Foruming - Do tell?

[Shu]

So a very respected Admin (Bustamo) in the past, created a thread in which asked the veterans on the forum how they came to this Forum in general, and what their past Forum experience was like.

So taking that and twisting it a bit, let me ask something to the community.

1) How did you come to this forum? Were you referred? Were you looking for a FAQ or help to getting further in a game? Or were you trying to find a community to relate Final Fantasy with.

2) In your past experience how has your perception changed from when you first started Foruming, and up until now.

3) And lastly which is the most important, on your time on this forum, how has it changed?

(as a side note, don't turn this into something like "Bring back so and so, or the staff is evil etc etc [we know we are ].)

With the previous thread we've had some good follow up with some of the members/staffers where they have asked "Where is so and so at these days, or What happened to this feature/sub-forum/event.."

 

[Lirael]

1) How did you come to this forum? Were you referred? Were you looking for a FAQ or help to getting further in a game? Or were you trying to find a community to relate Final Fantasy with.

2) In your past experience how has your perception changed from when you first started Foruming, and up until now.

3) And lastly which is the most important, on your time on this forum, how has it changed?

1) I joined these forums years ago, soon after discovering that forums existed. I was keen to meet FF fans and enjoyed socialising online too as I was able to meet a variety of people; I was at a girl's school at the time and live in the middle of nowhere so had never met anyone who enjoyed gaming... I didn't really know any boys either.

I came back a few months ago after finishing Uni because I missed discussing things on forums. Furthermore, I wanted to get back into GFX and meet further awesome people, which I certainly have.


2) I used to be more emotionally involved in forums, I think, and I spent far too much time posting on them! I still invest a fair amount of time I suppose, but I don't spend hours a day on forums. I don't think my perception of this specific forum has changed... I am just very keen to welcome new members as I would like to see the community grow. Having been a newb on a couple of forums recently, I also know that there is no incentive to stay unless you feel welcomed and believe you'll meet interesing, friendly people who are interested in you.

 

[Shaissa]

Well dictator Shu you evil bastard you (joking don't infract my perfect non-fraction career ) I shall answer your three questions.

1) How did you come to this forum? Were you referred? Were you looking for a FAQ or help to getting further in a game? Or were you trying to find a community to relate Final Fantasy with.

I basically searched "final Fantasy forum" and found this one at the the top very fun stuff

2) In your past experience how has your perception changed from when you first started Foruming, and up until now.

Well I use to always try to make my post 100% serious, and take everything literally (even in the sb) But now I made my post more like me, joking around, just having fun.

3) And lastly which is the most important, on your time on this forum, how has it changed?

Well The Final Fantasy section almost died for a long while here, I don't post as much as I use to or want to...and yeah...

 

[ribbit]

1) How did you come to this forum? Were you referred? Were you looking for a FAQ or help to getting further in a game? Or were you trying to find a community to relate Final Fantasy with.

On the forum I moderated, I knew Squee, or whatever name he's going by. He told me about how he was having issues with a forum, and this happened to be the forum He said they had a shoutbox, so I joined. I hate forums that don't have shoutboxes, because I've always found it hard to meet people when you're just posting in threads compared to actually talking and going off topic without too many people treating you like crap

2) In your past experience how has your perception changed from when you first started Foruming, and up until now.

Every forum has its assholes, and that doesn't change It hasn't changed, since I've only been dedicated to 2 or 3 actual forums. You move on after a while.

3) And lastly which is the most important, on your time on this forum, how has it changed?

Nothing has changed because I've not been active long enough to see change

 

[Dionysos]

1) How did you come to this forum? Were you referred? Were you looking for a FAQ or help to getting further in a game? Or were you trying to find a community to relate Final Fantasy with.

I was the latter. I wanted a forum for Final Fantasy and typed 'Final Fantasy Forum' into google. This was the first forum to pop up, and I clicked it.
I'm afraid my origins are as boring as that. I didn't have an epiphany and no god stood by my head to tell me where my destiny lies.

I'd put off joining a forum for a very long time. I was quite new to the whole internet thing, and I'd not matured yet. When I had previously been on the internet it was for things like Runescape and Habbo Hotel facepaw. I only had one friend throughout my early to mid-teen years, and I was aware that he did foruming. It seemed to enlarge his mind, he began to know things about the world of the internet (and therefore anything in the world that is new and current would be revealed), but I didn't really get foruming back then. I avoided that sort of thing and just played with him on Habbo and sat in my own little world. I ran my own mafia, but I only had one or two actual members of it, and we all knew we were just sitting down in an empty office.

One day much later (when I was about 18) I joined a superhero forum with a real life friend and I saw for the first time in my life how good a forum could be. I didn't really stick with that forum to a serious extent so I joined an FF forum (though I probably prefer the superhero subject matter than FF, as FF isn't a big part of my life anymore - that said I think it was the masses of general topics and sections unrelated to FF that drew me to stay here).

2) In your past experience how has your perception changed from when you first started Foruming, and up until now.

I was a complete loser when I first joined the forum. Some things never change, but a mouse can at least attempt to become a lion. Back then I was merely a mouse being a mouse.

I didn't get on well with people, probably because I was just another noob. Probably also because I had a numbered username... 'Argor251' probably made me look like a random spambot with no soul. I also did not have the first clue how to communicate with anyone at all. I'd no idea how people thought or behaved.

