.

I could understand if it were Proboards or even merging with something like Flarum to become their cloud option, but Tapatalk?!? That's the unforgivable part of the whole thing. It's just...it's awful. Worse than awful.

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

lol, I keep trying to find people that have heard of it, but it seems to be on the rarer side, nice to know others have spread the word!

I would hate to sit down and really sort out how many posts I've made across all forums I've been a part of, lol, it has to be a very high six digit number, and that is a scary thought! I know of several forums where my postcount is over 25,000, and this one is very quickly approaching it, too, lol, so I'm sure if I did the math it has to be well into the 5, 6, 700,000+ post range and that is terrifying to think about, even over a 25+ year span, lol.

I could understand if it were Proboards or even merging with something like Flarum to become their cloud option, but Tapatalk?!? That's the unforgivable part of the whole thing. It's just...it's awful. Worse than awful.

That's one hell of a commitment, my friend.

I usually don't stick around long enough to clear 1000 posts anywhere (but there's one forum where my current count is over 13K). I have been a member of dozens of boards, however... I'm sure I must have made at least 30K posts over the last 20 years combined.

 

[PGen98]

That's one hell of a commitment, my friend.

I usually don't stick around long enough to clear 1000 posts anywhere (but there's one forum where my current count is over 13K). I have been a member of dozens of boards, however... I'm sure I must have made at least 30K posts over the last 20 years combined.

Just wait, we'll get you hooked here and you'll quickly join @Nebulous in the 80k club