What's Area 25?

[DarlinKell]

I saw it mentioned several times in Chris 62's thread about Ming. I wouldnt posted the question there but i thought it might be considered Thread Jacking?

[H Tower]

a long time ago... well probably not that long ago, but before i got here, one of the forums got shut down. at least that's what the mods and admins thought, all that happened was that it got taken off the main page. and a few of the more notorious posters found out it was still there. and since post counts counted there... Can you say spam? I don't know exactly who found it or who posted there. Anyways, they all ended up getting busted when Ming found out, something about Horse posting a link to it in the OT, at least that's what i got from the horses mouth when i asked him over at CivFanatics... he was probably just trying to get me (and others) riled though.

[faded glory]

I wondered that too......but how can you have an unused section of forum? I mean.....we could spam the Mac or TOT forums to hell.....like that? Kind of?


Where was this forum?

[DarlinKell]

well kinda reminds me of the old Sega msg boards..... when you make your own forum.. you moderated it and had a password for ppl to get into it....... there were no lists.... just other ppl had to know the name and the pw to get to the forum...... they redid the msg board and siad they got rid of them ...... but they didnt, they just kinda forgot about them and we used them all the time once we'd find out a pw to one of the old forums.

[ixnay]

I don't remember when this happened, but from what I've gathered, one of the forums became unused, but still in the database. All the forums have a url like this:

http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=31

And I suppose by putting in a 25 at the end for the forum ID, they managed to get in there.

[Wiglaf]

For the record, FG, spamming the mac forum is rather difficult. Mark gives it a regular sweep every so often, usually knocking off whatever asher posts, so you'd probably have a hard time getting anything done there...

[Gramphos]

Poly is full of surprices. I know about the double area 51.

[DarkCloud]

IT was not merely spam. There was pornography and other such things there.

Through use of the forum, some posters managed 30 to 40 posts a day for a time.

Over 30 were banned.

Snapcase discovered the forum... was up to 3000 or 4000 posts... then received a 50% pcr, I believe... Then changed his name and locked himself out of his login, and was forced to create a new login and has since then recovered his posts.

Andz83 was among the banned as were a multitude of others.

AH blew the whistle on the operation.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Snapcase discovered the forum... was up to 3000 or 4000 posts... then received a 50% pcr, I believe... Then changed his name and locked himself out of his login, and was forced to create a new login and has since then recovered his posts.

I know the story of Snapcase's DL (A Preserved Snapcase on Stage), but I didn't know it had to do with that forum, but more that it were related to that he used tochange his name now and the, and one they he made the name too long for UBB. However, that account works with vB (Snapcase tested it).

The date of is new account would bring down the discovery of area 25 to november 2000.

[DarlinKell]

hmmmmmmmm....... dont think i'd be a snitch....... and ifi were i'd be sure and not tell ppl it was me....hehehe

[H Tower]

i bet horse just wanted the attention, he will forever be remembered as the whistle blower.

[faded glory]

How can a forum like that Hide from the Mark????? Moreover..Porn? That would have been awesome had it still existed Is there an Archive of it?


Dam!

[Eli]

The forum was removed from the main page, but not closed for posting. So the mods couldnt see that new posts are posted there.

Someone discovered it using the method ixnay37 described, and the rumor spread. So we were pumping up our post counts for a while and then AH told to the mods and everyone got banned.
Luckily, I had only 400 posts at the time, and 33% PCR didnt matter much.

[Dauphin]

and since post counts counted there... Can you say spam?

At the time OT posts counted aswell.

....

There was also the "Case of the Communal DL" on that forum.

[Buck Birdseed]

Note that there are no empty "hidden" forums in vBulletin so don't even try to find them. I already did.

This was under the previous system, UBB. And although I take full "credit" for finding Area 25 (and the three other empty forums, 2, 8 and 30 IIRC), the, er, trick was discovered by someone at OWO, where it was possible to spam the classic "empty" forum. It was discovered on the eight of October, 2000, IIRC. It was a day after I left for Univeristy, so I missed the final chapter of the whole mess.

I don't think anyone except me used the communal login, "Ken Bregott". The "communal" bit was an afterthought, actually.