Comic Genesis Forums: a history
From CGWiki
Comic Genesis Forums, A History
Looking back over five years of Keenspace
Contents |
The Age of Growth
In January 2002 STrRedWolf became a fully fledged admin and Keenspace Wrangler and on the 17th of Febuary the Forum changed its address from Keenspace.com/forums/ to forums.Keenspace.com. As well as this it also switched over from the aged UBB scripting format to the superior phpBB giving us the look it has today. (STrRedWolf gets the credit for the conversion script from UBB to PHPBB... see later note about 1999)
One minor side affect of the move was that all existing users were now described to have joined the forum in 02 Jan 1999. (Kisai noticed that after the conversion to PHPBB2, a lot of logins said December 31st 1969. Knowing full well that the forums didn't exist untill at least 1999 Kisai manually tweaked the database to show Jan 1 1999 instead.)
Chris Crosby and Gav had by now significantly reduced their direct interaction with the Keenspace community so Teri Crosby, StRedWolf and Neighborhood_Watch were installed as new General Discussion Mods.
An interesting aspect of the new configuration of the forums was that for some reason Keenspace Nate had been set to get every post made on the forum attributed to his post count. A preventive measure to keep from being considered a newbie to the uninitiated? Or some geeky form of pure unabashed lower drawers compensation? You decide.
Forum ranks were first put in use towards the end of February when STrRedWolf activated the feature and was followed by the creation of the Keenime Dropdown (Later just Keenime) and Techniques, Tips and Tricks forums in May. Bryan Y B Wong and SI Rob were made the mods in charge of Keenime.
And then in April 2002 forum users were granted the use of avatars for the first time.
In August 2002 Keenspace redesigned its front page to the long running space theme.
Around this time Keenspace Nate started making regular use of the Announcements forum, Neighborhood_Watch was mysteriously deleted from the member list and Kisai revamped the guide.
On the 10th of October Kisai implemented her long running Navy-themed ranking system. The age of cadets and Lt.Commanders had begun. (Actually Kisai added additional ranks and changed the post counts for the existing ranks so there was a little more variety.)
On the 31st of October after a bout of trick-or-treat cookie madness minifoo started the infamous Do Not Reply (DNR) thread, a thread that, unspurprisingly, rapidly grew to an unprecedented length.
Nov 07, 2002 STrRedWolf bans Kent B
After passing its 100th page, the DNR thread started displaying some very odd behaviour and was unable to be viewed for those lacking the ingenuity to figure a way round the bug. The thread continued to exhibit increasingly stranger syptoms until, on the morning of the 10th of November 2002, the last of admin activity was seen on the main boards when STrRedWolf banned Bobby Crosby. After that, the administration of General Discussion without warning, inexplicably disappeared. (This is design flaw in PHPBB2 at that time, all PHPBB2 boards experienced similiar problems. -Kisai)
The Forgotten Year
Without any mods, and the absence of admins, general discussion collapsed into general anarchy and a style of self rule where forum etiquette and standards were decided and enforced by established spacers. It was fun.
As much as the frequenters of General Discussion wouldn�t like to admit it, life continued outside their forum. Although never seen within general discussion, admin activity continued labouring on the rest of the board.
On the 25th of November the current server, torTheCalculate reached maximum capacity, Keenspace was moved to schlock, (Tor was a Linux server that we could barely keep running. Kisai proposed a Dynamic Hosting feature to STRedWolf, which was then implemented and the memory problems went away. This feature was carried over to the new server Shlock)
'a really powerfull server with lots of space'.
On the 26th of January, shlock died explosively taking about 1000 Keenspace sites with it. (Kisai- Nate was unable to keep the server alive long enough to copy everything from it, so it just went BOOM. Unfortunately, there was no data in which to recreate the accounts. Kisai had been developing a MySQL database version of the Guide and the data from the guide was used to rebuild all the accounts. The comic data itself was gone though.) It caused what is wildly revered to as the Big Keenspace Meltdown of February 2003. In April 2003 Zortic�s Cartoonists Choice Awards were given a forum on the board and it and Keenime were both moved to the newly installed category Hosted Communities.
And then calamity struck on October 10th 2003. The day of the Great October Crash.
