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| SD History; It's back! | |
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| Topic Started: Nov 30 2009, 11:53 PM (253 Views) | |
| Tru7h | Nov 30 2009, 11:53 PM Post #1 |
 
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This thread's been missing for some time now, and thanks to a suggestion by Hobbies230, it's being recreated! This is a work in progress, and will remain as such; if you have anything that I've missed, post it and I'll put it in! The Spartan Dominion forums have been around for quite a long time (just over five years at the time of posting). Not many of our new members are aware that SD actually started as a group on bungie.net and not an InvisionFree forum; the group (chapter) itself was founded on November 7, 2004 (my username when I created it was dylan90). Back then, newly-created chapters usually took a long time before they picked up any kind of activity, accumulating roughly 2 or 3 members a week for some time. For whatever reason, SD was an exception to this rule; in only a couple of weeks, we had acquired over 500 members and had appointed 8 moderators to watch over things. Because of the incredible amount of interest from the Halo community, we decided it was wise to remove ourselves from the limitations of bungie.net, and create our own independent forum on the InvisionFree (now ZetaBoards) servers. Less than three weeks after the founding of the original chapter, the forum here was created on November 26, 2004. The new forum's second member was tHeMoRoN, and the third was ironman, who was in fact a moderator of the original chapter and remains a very important member of the current staff team. Things took off quickly from there. We were getting a number of new registrations every day, despite the presence of our original (truly revolting) black-and-bright-green skin. (If anyone has screenshots of the original skin, let me know so I can include them here.) Near the end of 2004, we decided to start some outside projects to boost activity-- create a directory site, gain affiliates, advertise on bungie.net, etc.-- and later on, the IRC channel and SD Bot. Countless people (far too many to thank) helped with the promotion and growth of our community, and it's because of the collective effort we got where we are today; I could never have pulled any of this off without the support of such a strong and helpful community. While I can't go into detail about everybody who helped SD become popular, I will mention the story of J4kk; some of our older members probably still remember him. He joined SD on June 26, 2005 in response to a PM I sent him on bungie. I noticed from the beginning that he was ridiculously active on the site, given the number of posts he had in his first week here. I decided that if he remained active, I'd make him a mod. Turns out that not only did he remain active, but he recruited new members and motivated our current members to stay. Not to mention the countless number of ideas he had to improve the site. It wasn't long before he became our Assistant Overlord, then took over SPARTAN Ultra's position as Co-Overlord. Although J4kk unfortunately hasn't been able to participate in the community for some time, he still remains the member with the 4th most posts out of all members on the site, showing just how active he was. For most of the time he was here he had far exceeded my own post count, averaging somewhere around five posts per day since his join date. A running tradition on SD is to play some (not-too-mean) pranks on our members on the 1st of April. I can't remember all of them, but perhaps the most epic was the Achronos one. For those who weren't around, here's how it went: myself and J4kk created a new member account called Achronos, which is the username of the admin of bungie.net (the account we created still exists here; note the characteristic post count of 666). We then proceeded to give this new user full admin privileges, then demoted our own user accounts to members. Through careful planning, we made it look as though the admin of bungie.net was angry with SD for the use of copyrighted images, and had thus decided to hack into the site and make himself an admin so he could remove the images himself. We kept the prank going for a solid 24 hours; as certain members discovered that it was an April Fools' joke, we invited them to the site's IRC channel and encouraged him to play along. Some members were very passionate in the messages they sent to the new admin's account; since then, though, they've all (I hope!) forgiven us for the prank. If you're interested, you can see the original messages posted by "Achronos" here and here (moved from the Archives to QZ). The thread announcing that it was all a joke can now be found here. Since SD's creation, we've undergone many skin changes, held many banner contests, gone through many moderators and several co-admins, made new friends, and lost a few valued members. As it stands, we have near a thousand members, two admins (myself and Jana) and a modest 5 moderators. While we might not have too much activity right now, I can promise you I'm not about to let the site die; too much time and effort from a lot of people have been put into this community to simply let it slip away. To everyone who's helped make the Spartan Dominion great-- be it through posting, contributing ideas, spreading the word, or whichever means-- I'm indebted to you and I want you to know your efforts are appreciated. 
Edited by Tru7h, Dec 14 2009, 01:07 AM.
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| The Guy | Dec 1 2009, 01:33 PM Post #2 |
Padawan
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Awesome! I read through that April Fool's thread and it made me lol. |
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| Hobbies230 | Dec 1 2009, 03:54 PM Post #3 |
 
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Ahaha, awesome. It's quite amazing how SD grew from something so small into such an active community. And now I feel rather embarrassed that I fell for that April Fool's joke.  I applaud you and j4kk for that, Tru7h. 
