Today’s prompt from Long and Short reviews is, “Websites we wish still existed”. The first thing that comes to mind is the old 3DO forums: 3DO was a game-publishing company that did several very different series, including the Army Men games and Heroes of Might and Magic. Their forums, which were the first I ever tried, had a ranking system based on your post count — but, the expressed rank was different depending on the “class” you registered as. I registered there as a fan of the Army Men games, so our titles were military ranks and job duties: we’d appear as Smellincoffee the Rifelman (yes, they really misspelled it), or Sarge506 the Tank Driver. The ranks had a steep progressive curve, so it was easy to be promoted from “Puddle of Warm Goo” to “Recruit”, but it would take ages to move from Brigadier to Major General. (Er, Army Men is a series in which the rival armies are plastic. The games took this premise seriously to varying degrees. Most were straight-up WW2-esque games but others had fun with it.) Someone who registered in the Might and Magic class, though, would have completely different, but still escalating, ranks. I can’t remember what they used but it was probably stuff like “goblin123 the Halfling” and “josecanseco the Orc Slayer”. Only one person, General Plastico, ever made 100 as far as I know. (We Army Men people were so proud it was one of us and not one of those Might and Magic people who made it first.)
One popular board was the Halfway House, which opened at level 50: it was a major moment to get access there, since the discussions were a lot more serious. When I came home on 9/11, the Halfway House was the first place I looked for information. It was tremendously creative and, so far as I know, unique to us: the 3DO forums had a genuine sense of ‘we’re special’, with one user creating a website to chronicle members and stories gone by. (It was called The Codex but I have never been able to find it in the wayback machine.) I was particularly invested in it: I had a monopoly on the Captain Blade display photo, and designated myself the Army Men: Air Tactics expert, complete with a Homestead website with mission guides. When 3DO switched to generic forum software, a lot of old hands left — though some of us persisted, even after 3DO closed its forums permanently and we wound up regrouping on another user (Sarge506)’s private forum. I would love to see even just a screenshot of the old 3DO boards: it was my internet “home” for many years, and even today I’m facebook friends with several people from The 3DO Days. (The first time I ever shared photos or talked on a mic to People On the Internet involved faith130 and Sarge506…3DO peeps.)
WHAT have you finished reading recently? Woodrow Wilson, . I wanted to go ahead and get him out of the way before the year’s second half begins.
WHAT are you reading now? The Power and the Dream, about the relationship between RFK and MLK. I’m also listening to an audiobook called The Hidden Coalition, about the sub rosa dealings of Eisenhower and LBJ to work together.
WHAT are you reading next? I should really read faith130’s Rupture since I was just waxing nostalgic about the 3DO days.
Reading Freely 
Those types of online communities were so important and while there are certainly online communities today, I think the expansion of the Internet, or rather the number of users over the years, have diluted the quality of them.
Oh, definitely. Back then some manner of competence was required to get online, whereas today anyone with a cellphone will be online and insist they aren’t. (I have patrons every single day who tell me they don’t have an email address, but then the Gmail app on their phone is obviously in use.) It was also more fun before ….all the rules, frankly. Flaming was obnoxious but it was more fun to be on boards with human personality rather than the ironed-out places like reddit.
I agree wholeheartedly!
Ahhh, back when having options online, wasn’t an option 😉
I think there are too many options now, in terms of creating a sense of community. People can find a website/platform for their niche and stay there like a tick and never need to go elsewhere. OR they leave at the drop of a hat because User BS said that coffee was only good black. Either way, “online community” is a lot smaller these days if you want more than reddit style machine gun opinions 😀
That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it, hahahahaa.
Those rankings sound cool.
I used to hang out on a message board that had rankings, too, but it was the same for everyone in the sense that A number of posts there would give you a B ranking and X number of posts there would give you Y ranking.