Gav broke the news:
�Hey guys, only one smiley will do for me right now:
Well, I was asked to upgrade the forums to the latest version of phpBB, and in the process, all the post text was lost. It turns out there was a hard drive corruption problem in the posts text file, and when I tried to back it up, it just chopped off everything after the bad block. I've tried all night to recover the posts, to no avail. They are just gone. I apologize profusely. The best I could do was revert to an old backup I had lying around from the last time there was a total forum meltdown--way way back in February. There are also 39 random posts since February that I could save, but I have no idea which ones they are. I thought we were making more regular backups than that, but Nate informs me that the backups weren't really working.
If there's a scrap of good news amongst all of this, it's that I was at least able to upgrade the forums, in the end. There were major difficulties, as usual, but I worked through them. Sorry again, but maybe you're used to it by now? What can I say? Let's just fill the forums back up with interesting posts so that a month from now, we won't ever remember what's missing.� (Kisai - Kelly and Kisai had been asking for direct access to the forum server for a long time so this could have been adverted. Sometime in 2005 Kisai deleted all the users who had zero posts as a result of this. VileTerror complained, so Kisai then reinstated all the users that had been deleted that still had posts in the system. Look for ZOMBIE USER)
No such luck! THIS spacer remembers! You took the best year of my li-
When the forum came back up, spacers were horrified to find that almost everything written between February 11th 2003 and October 24th 2003 had been deleted. Worst of all DNR had been set back nearly 100 pages. There was only one thing for it.
DarkMagician got the blame.
November 25th Signups for comic forums were closed to conserve memory.
December 22, 2003, Evil Jamie! elected President of GD.
Battle Royale got underway sometime around December and January.
2004 began with TheGoobla's Grand Opening of Keenchat on January 3rd. It was quite low key really. Only about seven people bothered. But although adaptation was slow, it changed the way spacers interacted with each other forever. REAL-TIME!
And then on the 10th of January yarpsDat discovered that he had been suddenly made a mod. (Kisai- Nope, he asked me to be a mod) The first active mod in General Discussion since the night Night_watch had disappeared. Incidentally, with the promotion activated yarps curiously found himself unable access General Discussion, until he improvised a solution by creating an alternate identity on a separate account to whom he gave the mod powers. Enter EMH (Emergency Moderating Hologram). (This is known as the "over 50 pages bug", it took a while to figure out how to solve the problem. Kisai later fixed the indexes that caused the problem.) However not all parties in GD approved of the promotion and a lot of flailing ensued. It is speculated that this hubbub about nothing was what awoke the sleeping hermaphrodite giant from its slumber.
The Period of Restoration
It was then on the 2nd of February 2004 that STrRedWolf figured out that it was the thoroughly borked DNR thread that was preventing him from accessing the General Discussion forum all this time. He immediately had it locked, chopped, and moved and set about giving the forum a significant overhaul.
Thus was the dawn of great change.
VileTerror and all its manifestations were banned en masse, and EMH's mod-status was revoked. EMH was then reprogrammed to serve as a janitor, and to clean up frequent puddles of urine left by Noise Monkey. All overweight and seditious threads were culled, half of GD deleted, autoprune activated, the 20 page limit rule instated, and new forums Off-topic Junk, Forum Games and Comic Pitching were formed. In response to the sudden overload of change, several oldbies died of simultaneous heart attacks.
To supplement the new forums, General Discussion modship powers were distributed to Phalanx and faub after Mr.Bob nominated them. Toxic nominated himself for Comic Pitching. Was passed over in favour of Yeahduff. Once the shooting was done, the questions were asked, and as a result, EMH's powers were reinstated. But that was not the end of the affair as VileTerror supporters protested for a lift of his ban, and theGoobla cashed in on the social upheaval by opening a cafepress shop where he made a killing selling [[�FREE VT�]] merchandise.
Following that memorable weekend, VileTerror�s main account was unbanned after the end of the superbowl (the Janet Jackson one), but it chose not return to the forum.
On the 9th of February 2004 Kisai updated her ranking system to accommodate McDuffies postcount, and on the 15th, Boardy died, pulling the entire system down with it. It wasn�t long before STrRedWolf introduced us to Boardy (and YDK�s by association) successor: Butch.
In March things settled down again and Keenspace was once again open to new comic submissions and the frontpage was redesigned to a much more Spartan look.
Toxic applied for the Mod vacancy of Forum games and was passed over in favour of War. This was followed a few days later by the passing over of Toxic in favour of McDuffies as the new mod of the longly unregulated Off Topic Junk.
