Have you ever had good or bad experience on smaller forum communities?

[GuillermoGage 246]

This subject is of course about other forums, not this one.

Over the years, or even recently, what has your experience been on being a part of smaller forum communities?

... like, for example, does anyone here have a personal history of running into trouble, or getting frustrated with people, or the opposite happening?

 

How many other forums are you a part of?
Again, I am talking about other forums, not this one.
I have experience in this. In fact, I may be coming back to this forum after personal experiences elsewhere in the MLPFiM fandom and after finding more and more insight concerning conduct elsewhere.

When I say "small forum", I generally mean something that is small enough where you can get a familiarity with several people, and it is possible for people to get to know each other.

Massively vast things like 4chan.... and maybe Gaia Online, and also kind of large things like GameFAQs, those are places that I consider to be big, and the mindset can be harder to narrow down.

[baltoist 303]

Yes on canterlot i have 2 warning points and lost my status ability and on world of equestria i was perma banned.

[Megas 27,628]

This is probably the only big forum I've been too that I actually enjoyed. Most of my favorite experiences are from small-to-average sized forums

[Scootalove 10,689]

This forum in particular, is the only big forum community that I've been a part for a long time and that I enjoy it a lot. That's saying a lot coming for me.

[Banul 3,831]

This will be the first forum that I consider myself active on, and it's been going pretty well.

 

I lurk on some other forums, mostly for games.

-the World of Warcraft forums are a constant stream of complaints. Likewise the Hearthstone forums. They both have some "forum celebrities" but it's mostly sort of anonymous.

-hung out on the Bioware forums for a while. Mostly liked it, but waifu flame wars were common. Liked the fan club sub section until the Great Miranda Civil War forced the mods to locked it all down.

 

I guess this is the smallest forum I've been on. Maybe that's why it manages to be more civil than the others.

[~Sylveon~ 188]

I was on this site where the main thing wasn't a forum, but it was part of it. The site wasn't that big on the forums part- a lot of people played and ignored the forums. I got into a little (emphasis on little) fight with one of the most popular people on the forum. It's over now- we're buddies, actually- but some people still dislike me for it. So I don't really like small forum communities.

[M'aiq the Liar 5,804]

I used to be a constant member of bungie.nets "The Flood". It was essentially a /b/ but with the population the size of this forum. I had wonderful experiences with it until they made the worst decision ever and changed it to a twitter like layout. I was one of many thousands that left after that change.

 

I also used to spend a lot of Airsoft Society, but that place, despite having nearly 100k registered members, seems to be insanely inactive at the moment. I had never really had a bad experience on there, other than it being dead.

 

All in all, I've had better times on larger forums, were there are enough people around to create subgroups, and enough back corners to get lost in.

[TenorSounds 832]

I used to be very active in the animetheme.com forums years and years ago (back when I thought the handle "ShadowWizard576" was the coolest thing ever); that's where I got my RP chops, mostly. Lot's of fun to be had, and everyone was so friendly and welcoming! I went back a couple years ago and it was significantly less active, but there were still some 'old-timers' I knew hanging around. No real active forums aside from that, so I guess I haven't had any bad experiences.

 

So-far this community seems really nice and welcoming too, so hopefully I can capture some of that here 

[Mephala 2,633]

I like small communities. I find that there are still the "popular" users, but I generally get along with people better when there's >500 users. I don't know why, I guess it's just easier to access people since a lot of larger forums treat friendships like prizes and methodically reply with generic comments to messages and don't think of them as worthwhile commitments. Also, it's a lot easier to weed out the nasties of a community that is small.

 

Yes on canterlot i have 2 warning points and lost my status ability and on world of equestria i was perma banned.

Canterlot is pretty well known for being very hardass on the members that aren't well-known or that the mods don't like. Personally, I don't like it as a community, but some people prefer that to other styles of forums. I prefer when mods are a little more impartial, or at least follow their own rules. <__<

[Tigerpop198 696]

Well, this is the only forum I have an account on, so yeah, can't say too much.

Edited June 20, 2014 by pony12343

[Invalid 54]

I used to be an "active" member back on some video game frachise forums, but that was a long time ago. Then I moved on to another forum after some time and it became my main hangout online. I grew to like it over the years and the people were friendly enough, but the overall theme (and reason behind) the place had was starting to get overly depressing for me. I didn't want to keep coming back to trite, old topics and there were a few members there that were getting gradually annoying with their dull humor or whatnot.