This forum, though it is just a forum, did teach me quite a bit about how people think. I took mental notes on what people said, even little things, and these are things that in day-to-day life you might not hear people say (unless you are friends, and those I found were slim at the time in real life). I got to read how people thought, and what was going through the minds of some people. Obviously some people would be trolls and would be making the whole thing up (and some people, like myself, would be exaggerating sometimes to make a silly post or to emphasise something), but I accepted that some people would be putting their thoughts out here in some form. I sometimes found that enlightening.

Sometimes people just posted about getting toast and dropping marmite on their cat. That wasn't so enlightening.

But really... Here I was meeting (or 'meeting') hundreds of people from all walks of life, and from different countries all over the world. When I got to observe conversations and read posts in threads I found this very fascinating, and still do. I now meet people from a variety of places all over the world in real life every week, but still here I get the inner-consciousness of some people expressed in posts that might not be expressed in real life (without befriending someone or getting them drunk).

My view on forums? People are ok, as a whole. I've learned that people who don't have the same moral views as yourself can still be decent people, and usually have reasons for thinking in that way, even if it may annoy you. Obviously this is more of a life thing, and not a forum thing, and I didn't just learn this from a forum... I just can't think of anything that has really altered perception of forums other than that I don't mind anymore when someone holds an opinion different to my own.

3) And lastly which is the most important, on your time on this forum, how has it changed?

I'm struggling to answer this question at present. I may return to it (if it isn't already stated somewhere in that block of text above).

 

[Jack's Smirking Revenge]

1) i was on acf a few years ago and a member there (the slasher) had a link to this forum in his sig. it was a pretty new forum at the time, and he was a gmod at the time - one of the first, i think - and was looking to get this place kickstarted.


2) i'm not sure to be honest. i can't remember for the life of me what my perception of foruming was 5 years ago. i could go down the whole 'i've matured and grown up and made lots of friends who have changed me blah blah blah' road but we've all heard it before and don't really care.


3) again, it's tough to say how much has changed because i can't really remember all that much from 5 years ago. obviously the staff have changed - i think every staff member is different now to when i signed up - and there was no shoutbox back then either. we used to have a chat room instead, which was way better from what i remember

 

[Shu]

So a very respected Admin (Bustamo) in the past, created a thread in which asked the veterans on the forum how they came to this Forum in general, and what their past Forum experience was like.

So taking that and twisting it a bit, let me ask something to the community.

1) How did you come to this forum? Were you referred? Were you looking for a FAQ or help to getting further in a game? Or were you trying to find a community to relate Final Fantasy with.

2) In your past experience how has your perception changed from when you first started Foruming, and up until now.

3) And lastly which is the most important, on your time on this forum, how has it changed?

1) I was around 21-22 I think. I was looking for help and unfortunately IGN forums did not have what I needed. Though fortunately for me when I searched for Maps on the big Crystal another forum popped up.. not this one, but a map style that was drawn out by a fellow gamer. I sort of searched around for a bit afterwords, and ended up on here. I'll be honest, I don't know why I truly came here I assume like everyone else, google, I think the feedback that was given was tremendous. When I first got here I kept getting a bunch of thanks for putting up pointers in XII, via PM.

2) I was never part of a community really, just an online clan via PC gaming. I use to play with a French Canadian clan called Bone Collectors. Then Chowder, then FT, then a few others, then back to Bone Collectors. We mostly played Team Fortress Classic together. Other games we played were Dark age of Camelot and Counter Strike. I belonged to their forum/website. I also checked in on what used to be STA and OGL (biggest clan sites). From there I sort of dropped it when I started dating in highschool. Oh the heartache, I should of stuck with gaming .

3) Oh boy. Well I never really hung out with people on the forum via SB till 2007 (late) and 2008. I never had much time to idle, I had work/class dating, breakup, you name it occurring. So the forums really started out getting to know folks. I hung out mostly in the FFXII section and then ventured slowly into the Temple of the Ancients and Sleeping Forest, where I really set up shop and made my home.

I never really hung with the staff or affiliated with any of them. Mandi/Busta/Mits/Kelly/Vikk were really the first to interact and say to come into the SB more. I generally started out in the SB talking about my accounting classes and coding classes I was taking at the time.

I just kicked it really, was uber friendly with everyone. In 2010 I believe it was, I was asked twice on staff, till I said I was ready.. From there things changed uber quick in my eyes. A lot of new faces, a lot of old friends leaving. A lot of drama right before I got on staff, and more as soon as I joined . So that was .. uhh fun =\.

Things stabilized a bit more, and I kept to my Gaea section along with the SB as much as possible. Hung with a few folks on Xbox360, and talked with everyone via MSN asking how life and shit was mostly. One day Jace had to leave due to the military and asked if I would feel up to doing some admining. I'll be honest had to step back and say to myself.. do I really have time? Well things worked out..

From then on.. I've seen some of the most excellent people on the forums come, go and still reside here. It's been a pleasure seeing and talking to you folks still, and I still know why this is my most favorite hangout spot, even if some can be a pain in my neck . I kid, but seriously.. this place is excellent despite how many people have gone on to bigger and better things, new traffic keeps coming, and new faces stay around.

Given this, I hope we have an excellent year as a community.