GameFAQs message boards |
The GameFAQs Message Boards are a set of message boards or forums hosted by GameFAQs, a popular video game website. Though the original purpose of the board system was to facilitate game discussion, a number of other board categories have been added since the boards first came online in November 1999.
=General Information=
The GameFAQs message boards are home to over 3 million unique registered users, and moderated by a staff of mostly volunteers. Membership is open to anyone who is at least 13 years of age and has a valid electronic mail address.
=User Levels=
Every board member is assigned a Board User Level that controls which boards and special features are available. Levels are gained by earning karma. Karma is a score similar to the post counting methods used by other boards, except only one karma point can be earned per day, with the exception of the karma boost. All a user has to do to receive the point is login at some point during the day.
Levels
=Moderators & Administrators=
The moderators delete messages and topics that break the #ToS. These are all the current moderators:
====New Moderators (Level 50)====
AP33ME, Master LL, Tigereye, Deathgod, Jarek, Alucard188, CNash, Atom Edge, Jerec, wmac152, Zhuge Liang, AstralFire, GValko, LordOfDabu, Xenoserphia, SineNomine, dcow366, Asterax, CrystalMoon (Ail), A I e x, War Doc, Kaas, Cat Nip, Proctodynia
====General and Specialist Moderators (Level 51, 52)====
aarrgus, Absinthe Martini, ACA, AEtherSPOON, Asterax, Bastard Knight, Bishounen no Miko, bruplex, ChiZPoof, cold blue steel, ColdFusion, CrimsonScythe, CyricZ, DanKirby, Darth Maul, Deathjester, Devin Morgan, dreen, dyse, enalzi, Fencedude, ff7bigfan, GalFord, Garibaldi, Gelgoog IX, genie, goople, iamnothing, Iridium128, j00, javence, jesterguy, Kaboobi, KatThePoet, Kildread2, Kimari Lonzo, Larcen Tyler, Math Murderer, Mmeeva, Mr Bump, MrMoogle, OmniMirror, Oooska, Orochi Jin, paragon, pastaman44, Quistis, red13n, replicant, reversefigure4, Robbobloke, ruyeyama, Rydain, sakuraix, Scottie theNerd, seifer psx, ShadowStalker, Shale0, Shdwwrym, Silverfist, Solo, SPENCERNAMAN, Starky27, Terii senshi, TheMissingLink1186, tiger8191, Vargas, wally, WFEATHER, whiz kid, Wolfshade, WrestlingRPGfan
====Lead Mods (Level 53)====
Sashanan, RaptorLC, Crono LV99, Devin Morgan
====Administrators (Level 60)====
CJayC The Axe of Bannation , BethanyM, Sailor Bacon, Shadotak, jsd
====Data Administrators (Level 70)====
sbritton oh shi
=Game Boards and System Boards=
Every game in the GameFAQs database has a message board for game discussion. With the exception of a few older systems, topicality on these boards is strictly enforced. Popular games may have additional boards for social (non-topical) posts, trades, or other matters pertaining to that game.
In addition to games, each system on GameFAQs has a board for discussing the hardware, upcoming games, and other topics not specific to one particular game.
=Special Boards=
*The beta boards were created when the message boards of GameFAQs and GameSpot were merged and GameFAQs was switched to PHP from Active Server Pages. They include three boards: GameFAQs Forums Beta Discussion, GameFAQs Forums Beta Bug Reports, and GS-GFQs Sharing Test Board. Although they are no longer needed, they have not been removed and some people still post on them.
*Regional boards are boards where gamers can chat with people in their own region as well as the world. All the regional boards are created on March 2002. As of September 2005, The top three most active boards based on the number of posts and topics are the United Kingdom, the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) board, and the Brazil boards. The UK and ANZ board have expanded off-site such as a mailing list for the UK board, tournaments, and role playing on the ANZ board as well as their own chat channel. The Singapore board was used to be the most active in 2002 and 2003 though. Sadly, some of which had migrated to a splinter board called SGSB2.
*810–819 Boards were created a few days after April Fool s Day. Originally, CJayC posted on the Icon board about making private boards for the first few icons that signed up. Many thought it was an April Fool s joke until the boards were actually created. The few people that received these boards were also allowed to name them. So far, the ones that have been named are: 810 (Mostly Harmless), 811 (SEW), 813 (Unnatural Selection), 814 (The Upper Room), 816 (#showarr), 818 (KGB) and 819 (CE Reloaded) In order to access these boards, the founders must send an invite.