 

So, I came here soley because of my liking of ponies (obviously), the fandom, and the friendly layout it had. So far, so good.

[GhostPony750 959]

Hmm yea... I've been on a few other forums.

 

There is this small pokemon community, the forums are quite inactive but it's the best pokemon website I've ever found. I somehow managed to get 1000 posts here, over the course of almost two years! I like small forums.

 

And there's also this forum about a video game... Well, they decided to change the mods, and the whole thing went wild. Mods, abusing power, decided to ban me for a noob reason. Since everyone liked me here, there was a huge rage on the forums. Then the mods said thay whoever complained again would be banned. 3/4 of the peeps left. Now, it's a wasteland where you can't even post something without being bashed by the mods, who doesn't respect their own rules and stalk everyone hoping to find a single fault to shame them and ban them.

 

Yea, it went pretty crazy here. But I still have contacts with all my friends.

 

The MLP forums are too big, it's hard to interact with people when you're not one of these popular peeps.

Edited June 20, 2014 by GhostPony750

[Pinkamena-Pills 6,839]

I joined Gamefaq's at one point a few years back...

 

Needless to say i stopped posting there soon after. 

[Glitterheart 64]

Whelp, I screwed around on Gaia a few years back.  Unfortunately all the private guilds were pretty much dead by then, and the public forums were basically just a Saturday morning cartoon version of 4chan.

 

I was active on another pony forum for a while that was smaller than this one.  It was fun for a while, but eventually people got bored and left, and it just gradually slowed down and died off in terms of activity.

 

THIS one is a little intimidating in size, but hopefully won't be dying anytime soon.  Now i just need to finally get active on here...

[TheDarkMysteryMan 670]

Well...I can say proudly that I have been in a total of 4 different forums. One of them I'm currently running.

 

The first ever forum I ever went to was one for hacking the Xbox360. That was probably the lowest interested one I went to.

 

The second one was for a website for really crazy shit, like decapitation, street fights, and even the weirdest porn I've ever seen. I'm still a member to that site, but I randomly go there now because it gets boring seeing the same old thing.

 

The third one is this one right here. So far, I'm trying to be as active as ever here, even more than the last forum I'm presenting.

 

The last one is for Brawl modding.

This is the forum's that I currently go to the most to this day. The simple answer to why is because I'm a global mod there. I have to keep myself there to make sure the place doesn't fall apart.

[GuillermoGage 246]

Wow, I had no idea that this thread would get so many replies.... I've been off here... and I basically just posted this thread to vent to myself about how bad EquestriaForums is... and I've found out that I am not alone.

And it is for the same reasons as people are talking about, about other forums. mods, popular users, and arbitrary pummelling of new people who don't fit into their clique and tow the party line.

For example, just a few days ago... someone from South Africa was mentioning South Africa. I asked the person if they knew that Tabitha St. Germain has lived in South Africa... and their reply was. (I also asked her about Shartlo Copley, first, so that is why Tabitha St. Germain is "that second person")

 And I don't know that second person you cited so I don't really care

 

My reply was:

 

PokePony, you appear to be a totally fluent English speaker...do you watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in English without much need for subtitles for some other language? In a situation where you are hearing the English-language voices?
Because if so... well, I've been looking for a proper reaction image to post... something with a "nope" or some sort of gradual zoom in to the face thing of bafflement... but I'll just say it. I am offended that you don't know who Tabitha St. Germain is, especially if you watch this show in English. And that you didn't just quick look her name up before posting your message, if you were able to search it.

I am offended.

 

And then the community just got all defensive:

... Or you could just helpfully say that she's Rarity's voice actress and leave the patronising "how don't you know this, you appear to speak English?" attitude at the door. Why would you be offended by it? I honestly can't figure out if you're joking or not but if you are then it's not especially amusing.

 

PokePony ended up replying:

0, the amount of care I give o/

Then I replied:

"So, uh why didn't you just look Tabitha St. Germain up? She has lived in South Africa, I find that interesting!
So... I wonder what dubs there are for MLPFiM that are like Afrikaans or Dutch... I'm considering looking it up.
Are you familiar with the movie District 9?"

 

she replied:

"because I dont cate about the subject and cant be bothered about it. also why would I care about afrikaans dub?
and yeah I saw that once and didnt like it. I truly wonder why you are talking about all these."