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| Tru7h | Dec 1 2009, 03:58 PM Post #4 |
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Haha, don't feel embarrassed, nearly everyone fell for that joke. |
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| Haych | Dec 1 2009, 05:04 PM Post #5 |
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I have to say, that joke was pretty sweet. And it's amazing how far this site has come! |
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| Master Chief 2594 | Dec 1 2009, 05:06 PM Post #6 |
Guru
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You forgot to mention that I'm a BAMF.... but other than that, good job
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  I'm back baby! | |
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| Tru7h | Dec 1 2009, 05:08 PM Post #7 |
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Haha, how could I have forgotten? You can be the SD Bouncer, MC. By the way, your avatar is broken. =/ It is! Here we are five years later, and SD's still going strong. Edited by Tru7h, Dec 1 2009, 05:09 PM.
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| Master Chief 2594 | Dec 1 2009, 05:11 PM Post #8 |
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Guru
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Yeah.... I'll go change that.... *Runs to Control Panel* Edited by Master Chief 2594, Dec 1 2009, 05:13 PM.
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I'm back baby! | |
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| Tru7h | Dec 1 2009, 06:49 PM Post #9 |
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There you go. I'm still trying to find the original history thread; that one no doubt contains more detail than this one, since it was written around 2006. |
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| Stormtrooper30 | Dec 1 2009, 07:02 PM Post #10 |
The Czar
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That April Fools joke... I have never posted so many rage posts. Was not amused.
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So what, I'm a Star Wars geek?!?    
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| Tru7h | Dec 1 2009, 07:05 PM Post #11 |
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Sorry about that, Stormy. You have to admit, though, you got a laugh out of it once you found out it was a prank.
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| Dr. Octagonapus | Dec 2 2009, 09:16 AM Post #12 |
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Wow haha, that april fool's thread was hilarious. |
| DR. OCTAGONAPUS BLAAAAAARGH | |
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| a pretty cool guy | Dec 2 2009, 10:53 AM Post #13 |
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I didn't know the spartan dominion had been around for so long. No wonder you guys know each other so well, haha. |
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| The Guy | Dec 4 2009, 03:01 PM Post #14 |
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Padawan
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Poor Stormy. 
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| Jana | Dec 5 2009, 12:05 AM Post #15 |
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Hey! I should be in this history somewhere, right?
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 For those of you looking for my forum, it's right here! | |
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| Tru7h | Dec 5 2009, 12:17 AM Post #16 |
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You're in the last paragraph, haha. What else would you like me to put about you? |
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| Stormtrooper30 | Dec 11 2009, 08:08 PM Post #17 |
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The Czar
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Dude, this site used to be my life. So much time spent in the RPG thread... stuff was so good. I miss the SW RPG. |
So what, I'm a Star Wars geek?!?
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| The Grenadier | Dec 11 2009, 11:44 PM Post #18 |
Forum Addict
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Ah… nostalgia. I don’t really have much to say – the memories I've had here are too numerous to count. Here’s to another five years! [Suggestion: Maybe you should post a link to the original bungie.net group.] |
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| Tru7h | Dec 14 2009, 12:40 AM Post #19 |
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How do you mean, Gren? The latest news story posted there already has a link to the forums. |
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| The Grenadier | Dec 14 2009, 12:51 AM Post #20 |
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Forum Addict
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What I meant: Original
With link
Sorry - my earlier post wasn't very clear. Edited by The Grenadier, Dec 14 2009, 12:58 AM.
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| Tru7h | Dec 14 2009, 01:06 AM Post #21 |
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That was my fault; I didn't read your post carefully. I'll edit in the link.
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| Sergeant_Keslo | Dec 15 2009, 11:46 AM Post #22 |
Veteran
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oh man, the april fools prank had me going lol, good times. |
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"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug" - Chris Hedges | |
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| Jana | Dec 15 2009, 10:42 PM Post #23 |
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Oh... didn't see me! Ok, we're good!
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For those of you looking for my forum, it's right here! | |
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| mstewie08 | Dec 18 2009, 03:58 PM Post #24 |
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hahaha that was an enjoyable read. but i isnt in there. lol. and i loved that april fools joke. It just happened 2 hrs before april 1st where i was so i was kinda like wtf? and then i helped out with it. twas fun. lol. |
 ^new one. go ps3 w00t lol. | |
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| Tru7h | Dec 19 2009, 05:25 AM Post #25 |
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It was less obvious by not doing it the instant it turned April 1st.
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