*Board 820(Hacked) is a private board the same as the boards from 810-819 but it was created as a reward for a user who found a major bug in the message boards.
*Dead Boards are game boards where off-topic posting is allowed. This is generally because the systems the games belong to are so antiquated and obsolete that very little genuine discussion would otherwise take place on them. Many GameFAQs users have adopted some of these boards for their own use. The accepted capital of the dead boards is Zamzara, which also houses the weekly Top 50 Secret Boards list. The largest dead boards at this time include Bushido, Moon Cradle, and Captain Goodnight. Some dead boards of note include:
*Destroyed Boards are game boards where so much spam had occured (at what was supposed to be a game board) that they were destroyed by the administrators. That is, no one can post in them any longer; visit the board and the normal options at the top of a board s page will be gone. Only two are widely known:
Oftentimes a single Board Hunter & Wander Inn topic will be posted in random boards, with the usual suspect poster Red Maw offering Free food and lodgings, enjoy your stay.
=Special Interest Boards=
*Special Interest Boards are boards similar to game boards, but about any one of various topics that GameFAQs users have petitioned the administration to create. These are not social boards; all topics have to match the boards description or risk moderation. Special Interest boards include: **Arts: book, Music, Poetry, and RPGs (including paper and pencil) **Design: Cartoon and Animation, computer graphics, Game Design and Programming, Web Cartoons and Design, and Web Design and Programming **Games: Card Games and Classic Gaming **Popular shows: Dragon Ball , James Bond , Harry Potter , Pokémon , The Simpsons , Star Trek , and Star Wars . **Sports: martial art, professional wrestling, and Sports **Television: Adult Swim, Anime, Television, and film **Video Games: Next Generation Gaming discussion and Square Enix) **Misc: Paranormal & Conspiracy
=Site Boards=
These are boards created to allow users to discuss matters relating to GameFAQs and its message boards.
*Message Board Announcements is where administrators post general notices and warnings for the entire community. It was originally an open board (only admins can start topics but anyone may reply), but it was mostly filled with first post and other silliness. In early 2005, it was changed so that only administrators can post there.
*Message Board Help (MBH) is the unofficial complaint forum of the boards; if a user feels that something is wrong with the moderation system or staff, or suspects that a board error may have occurred, it is usually reported here. It is also used to ask questions about board features. This board was originally known as the Questions and Suggestions until the Karma system was introduced; after that, all suggestions and petitions have gone to Site Suggestions. MBH is still often used as a complaints forum, despite recent ground rules to discourage this. New users that ask questions readily available in the ToS are often ridiculed by the users that frequent the board.
*Poll of the Day (PotD) is another social board, similar to LUE, although the topics there are not usually as vulgar or bizarre. Topicality was eliminated from the board in the summer of 2002 and the poll is seldom discussed now. Topic content is generally completely random and polls are fairly scarce. Women and love are commonly discussed topics.
*Review Contributors is the board for all the review writers to talk about common interests. This board has been split to better categorize the discussions on it. It is now composed out of three boards: General, Help and Critiques, and Social.
*Site Suggestions is the official petitioning board, though very few ever pass. Successful petitions are usually for new special interest or social boards; rarely, a new feature may be added to the site itself.
*Summer Contest is a board for the annual Summer Character Contest, a huge event at GameFAQs, where the Poll of the Day is replaced by a video game character tournament. This board has evolved separately from the others since it opened in , due to his annual failures in the Summer Contests, is widely accepted as the board s favourite target for ridicule and has lead to the saying GFNW , which stands for Gordon Freeman Never Wins .
*The Daily Grind is a board that Sailor Bacon (a board administrator) was meant to blog about his time at E3 2005 however it was never posted on, and to this day has not been posted on. Only administrators can create topics.
