the more I read on ZD, the more I relize theres a lot of stuff that has happened in the past that newer members don't know about, that are important to what ZD is today. So I was wondering, any of the older members, is there anything significant that has happened while you were in the forums that you consider to be important to shaping the forums today?
some lil insignificant trivia, back 2019 and 2020 (maybe 2021), new members used to be announced by scrapper in the SB, and people would say welcome after it popped up
somewhere along the line it disappeared and I'm not sure when
another thing was that for the majority of my time here (2019-2022) the SB didn't have standard reactions like posts do, it just made a green +1 (+2 if two people reacted, +3 if three, you get the picture)
I joined the forums back in 2014 or something crazy like that but I didn't come back until 20...19 or so? Maybe 2018. Everyone assumed I was an alt
Nothing too crazy has happened since then but some people left, some people came back, some people say they'll leave then come back... pretty basic forum stuff
some lil insignificant trivia, back 2019 and 2020 (maybe 2021), new members used to be announced by scrapper in the SB, and people would say welcome after it popped up
somewhere along the line it disappeared and I'm not sure when
another thing was that for the majority of my time here (2019-2022) the SB didn't have standard reactions like posts do, it just made a green +1 (+2 if two people reacted, +3 if three, you get the picture)
Oh, I joined back in Jan 2010 and so much things happened. But much isn't relevant. I do remember when we lost a lot of post during some malfunction or something. And of course switches between new forums. Oh, and the infamous database errors!! Oh, those good old days
You used to be able to earn rupees here for thread making and posting and spending them in the ZD shop. I miss that feature as I found it encouraged thread making and activity.
I've been a member since late 2012 and active since early 2013. Back then we were an amalgamation of 4 different websites under the Dungeon Gaming Network banner, those being Zelda Dungeon, Pokemon Dungeon, Darksiders Dungeon (lol), and GenGame (General Gaming). There were dedicated forum sections for each. We used different forum software and had customizable username colours that we spent rupees on, which were earned by making posts and threads. There was also a proper blog section and an arcade. Profile Messages were not able to be commented on, meaning in order to respond to one you needed to write a message on that other person's profile, and go back and forth that way. So generally a profile was just a long string of messages by one person lol. In addition, profiles had customizable backgrounds and there was a gift system, which was little icons you could buy for people that showed up in their sidebar (beneath the awards).
I should talk about the shop more! On top of gifts for people and username appearance customization options, we could spend rupees to upload custom emojis (which led to one particular user uploading a freaking army of Dr. Who emojis) and, rather controversially, there was an item called "Stalker Goggles" which allowed the purchaser to see the online status of people who had that hidden. To see an example of username customization in the old shoutbox, click below!
There were far more user ranks back then. On top of the regular moderators and administrators, which had red and blue usernames respectively, there were at least 4 other ranks that had coloured usernames as far as I remember: Article Writers were yellow, and that was given out to users who had written articles for the ZD front page; Wiki Scribes were pink and that rank was given to people who were very active editors of the ZD Wiki; the remaining two colours were green for "Hylian Noble" and purple for "Hylian Knight". Hylian Nobles were effectively the "ZD Hall of Fame". It was a rank given to people handpicked by Mases (the site owner), usually former or current main site staff. The Hylian Knight rank was highly controversial, as it was given out based on a voting system to users who had supposedly been role models. It was controversial because the induction system was heavily flawed and a solid majority of the users in question were far from what most people would consider role models (not even joking lol). Apart from that, there were other ranks that didn't affect username colours which were Wiki Contributor, for people who regularly updated the wiki but not enough to be considered a Scribe; Event Staff, which was the previous name for Forum Volunteer (iirc Community Coordinator didn't exist yet); and Competition Leader, which was a rank given to people who hosted competitions like the Writing and Drawing competitions. There may have been more as well, but I don't really remember. At one point, there was a flaw in the code that allowed anybody to give themselves fake user rank banners, which led to some funny instances. Speaking of which, check the spoiler below to see what our old rank banners looked like!
During this time, one of the admins created a totally unhinged forum layout known as thebestzders. Click this spoiler to see what that looked like!
That same admin, before even becoming admin, discovered some exploits in the code and had some fun messing with everyone in the SB. This spoiler contains a few examples of that:
The forums changed software in 2015 to Xenforo, and it may have been around that time that the Pokemon, Darksiders, and GenGame brandings had been removed (I could be wrong, that may have happened earlier). We had 4 admins at the time, 2 of whom were brought on primarily for tech-related stuff and it was their idea to migrate the forums, which was a great idea in hindsight because the old software was severely outdated. Shortly after this came the era of THEBESTEMOTES.
Basically, picture thebestzders forum theme from above, but in emote form. It was absolute chaos and it was beautiful! The emotes were colourful, obnoxiously large, and many of them were animated. Pulsating was a common theme, as was glittering. Some of them could be triggered by typing normal words, which led to some hilarious moments (rip dek:unu:t).
And THEBESTEMOTES in action!
And this is when a new one was created but he forgot to remove the white space so this is what happened
Throughout 2015, there was a gradual increase of hostility between a couple different groups of members who had competing ideas of how the forums should be run. This escalated throughout the year to what later became known as the "Great ZD Civil War of 2015", which peaked somewhere around October of 2015. This led to mass staff resignations and bannings of many prominent members, myself included. Most of it was petty internet drama that really never should have occurred, but the resolution of which led to a significant improvement in the quality of staffing and general camaraderie all around. This was when Jimmu became the main admin and went on to be by far the best leader since I joined almost 12 years ago.
Later on, another significant event happened with the forum merge, when Mases purchased Zelda Informer and the websites merged into one. ZD became ZD-I (Zelda Dungeon-Informer). This happened, I wanna say, around late 2016/early 2017, I don't remember exactly. The Informer was later dropped from the official name and we became ZD again.
Late 2017 I had become one of the Community Coordinators here, before even Azure Sage held that title. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to help out behind the scenes because this forum was a second home to me for a very long time. I was, in fact, the one that officially invited Azure Sage to the role, who has become easily the longest running Community Coordinator we've had.
2018 was then a dark year for these forums. We had lost a prominent user who had been around for ages, and was one of the admins who helped migrate the forums to Xenforo, and also one of the closest friends I had ever had. His name was Jamie, and he took his own life on June 16, 2018. this event shook the community, but it was incredibly touching to see almost every active member come together in solidarity to remember and reflect on the life he led and the impact he had on these boards. Never before had I seen this community rise as one whole unit, it really was beautiful.
I can't speak much on what's happened since, because I've had many spurts of inactivity since then. All I can really say is that, for the most part, things here are peaceful and I really do feel at home here again! ZD has been a significant part of my life for the better part of 12 years and I've met some of my closest friends here! I've been around through several different eras, forum migrations, website merges, crossover events, had multiple tenures as a forum volunteer and one as a forum staff member, been involved in the community in many different ways, and even still today there are very active members who were around even before I joined!
If you want to know more ZD lore, some of the other "veterans" should be able to help out. I just mentioned all the significant events I could remember from my own time off the top of my head, but this forum does have a deep lore that even I would be very interested to learn more about!
Hope my incoherent rambling helps satisfy some of your curiosity!
