The 'Shroom:Issue XXXV/Forum Update

Forum Update Written by

My name is Nerdy Guy. Today, I'm hosting a new section about the goings-on in the wiki's local forum. This issue, I'm going to ramble on talk about what happened in the month of January, 2010. However, since this is the first issue and some people might not know much about the forum, I'll give a short explanation when needed.

Major Events

 * The Bulbapedia webmaster came to discuss a wiki alliance between us, Bulbapedia, and ZeldaWiki.org. There was some worry and nervousness from some people who were a little bit of a Chicken Little (mainly, if not only, me). However, everything worked out fine and Porplemontage (the wiki's creator and the person who sent the montage email to Strong Bad) agreed to the alliance.
 * Ugozima's ban expired. He was originally banned for sockpuppeting (having more than one account) and using his sockpuppets to spam. Now Ugo's not entirely a bad guy, but he broke the rules and got three warnings. So, the forum mods and admins agreed on banning him. However, a couple weeks ago, a new sockpuppet named Lord Awesome Face showed up while Ugo was still banned. LAF was actually a "friendly sockpuppet" since he didn't spam and just acted like a normal user. The mods eventually found out after one or two days that Ugo's and LAF's IP adresses match and Ugo admitted to sockpuppeting, so Ugo's ban was extended for two weeks.
 * Uniju, an old respected (kinda) user, announced he was retiring from the forum last month or so. He recently came back though. He started posting again, and was warned for breaking a couple rules.
 * Noahp89, a mod, pulled what is known as a "Blitzwing". He deleted his own account out of the blue for a personal reason and decided to rejoin later in the day. He also changed his main name to Master Cobalt. Luckly, his posts and Personal Messages still exist as he only partially deleted his account. People have been known to be randomly deleted by hackers, so some (including me) were scared by this. However, Noah explained that he deleted his own account. He is doing fine now and everything is going well.

Minor Events

 * I signed-up to do this section.
 * The mods discussed changing MJII (a invite-only board created because the mods thought the Mindless Junk board was getting too mindless and out of control) around, but the discussion was dropped after talking it over and concluding it's fine for now.
 * Eh Oh El, a forum user from a long time ago who disappeared, surprisingly returned. He comes by from time to time now, but only posts in the Mindless Junk board.

Stats for the Month

 * A lot of new members joined, but most of them never activated their accounts. In total, 22 (or more depending if one joins after I type this) new users joined overall. That's a little low compared to last month's total of 44.
 * The total amount of new posts made this month is in the 2000 - 3000s. That's lower then usual, but last month was low too. The average amount is in the 4000 - 5000s, but the exact number is sometimes greater.

Final Word
This month marks the time last year that I became a lot more active. Times have changed a little, mainly for the better. However, the forum seems a little less active now compared to a year ago.