DarkCloud: Surely ye jest ;)  Certainly, yes, I do have several works in progress that may take forever and likely will. Namely, Apolyton the Book and The Apolyton 100. I truly doubt that either will be complete.
Apolyton the Book is remarkably sparse on information about ye old days of Apolyton (1998,1999,early 2000) however, DanQ's interview filled some of that for me, and in a later edition I may update.  I could interview some posters, but I don't know the questions to ask. If I wasn't lazy I could probably pry a lot out of Imran and fjxorc (AKA Forks n' Freerunner), but I don't think they want me to bother them too much ;)
As for The Apolyton 100: The only way I can finish that one completely is if I search all the old OT archives for information and spend hundreds of hours reading threads, etc. to determine information about posters.  In addition, I don't visit the OT as much as I used to, so I am sadly sketchy on recent happenings.
In addition, the Apolyton 100 keeps expanding. The last time I updated, I think it was up to 120 posters, all with full histories, and took up about 200 KB of information on my computer.

Solver: How did you come to Apolyton? You should have answered this already :).

DarkCloud: Well, lets see.
I first visited Dan's Ultimate Civilization Site in 1998 looking for scenarios, and surely, they had hundreds, if not thousands. I downloaded a few, and visited the First Greek Civ Site once, then ceased my accesses to the internet for a time. So, you could say that I first visited Apolyton in 1998.
Then, I wandered into apolyton in august 1999 glanced around, couldn't find any scenarios and left... Unwittingly In that period of time, I frequently visited the hosted sites... Then, in May 2000, I visited the forums because I had heard about the list, but for some strange reason I thought that I had to register to view the threads...
Maybe I did and maybe I didn't, but at the time, I had no wish to register for any forums and sadly, did not discover the list or the writing of the list, despite visiting the forums' main page.
Then, in July 2000 I discovered Sidgames after purchasing Alpha Centauri and registered on their forums, searching for Alpha Centauri help, etc. Due to the low amount of traffic on their site's SMAC section, I searched for other forum and rediscovered Apolyton, then registered on the 27th of July (1 day after Apolyton's 2nd birthday), and began posting in the CIV III-IDEAS section and AC sections.

DarkCloud: Hmm... Top Apolyton moments

The day of Banana's Primordial Beginnings- Pollgate... Spamgate- Many people received 1 day bans, a few received 2 day bans- I decided to get into the festivities without becoming banned- starting a thread on increasing the number of poll options, with a poll of course ;)
Well, the thread seemingly worked- as we now have 24 or so poll options as opposed to our original 10... Increased from the 16 created after Civ III was released (so that we could have threads with all the civ's in the polls-thus not offending anyone's civilizations)

Even though it wasn't fun at the time, I found my little quarrel with Ming around Christmas 2000 of interest. After he closed Apolyton: The Book or The Apolyton 100 in the OT because I left several empty posts; (to be filled later) and people began to spam the thread.
However, I was working on filling it; then edited it and put in the data- only to find it closed! I was full of venom after the incident and started a thread in the Community Section something along the lines of:
"Ming!!!!!" and wrote inside it a little poem to the song of "The Grinch Stole Christmas."
Ming was quite annoyed.
However we eventually worked out the misunderstanding and the thread went up several days later in both the OT and Community sections; full of information.
And we quickly made up.

Another of my favorite thread days was the days surrounding Provost Harrison's Guild of Emperors in which spoof threads- Cacaphony of Kings (or was it Court?), Concert of Chieftans, Settlement of Settlers, War-Council of Warlords, Palace of Princes, etc. were instituted.

And, just so that you don't think all the best things of Apolyton happened in the Olden Days- another of my favorites was the day I came back and found the D&D rankings in place next to my posts.
My first thought upon seeing them was "What the heck are those?"
That question was not easily answered.
The next day I found my answer after reading 8 pages of material... and THEN the ratings were changed into Civ-Unit stats and moved to the profile.
That particular day, I spent about twenty minutes wondering, "Where did the D&D stats go?" then I visited the requisite thread and found out the truth.
 