It is around this time that Warren first kicks McDuffies in the McDuffies. Says:
�Hey.. this is kinda fun!�
April 2004 saw the return of the long obsolete newsbox in its new incarnation (affectionately dubbed newshack), and the launch of the new Keenspace home page designed by RPin. Yes, Keenspace had become pink!
Late Keenspace Era
In June 2004 Phalanx took over the long abandoned and derelict Gear site. She revamped it, releasing version 2.0 on the 16th.
June also saw the return of VileTerror from its self-imposed General Discussion and Off-topic exile when it crept discreetly back onto the scene.
August 4th STrRedWolf bans Al666
August 30th. Infamous [[�customer�]] incident at keenspot forums.
October 29th 6:43 am Spoder Man shows up for the first time October 29th 8:24 pm STrRedWolf bans Spoder Man for the first time October 31st Spoder Mon returns
In November 2004, the forums were moved from the aging server P.D.I to the brand new server Sandy. Many were shocked when the transfer went without by incident.
On the 2nd of November RPin drew Space-tan for the first time.
On November 18th, Van Douchebag raised the motion that RPin's Spacechan be made Keenspace mascot. Inadvertently rechristens her Spacechan in the process.
After a month of the forum functioning on the new server without a hitch, STrRedWolf lifts the 20 page limit rule. There is much rejoicing.
December 1st 2004. The Revolution begins. December 3rd, 2004, Keenreality TV Season 1 debuts.
On December 30th, realising that the year�s running short STrRedWolf makes a mad dash for it and bans marx On December 31st STrRedWolf bans hyrodragonslayer; thus ending the year having beaten his previous score. January 14th 2005 sees STrRedWolf beginning the New Year by banning evile
Jan 15th, Keenreality Season 2 gets underway. This day also saw the return of the 20 page limit rule, but with a slight difference. It was now the 10 page limit rule. Whereas the 20 page limit rule had been more of a guideline than a ruling, the 10 page limit rule was now rigorously carried out as the mods were charged by STrRedWolf to lock threads exceeding 200 posts. This never lasted, and after a week of extreme unpopularity, Sam Charrette and Kisai convinced STtrRedwolf to abandon the limit rules once and for all. T�was a great victory for all of forumkind.
Toxic was dully passed over and Sam Charette was rewarded with adminship for his tech-geekery, and somehow, during the kafuffle, Collapse found himself banned.
Though unbanned shortly later, he got banned again before his luggage arrived.
February 3rd, STrRedWolf bans Archae45
On Feb the 11th Season 3 of Keenreality TV starts
On February 21st, 2005 the first Keenspace Sampler was completed!
Then on February 27th Sam resigned as forum admin. Toxic applied for the new vacancy. On the same day, Kisai cleaned the database by deleting all the inactive users and then recalculating the post counts. However, because of autoprune and the large number of missing posts all the users suddenly found their postcounts significantly reduced, and by extension, their ranks demoted. Kisai took advantage of this opportunity to revamp the ranking system. Since Mr.Bob�s proposal was elected as the new system, Toxic was promptly passed over and Mr.Bob made a Junior Admin to implement it.
In March, new Mods Kris X joined the lonely YeahDuff in comic pitching and Fanny-Pack was recruited to assist Phalanx in The Gear. Toxic was passed over yet again.
Apr 1st, 2005.. it�s Season 4 of Keenreality!
April 15th STrRedWolf bans Spoder Mon again April 15th STrRedWolf bans Van Douchebag April 25th STrRedWolf bans boby
May 8th , 2005. The tragedy that is Keencruise. YAAAY!!!
Identity Crisis
On Wednesday, the 18th of May 2005 Chris Crosby casually announced to the world in a websnark comment that Keenspace would be getting a name change on the coming Monday.
Shock and outrage quickly swept through the community as spacers became infuriated that they had not been consulted or informed first. This was followed the next day by STrRedWolf's sudden resignation from Keenspace due to an unrelated salary issue. A number of spacers chose to go independent when it was learned on the 24th that Toonspace was to be Keenspace�s new name. But most of them stayed because season 5 of Keenreality was starting.
