(Continued from previous page. . .)
The first place I visited was the ‘Episode II’ forum. The first poster I ever conversed with was Twineball. To be honest, and this is no joke, you could post a thread and within seconds, and I mean seconds, it would be on page 2 or even 3!
Twineball was one of those calm and collected posters, and he seemed cool to chat to aboutStar Wars stuff. Darth Vaernexx the Scion, later known as DVTS, was also another cool poster.
Back in the early days, the threads being created were just nonsensical and crazy and some of it didn’t even belong in the forums and some it was just posted over and over again, like ‘Who shot first, Greedo or Han?’ I would say that ‘I guess you know what I mean?’ but I don’t really think you would. It really was manic and moved at the speed of light!
This went on for weeks. There were chat threads popping up all over the place and we had no moderators. There were no profanity filters–it was a real fight or drown-in-ridiculousness scenario.
After a few weeks of watching threads go by at .5 past light speed, I hooked up with a poster called ‘Gothmog the Ballrog’. It was at this point that he and I kind of stopped taking it all seriously and the real fun began. Some people, however, took it very seriously and the ensuing rows and arguments were quite funny to watch. You had to be there to understand just how much fun this actually was. I mean, there were guys threatening to kill other people and fights breaking out over the silliest of topics!
It was around this time that a few of the regular guys were made moderators. Twineball, DVTS, Porthas, Fatboy Roberts to name a few, but they didn’t have coloured screen names; everyone was black. So you didn’t actually know who was a mod until threads started getting locked.
It was a long while after moderators and locking buttons that bannings started to happen. And it really did have to be severe for a ban to happen. But a few people went and this really did make the posters sit up and think about what they were doing. Then the profanity filter was put in and the ‘terms of service’ were enforced much more closely by the mods.
(Continued. . .)