 

 

... She somehow could not take the scant few seconds to look up the name Tabitha St. Germain, but was able to post her intitial message. or actually pay attention, then she would know why I was mentioning the possibility of non-English dubs. it is one thing to be totally ignorant of the names of the major voice actors when you are a big enough fan of a super-popular, very devoted fandom cartoon to frequesnt a forum on it. It is another thing entirely to just blow someone off and not even be vaguely curious when someone asks you if they know if someone has lived in their home country before, you don't even have the common decency to look that person's name up or politely ask??? You just say, durr hurr, I don't care?

 

... I decided to initially not mention who Tabitha St. Germain is, because, she did not care to look the name up herself, and because I wanted her to figure it out or herself. I did not want to spoon-feed that answer.

 

 

... so yeah, that may seem like a long-winded rant over not much... but the reaction about how people somehow made me out to be this "patronising" person is just... just so typical of EquestriaForums... and I am not the only person who notices this.

[(MARVEL) Blue Blood 991]

I was part of the staff on a small Sonic forum. After not getting ANYTHING done in months, I just left without telling the head about it. Felt pretty good about it too.

[Invincible 2,091]

I made an account on a small, hebrew-speaking forum for D&D and roleplay back in the day. The community just faded into nothingness after a while, they simply stopped posting altogether.

[Deathstroke 1,564]

This is my first ever forum i join so i can't say anything 

Edited July 15, 2014 by Desert guardian

[Jeric 46,851]

Well, when I installed phpBB 3 (Olympus) on an old forum back in 2005 there was an exploit that someone had supposedly dealt with and patched it. It had 'passed' was QC'd and went through UAT 'fine' ... nope. The exploit was discovered when my board was ripped asunder by one of my own users trying to prove a point with his hatred of the new design. Resolving it was relatively painless, but it was the fact that one of the users had a vendetta unknown to me that left me completely beside myself.

 

Never had issues as a user.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Jeric

[Mr. Forest 135]

Since it's creation a few years back, I've had nothing but a good, no, a GREAT time at the Arkamverse forums.  Everyone there is very friendly and no one is attacked or mocked by the group there.  Everyone is mostly on good terms.  There have been a few bad apples but they were banned early on.  What's cool though is that they are given the chance to come back later when they've matured a little.  One poster was able to do this about two months ago and so far he's been a lot better than he was when he first started there.

 

The website as a whole has remained decently active but it never feels "dead".  I only wish the site's creater was still around but he left for personal reasons.  Still, he left the site in very capable hands.

 

Another small site I posted regularly in for two years was the Tali'Zorah Forums.  We had a small, not as nice but decent community there too.  Unfortunately since ME3's release, it's been mostly dead.  The ending was so bad that it ruined everyone's interest in the game series, so there was no new fan creations, series talk, or even posting in general.  Everyone just left and never looked back.

[SparklingSquirrels 21,341]

This is the only forum I'm a part of, unless if wikia counts (which I don't think it does, but the discussion forums and blogs make it close enough). I've had a mostly good experience there (it was MLP wiki) and I met many good friends. Now, however, most of them have left...

[BayoUni2847 528]

I jumped between a few forums over the years, just barely getting to fifty posts before leaving the forum entirely.

 

Other than MLP Forums there has only been one other forum I was this active on, and it was called NintendoCity.

 

NIntendoCity was an awesome forum with a small community, where the active members were really good friends and we had a lot of fun posting and beating high scores on our forums' arcade.

 

I joined it back in 2007 and was active right until it went down to nothing around late 2011 due to a lot of owner changes, older members leaving and hardly any new people registering.

 

Now days I visit the forum once in a while to remember the great memories that were made.

[Stellafera 3,836]

I tend to go a little stir crazy on small forums. Big forums like this satisfy my need for new reading material. 

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

I was on a much smaller forum for almost three years. I got to know a few good people who quickly became some of my best friends, but after a while it lost its magic on me once those people left. New members came to replace them, but I never quite bonded with anyone else in the same way as the people I knew from the start.

 

I didn't have much trouble with the staff of the forum. I stayed on good terms with the admins and moderators, and eventually became a moderator myself. That lasted for over two years.

 

I just left that forum a few days ago. It was having a very negative impact on my life, because my job as moderator was a bit stressful. Most of my friends had gone, and the last friend I had left suggested that I take a break from the site as I was causing trouble with other members and ultimately hurting myself.

 

That website meant a lot to me; it was practically a second home... if not a primary home. But it meant too much to me, and as things started to change, it sent me into a depression and I missed the good times that I had. Being there reminded me of what was, and what never will be again. I'm no longer there anymore, as I like to look ahead to the future and appreciate other things in life.

Edited July 16, 2014 by Regulus