For more details on the controversy see the 2005 namechange crisis. But briefly, the sequence of events that followed was that as a compromise Crosby offered the spacers a choice between webcomicspace and toonspace. Though webcomicspace was less unpopular than the latter, the spacers rejected both names overall and demanded that the new name be one they propose. Crosby conceded and the spacers pooled together suggestions for alternative names. When it was put to vote, Comic Genesis emerged the victor.
On the 27th of May Starline creates Gen-chan.
On the 3rd of June Mr.Bob elected GD President completely fairly.
On the 7th of June Kirb has Space-chan sacked On the same day Jops provides the new official Gen-chan look.
And then on the 16th of Jun STrRedWolf returned
Jun 16th STrRedWolf bans arvo.
He�s back all right.
Jul 06, 2005 Season 6 of Keenreality.
June 21st STrRedWolf bans Stickfiguresk
On the 28th of June President Mr.Bob is unjustly placed under house arrest for crimes he did not commit. The second Keenspace Sampler is also completed.
On the 4th of July the forums found themselves an unfortunate victim of hacking. To their horror Spacers logged on to discover that all thread links now pointed at Microsoft.com. It was a week before all the damage was entirely repaired.
A new Genesis
July 19th 2005: Chris Crosby makes the official announcement.. Keenspace is now Comic Genesis.
IT'S OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: KEENSPACE TO BECOME COMIC GENESIS A long time ago, we chose to change the name of Keenspace (our free webhosting service for aspiring comic creators) in order to avoid the frequent brand confusion caused by the name's similarity to KeenSPOT. Though "ToonSPACE" was originally chosen as the new name, it received a negative response from users of the service. We took their opinions heavily into account, and after a number of user polls made a new final decision: Keenspace is now Comic Genesis, or ComicGen for short. The dictionary defines "genesis" as "the coming into being of something; the origin." We hope many wonderful new webcomics will come into being on Comic Genesis, as many did on Keenspace over the past five years.�
July 31st, comics were cleared off the Guide to make way for the Comic Genesis wiki
August 1st STrRedWolf bans Jberserk
Aug 24th 2005: RKolter made Off Topic Mod. Toxic and DarkMagician passed over again.
Sept 3rd 2005: During the great Drunk Duck onslaught of '05, Mercury Hat is made Mod of GD amidst the confusion. Toxic never stood a chance, however, he is optimistic that he will receive Emmy consideration for his Susan Lucci impersonation.
Nov 8th 2005: STrRedWolf considers Toxic to be the semioffical oooo biscuits! Toxic is unsure of what this means.
Nov 28th 2005: Mercury Hat expands her reign to becoming second mod of TT&T.
Nov 30th 2005: Phactorri is made mod of Dropdowns and Crossovers.
Dec 9th 2005: Robin is made new mod of GD and Mercury Hat is made co-admin of the forum after STrRedWolf screws up an abuse investigation. STrRedWolf starts reducing his role on the forums.
Dec 29th 2005: STrRedWolf eyes Toxic for an important role on the CGWiki. Toxic is intrigued.
Jan 10th, 2006: The Keenime forum is bumped up out of Hosted Communities into the main section of the forum. This causes a bit of unrest in the community which requests it be put back in Hosted Communities. A compromise is reached by Kisai who tweaks the forum so that both the main and the Hosted Communities sections are unfolded on the index.
Jan 24th (aprox), 2006: STrRedWolf gives Toxic and Mercury Hat permission to become head editors of the CG Wiki, and unlock the front page (STrRedWolf and Kisai only have the admin privleges). This makes Toxic happy.
April (approx): Kisai stops Forum Games from adding to the postcounts.
August (approx): Postcounts disappear and along with them the ranks. Much hysteria ensues in the forums, but eventually it all settles down. Someone figures out the change was only on the default forum look.
Oct 23rd, 2006: Mercury Hat gets strict on signature sizes.
Dec 6th, 2006: Mooman sighting.
March 2007: The Neko defeats Mr.Bob to become the 3rd President of the General Discussion. He then disappears and is replaced by Keffria as de facto president.
Dec 15th, 2007: STrRedWolf announces a major forum renovation including either folding Off Topic into General Discussion, or renaming Off Topic GD and turning GD into a Comics Discussion forum. (As of April 2009, nothing has come of this.)
February 21/22, 2008: Kisai forces an upgrade of the Forums from PBB2 to PBB3 in hopes of ending a barrage of pornbots. Fear abounds amongst the community. Rioting and looting breaks out, President Neko returns and promptly blames Mr.Bob.
