New to Off Topix. A few questions.

[Mech]

So okay I'm new to Off Topix and for this I already have some questions. But first, let me tell you I'm here.

I am now in the progress of finding a new ''main'' forum. You see, a forum I used for 1,5 years went down after a DDoS attack, the owner got it back up but then it went down again. So now I deem it very unlikely that it will ever get up again.

I will not state the forum's name or URL but I can tell you I loved that place. It had a laid back atmosphere, semi-mature population, a friendly but slightly mischievous community, an extremely active shoutbox, dedicated and very active members, a huge variety of discussions and relatively lenient rules. It also had like 25k members, 1,1 million posts, an owner and admins who actually had a sense of humour, forum events & competitions, a shop where you could buy things like glowing usernames with the forum currency (which in my opinion was the most fun because you actually had something to work/thrive for).

Now that place is gone and I'm on the search for a new place to become part of a community. Now please let me know how this forum is by answering these questions, please don't reply with short answers, preferably thorough answers.

- How friendly is the forum population here?

- How active is the forum?

- How international is the forum? (Is like 90% of the forum from the US or do we have a lot of people from all parts of the world)

- How mature/immature is the forum population (I once was on a forum that was full of 12-13 year old butthurt raging trolls who couldn't stand a single joke)

- Will you get banned for casual swearing? Meaning just a very little swearing in a non-harassing way

- Does the amount of active members on this forum grow steadily? (Meaning that it doesn't stagnate or decreases)

- How dedicated are the owner and staff members?

- How strict or lenient is the forum? I know out of experience that a way too light moderation will turn a forum into a pseudo-4chan, a too strict and suffocating atmospheric moderation and the forum stagnates and slowly dies because everyone is too frustrated.

- What does the forum define as ''spam''? Will just posting: ''Okay, cool man.'' on a thread get you banned?

- Are multiple accounts allowed?

- Tell me some things about this forum that makes this forum great (subjectively) and give me some of your own experience on this forum.

- How stable/unstable is the forum? Does it have a lot of unpredicted downtimes? Does it get DDoSed or hacked often? (hopefully not)(on my old forum some hacker managed to turn the entire frontpage into some banking-money-scam-idk-what-thing)

Thanks for now!

 

[The Dragon Master]

Hello and welcome to Off Topix I'll try to answer your questions as best I can and if you need any more clarification, please don't hesitate to contact one of the staff members

- How friendly is the forum population here?

- How active is the forum?

- How international is the forum? (Is like 90% of the forum from the US or do we have a lot of people from all parts of the world)

- How mature/immature is the forum population (I once was on a forum that was full of 12-13 year old butthurt raging trolls who couldn't stand a single joke)

- Will you get banned for casual swearing? Meaning just a very little swearing in a non-harassing way

- Does the amount of active members on this forum grow steadily? (Meaning that it doesn't stagnate or decreases)

- How dedicated are the owner and staff members?

- How strict or lenient is the forum? I know out of experience that a way too light moderation will turn a forum into a pseudo-4chan, a too strict and suffocating atmospheric moderation and the forum stagnates and slowly dies because everyone is too frustrated.

- What does the forum define as ''spam''? Will just posting: ''Okay, cool man.'' on a thread get you banned?

- Are multiple accounts allowed?

- Tell me some things about this forum that makes this forum great (subjectively) and give me some of your own experience on this forum.

- How stable/unstable is the forum? Does it have a lot of unpredicted downtimes? Does it get DDoSed or hacked often? (hopefully not)(on my old forum some hacker managed to turn the entire frontpage into some banking-money-scam-idk-what-thing)

1) Generally the forum population here is very friendly.

2) The forum is generally quite active, there will be fluctuations through the year (i.e. summer tends to have lower activity levels than the winter) and throughout the day.

3) There's quite a mish mash of people from around the world here (US, UK, Europian etc)

4) People here can takes jokes in the appropriate situation.

5) Casual swearing isn't a problem as long, as you said, it's in a non offensive way and is only used rarely.

6) The number of active member's doesn't decrease, and increases at a steady slow rate.

7) We work to have staff online everyday at all hours of the day, and we try to make new threads and come up with contest ideas to try and keep people interested and attract anyone who may want to join.

8) Anything that the staff see that is against the rules is removed, and if any member has a problem and gets in touch with a staff member, the problem is dealt with as quickly as possible.

9) Short messages like "Okay, cool man" aren't seen as spam. Spam is more defined by links to sites in unrelated thread (i.e. a link to puppy care in a thread about space).

10) It's not explicitly against the rules, though it's would be unadvertised. Though if you can't remember you're login details and make a new account and remember the username of the old account we can merge them.

11) One thing that makes this forum a great place to be is the members. Everyone is friendly here and you can have a range of conversations with people here.

12) From what I can remember this forum has only be hacked once. and not again since. Since coming onto this software there hasn't been any unpredictable downtimes.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Seems like Dragon summed it up alright.

Nice to meet you Mech!

 

[Raven]

First off welcome to Off Topix.

I can tell you that, I've been here a few years now, I used to visit over a hundred odd forums, but now I visit a handful every day, Off Topix is one of them.
One of the most friendly sites on the net, The staff are very dedicated to the site, as are the members.
The content is great here, and there are much discussions. We do have some short down periods, I've been on a few times and had to wait a couple of hours before someone else posts. But there are people from all over the world here, you don't usually have to wait long.

I've posted the odd swear word here and there but I think it is preferred if you don't swear - there is a thread to swear in but it's in the elite section

Don't think I have actually ever seen any spam here, it's usually been dealt with before I can on.

 

[Evil Eye]

Welcome!

I've posted the odd swear word here and there but I think it is preferred if you don't swear

Seems like everyone's nice and polite, doesn't it?

 

[Raven]

Yea until you go in the profanity thread - if you have access to it HAHAHAHA.

 

[Jazzy]

Hello, Mech, and welcome to Off Topix! Nice to have you here.