=Secret Boards=
Secret Boards are a series of fourteen known message boards that are hard to find because users must manually type the board number in the address bar; they are not linked to by anywhere on the site. A fifteenth secret board ( Zen ) is rumored, but it has not been confirmed or denied by CJayC or leaked to the general public. The board probably does not exist; it is worth noting, however, that Toaster Oven was rumored for years before being created during April Fool s Day 2004. The War on Terror board is not a secret board per se, as it was until recently listed normally. Secret Boards are:
#Brilliant (-1) #Nine (9) #Board 250 (250) #Eggbeater (486) #Spork (542) #Spatula (622) #Semprini (709) #Angela (8535937) #Jenny (8675309) #Lame (20040401) #Rnd() (123456789) #Pie (314159265) #Toaster Oven (909090909) #War On Terror (408)
Special Social Boards (also called Series Boards) are very much like the Secret Boards, because the links to these boards have been removed from the board list. On these boards, discussions related to an individual video game series can be discussed at great length, but because they are social boards, topicality is not enforced. Because the links to these boards no longer exist, the number of posts on these boards has slowly decreased, and some users have petitioned CJayC to re-link these boards. Special Social Boards are:
#Capcom vs SNK (504) #Digimon (510) #Mario (556) #Mega Man (527) #Metroid (578) #Pokemon (534) #Resident Evil (551) #Sonic (569) #Three Kingdoms (570) #WWE (546) #Yu-Gi-Oh (557) #Zelda (548)
LUE is Life, the Universe, and Everything, a rather infamous board. It is secret, private, and sealed, the only board like it on GameFAQs. By order of the administrator, no new members are accepted.
=ToS=
The gamefaqs ToS is a list of rules the user must agree to in order to register at the GameFAQs message boards. For full ToS go to the GameFAQs website [http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/tos.php]
=Jargon=
This is a short list of Internet slang used largely on GameFAQs message boards.
*313 - Name most commonly used to describe the United Kingdom Regional Message Board. *313er - Someone who claims to be part of the United Kingdom Regional Message Board. *4AW-means four always wins. *4chan memes - Many memes from the Imageboard 4chan are borrowed by GameFAQs posters. *ANZer - Someone who claims to be part of the Australia and New Zealand Regional Message Board. *Autoflagged word - Words in posts that have been abused but still have legitimate means. Autoflagged words are not allowed in topic titles. A post with an autoflagged word that is marked by someone is given higher priority for moderation. *B& / B7 - Another term used in the same way as Banninated. B& is pronounced banned. B7 is used as a joke because 7 is the key which the character & appears on when shift is held. *Banninate - Term frequently posted when a user posts a message which contains a major ToS violation that normally leads to being banned from the website. The phrase is a play on of the word burninate which originated from Homestar Runner with the character Trogdor the Burninator. *BALEETED or BAL33T3D - A joke term to signify a post that will surely be moderated (another Homestar Runner reference). *Board Hunting (or Secret Board Hunting) - Going through dead systems (such as Commodore 64, Atari 2600, Amiga, etc.) and posting in threads on the game boards. More info can be found in the Secret Board Hunting FAQ, found in the [GameFAQs#External links|External Links] section. *Captain Planet - A popular fad is summoning Captain Planet , the title character of Captain Planet and the Planeteers , by means of multiple members duplicating the sequence by which the superhero as summoned in the cartoon. The first post is Earth , the second Fire , the third Wind , the fourth Water , and the fifth Heart . The sixth poster says By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet! and posts an ASCII art of Captain Planet. As LUEshi once was at the height of its popularity, summoning Captain Planet is currently forbidden and results in a Karma-loss moderation. *Censored Artist - A nickname, on boards where Final Fantasy is frequently discussed, for Yoshitaka Amano, due to the GameFAQs auto-censor registering shit in his name as a banned word. The auto-censor has since been adjusted to ignore the name Yoshitaka, and the nickname has fallen into disuse. *CEer - A term to describe a person who goes to CE (Current Events board) regularly, sometimes called CEmen. *Evil Republicans - A popular club on the War on Terrorism board, consisting of politically conservative users. Attempts to create competing liberal and libertarian clubs have ended in failure. *Forbidden - A somewhat overused word to describe everything on LUE, as it was when the new moderators were chosen. *GFNW (Gordon Freeman Never Wins) - An increasingly popular running gag on the Summer Contest Board (Board 8), referring to the character Gordon Freeman and his seemingly inevitable first-round elimination from each Contest. *Hacker- A member of the Hacked board (Board 820). *ITT (Ignore This Topic) - A term originating on the War on Terrorism board, as a response to topics perceived by users as Internet troll. Ironically, as any post in a topic moves it to the top of the board, posting ITT increases the likelihood of people reading it rather than ignoring it. *KOS (Kill on Sight) - Although rare, this is the worst punishment one can receive on GameFAQs. It is given to those