Mario Fan Games Galaxy Forums

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Revision as of 20:26, 4 February 2012 by VinnyVideo (talk | contribs) (Red link fixed)
The logo of the MFGG forums during the EZBoard era. Thunder Dragon, Nite Shadow, Fireball3k, Supertoad2k and Yoshiman can be seen in the background as they were the current moderators of the time. Also present is the Confused ShyGuy - one of MFGG's "mascots".

The Mario Fan Games Galaxy Forums (MFGG forums, or just forums) comprise the hub of MFGG's communication and public opinion, particularly on matters dealing with fangames and current events. They may also discuss topics, or lacks thereof, that bear no relevance to the foundation of the main site. It is generally agreed that the community of the site and forums are entirely separate, despite sharing the same name.

History

The MFGG forums started out as a simple guestbook on Thunder Dragon's Bowser Technologies website. This feature was eventually replaced with an EZBoard, marking the first incarnation of the MFGG forums. When Bowser Tech was replaced with MFGG on the 16th July 2001, so were the forums.

February 2003 marked the opening of the VBulletin forums, completely replacing the EZBoard for a number of reasons. This version of the forums was hosted by Spitfire, who, in October of the same year decided to stop hosting the forums due to them being hosted on an illegal copy of the VBulletin software. The forums were then moved to Retriever II's Penguinia and upgraded to Invision.

MFGG was eventually moved to Retriever II's new server, Taloncrossing, due to the amount of bandwidth needed to run the forums, however all information was carried over.

The forums have also received a number of modifications over the years such as a Custom Word Filter and Badges.

Community

The community of the MFGG forums is a fragile weaving of silly and serious members alike. They are arguably rather stupid as a whole, but undeniably much better off than most users of the main site which, at least before The Split is agreed to be a separate community.

Over the years, the forum members have melded together in a sort of unofficial family. The members can poke fun at each other, sometimes without injury, and often share secrets or problems that would best be left off of the internet.

The members have breathed personality into the forums, making it a message board experience... like no other, shall we say. Historically the MFGG forums are much more liberal than most other forums, and the morality, as well as sense of humor, is entirely different. There is the usual plethora of rancid, overused, ruined inside jokes, generally only intelligible to the community. Some jokes, fads, or memes include the arrival of Blaine the Train, Delccordion, and the controversial SoVeryHappy.

As time went on, many felt the quality of the community was gradually deteriorating. Several of the staff members favored stricter moderation or an increased emphasis on making fangames, but these efforts did little to reverse MFGG's decline, and the tendency toward a more autocratic structure probably only aggravated drama and hostility.

After the failure of the original phpBB boards, the MFGG forums ended up splitting in two at the end of 2010, with most of the "community" things, like discussion about commercial games and non-game art, going to a new board called Minus World, while the new MFGG forums (often referred to as "New MFGG," "Real MFGG," or MFGG 5.5) kept the vast majority of discussion directly related to making fangames and indie games, from game topics themselves to sprites and music useful for making games. Minus World, while hosted on the same server as MFGG and comprised of almost exclusively members from the old MFGG forums, has generally tried to develop its own identity separate from MFGG, with varying success. The new MFGG forums are much more fangame-oriented than previous times (with the possible exception of the very early years), and while most of the old problems have faded away, the new forums aren't nearly as active as they once were. Even still, however, the new forums have some capacity for having fun and goofing off, and a feeling of community still exists.

Fads

Main article: Fad

Like most forums, the community contains its share of memes (or fads) and is prone to arguments over idiotic and trivial things.

As there is an article on this already, only important or prevalent memes are listed.

New PHPBB ("MFGG 5.5" Structure)

 Stub.png This article or section is in need of expansion.

Please add further information.


Old PHPBB3 Structure

Staff Section*

MFGG

General

  • General Chat, for general discussion, as long as it has value.
  • Arts Board, for graphical, musical, or literal arts, or the discussion of art in general.
    • Doodles, for showing one's own artwork and sketches made just for laughs.
  • The Gaming Corner, for video game discussion.
  • Help Forum, for help on almost anything.

The Dungeon

IPB Structure

The IPB forum structure of MFGG is as follows:

Staff Section*

MFGG

General

  • General Chat, for general discussion, as long as it has value.
  • Arts Board, for graphical, musical, or literal arts, or the discussion of art in general.
  • Wifi and Online Gaming, for discussion of video games that can be played online.
  • Help Forum, for help on almost anything.

The Dungeon

Old IPB Structure

This was essentially the way MFGG was structured before the 21st of June 2007 and since the Invision forum was installed.

Staff Section*

General

Fun Stuff

Submissions

Archives

Obselete or deleted sections


*The forums in Staff-Only are not entirely known

In previous versions of MFGG, such as the EZBoard and vBulletin, the order of forums was different, but this has changed over time. Many of the forums have suffered name changes, such as during an April Fool's Prank, or because of an administrator's boredom. This generally affected the PPP more than the others.

See Also