DarkCloud: Top 'poly threads

DarkCloud: My favorite thread in the OT- The Apolyton Army version I. (Discussed Earlier)
and the little story I tried running with Sirotnikov where every OT civver recieved a political party and debated in a world arena.
(Thanks to Ming and the OT's story policy, it lasted 2 days in the OT, receiving 30 or so interested posts from people... then was moved to the Stories/Diplomacy forum where it died a needless, senseless and horrible death of rot and misuse, being insulted and made fun of by the Diplo gamers, RUFFHAUS8 and company...
Stories don't last long in the diplo forums... I don't hold it against Ming though, he was just doing his job...) [However, if my name happened to be Ming, I would be afraid to turn my back because... one of these days- WHAM! BOOM! STRAIGHT TO THE MOON!... ah, on second thought, ignore that, I have said too much...]

DarkCloud: DL's that I have

DarkCloud: None that I know of at Apolyton- although I have run one at Newsmax and CGN for a time.
At Newsmax I created the DL to expose the Newsmaxians idiocy and racism... It was exposed sufficiently to me, yes, but to the Newsmaxians- they were oblivious- it was quite embarrassing, so I gave it up after a time.
And, once at CGN, I was feeling in a frivolous mood and decided to create a DL. (Note: this was BEFORE I became a moderator at CGN)  That particular DL has taken on a life of his own, appearing at FreeFireZone and elsewhere, including the aforementioned NewsMax, and, in fact, at FreeFireZone, has a few DL's of his own.
He also happens to have his own instant messenger ID.

Now, If you want to talk about being ACCUSED of being a DL...
In my first thread in the OT someone accused me of being connorkimbro's DL because of a triple post and his mocking post below that one....
Then, around November 2000, Darkstar at FFZ Private Messaged me to ask me if I was MarkG's DL since in his eyes, I seemed to know too much of what Mark was thinking to be anything other than a DL.

Although Finally, I should admit to being Giant_Squid's most prominent DL. (My DLishness is quite obvious if you can remember his "City of Clouds" scenario :D)

Solver: Forum moderation - Apolyton vs. CFC vs. CGN vs. FFZ - which is the best?

DarkCloud: Forum Moderation, hmm... At times Ming and Apolyton are a bit too strict and too ready to weild the closing or deletion axe on threads, and the current policy of moving all Stories threads out of the OT and into the horrible cesspit that is the Demo/Stories section is a horrid one. (No offense to orange, RUFFHAUS8 and the other demo-gamers, of course. ;))
However, I think that Ming, Mark, Dan, etc. have to deal with a lot of trash on the forums. Ming has done right to close many of the threads he does, I suppose it's a small price to pay for some humor threads to die. Perhaps if he eased up a bit I could give the moderation an A+, however, I think I'm forced to give it a B+ as it could be better.
Nevertheless, the Moderation team does a whole lot of work, and views myriad threads. If you look at the OT long enough, you'll notice some of the hate threads and disgusting threads which Ming manages to catch, and you might begin to appreciate some of his efforts.

CivFanatics, hmm... I spent some time there, and I will say that Chris62 seemed like a fair off-topic moderator, not too harsh and not too lenient, just about the right sort of moderator. However, as I only posted there about one or two months, I'm not really an authority on their moderating.

CivGamingNetwork- it used to be better in the old days (when I was OT mod, of course ;)) orange and myself quashed all the spam and frivolity that forum bug Tim Vincent [Forum Bug: Definition: A poster who spams notoriously (See ProvostB)] and ZuluElephant tried to pull. However, the zero-tolerance level had a backlash or two, driving off valued posters such as FastEddie and the spammers (who, when they weren't spamming were quite interesting posters), but the spam had to stop. Nowadays, CGN is one of the most lenient places for posting, I believe, although ColonyPod does (or at least used to) control the Civ-forums with an iron hand, consolidating double threads, etc. which is admirable work, but a bit annoying.
CivGamingNetwork does good to promote the "small rural town community feeling" and so... I suppose I will give CGN about a B or B- on moderation.

FreeFireZone- I take back the 'leniency' comments about CGN- FFZ was a true spam heaven, and it was amazingly fun under MichaeltheGreat's leadership (he allowed multiple accounts) Although, once or twice it got out of hand with porno threads, tasteless threads, etc, MtG eventually managed to quash all the disgusting frivolity.
Now under MBloomIII, I can't really say anything about moderating as all the posters have moved on to Counterglow, and the site is now a football (soccer) site. But, considering their moderating policy in the old days, I think I'll give it a B... Too many 'things' got through, but the atmosphere was one of general fun.


 

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