with past violations on multiple accounts. Any new accounts of those who have been KOSed are suspended on sight by moderators, without question. KOS orders peaked in the 2002-2003 period. *LUEicide/LUEcide - Term used for account suicide (intentionally violating as many rules as possible in order to be banned) by a LUEser. It was popularized on March 4, 2003, when the infamous Black LUEsday occurred. Both LUEicide and LUEcide were autoflagged for awhile in an attempt to keep people from account suiciding, with the message Bad idea. *LUEsers - Describes people who go to and frequent LUE. It is pronounced loser , an intentional pun. *LUEshi - An ASCII art of Mario riding Yoshi created by the user Patamon. LUEshi quickly became one of the largest fads on GameFAQs, and posting it outside of designated ASCII topics was considered a serious TOS violation. It epitomized disobedience and defiance and punishments went from lenient to harsh. As of now, it is considered as regular ASCII and thus moderated only when disruptive (i.e. not in ASCII topics). *Meta Mod - A now obsolete feature which allowed users with 40+ Karma to rate the fairness of moderations. It was abandoned due in large part to some users rating all moderations, no matter how obviously justified, as unfair. *MIASU (Mark it and shut up) - Polite Message Board Help (MBH) users asked users to wait 24 hours after marking a message to complain; less polite members bluntly told them to MIASU (Mark it and Shut Up). It grew in popularity, but is now moderated for trolling (inciting flames). *Mod Baiting - Purposely attracting a moderator s attention, either by posting an autoflagged word (which, despite popular belief, is not automatically marked) or posting a topic implying that one is underage (i.e. Topic: I am 12 / Message: hundred years old) *Notification - A minor moderation that results in the loss of three karma. *O RLY - A sarcastic owl. *PotDer - A user who regularly posts on Poll of the Day. Nobody really knows the pronunciation (though spelling it out P-O-T-D-er or pronouncing it like Potter are the two most generally accepted). *Purgatory - A term used for the temporary suspension of users whose Terms of Service violations are not quite severe enough to warrant banning. *Purge - The regular deleting of topics that have not been posted in for a time determined by the number of posts on a board. Also used to mean purgatory in some cases, however in this case Purg is the more common spelling. *RIer - Name given to users who frequent Random Insanity. Can be pronounced either Are-Eye-er or Ryer. The alternative, RItard , has been suggested at times, but is frowned upon by the moderators. *Roffles / Roffle my waffles - A phonetic equivalent to the term ROFL (rolling on floor laughing). The waffles comment is sometimes added for humor. *Shiz - One of the more infamous banned words, because nobody really understands why it s banned. No one actually uses shiz as a substitute for shit , so the main result of it being banned is that a few anime characters names (such as Shizuka Kawai from Yu-Gi-Oh! and YuYu Hakusho#Characters from YuYu Hakusho ) can t be posted. *STEALTH PORN - The act of posting a Tos friendly picture, usually with a number like, www.Yahoo.com/luepics/cute girl1 and then by changing the number after the picture a user can link to porn for people to see and not be moderated for it. *Tagging - The act of posting tag as a reply to a topic. This is done so the user can keep track of the topic through My Posts function. Now considerably less common due to a less intrusive version included in GameFOX. *TOaster - A term to describe a person who frequents the Toaster Oven Board. *Usermap - A listing of the accounts which have been used to log into the site via a certain computer IP address, which supposedly records logins from up to 60 days before the current date. (Translation - it takes 60 days from the date of a login being recorded to the login being purged from the usermap.) Specific information about usermaps (such as the specific IP addresses and the accounts on a usermap) are restricted, and considered mod-only information. The information above is one of the only things that moderators are allowed to divulge to non-moderators, along with the warning that logging into the site from a public computer (ex. computer at school, computer at an internet cafe, etc.) means that you run the risk of losing your account if another user logs in on that computer and violates the TOS, resulting in a usermap axe. *Usermap Axe (or Axed ) - A severe administrative response to a problematic user wherein an account is banned, as are any account(s) of any user(s) whose IP has logged into the former account. *UUA (or Underage User Alert ) - Used in response to somebody who either admits to being under the age of 13 (and thus unable to have an account due to the Children s Online Privacy Protection Act), or (in jest) to somebody who posts something considered so inane that only an underage user could have posted it. *WoTer- A frequent visitor to the War on Terrorism board. The most common pronunciation rhymes with water.
=Links=
*[http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/ The GameFAQs message boards] *[http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/tos.php The GameFAQs Terms of Service (ToS)] *[http://www.ksot.com/ Secondary Board FAQ] *[http://www.wiki.earthfirewindwaterheartgoplanetbyyourpowerscombinedimcaptainpla.net LUEpedia]|
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