Paperpusher's Message Board: Difference between revisions
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[[Image:ppmbv2-5.jpg|right|frame|PPMB logo, version 2.5]]
The '''Paperpusher's Message Board''', often abbreviated to '''PPMB''', is the longest-running message board in Daria fandom history, and the major gathering place for ''Daria'' fans. Founded in 1999, it originally served as a replacement for the [[Lawndale Commons]] forum, and later the [[Outpost Daria Message Board]]. The board gets its name from the original owner and founder, the [[Paperpusher]]. It has over
'''Site movement has garbled the characters of various fanfics - see Rosetta Stone below for the solution.'''
The PPMB may be unusual and perhaps even unique—please note the use of the conditional here—among '''free''' online communities for its longevity and size. As of January 2015, it hosts posts dating back more than a decade, and boasts members who even antedate its current incarnation.
==History==
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Unlike many of the earlier Daria message boards, the PPMB could be efficiently moderated, with messages that violated the ad-hoc guidelines removed and belligerent users banned. Other message boards such as the [[Scorched Remnants Message Board]] remained unmoderated, and after the SRMB closed, the [[Sheep's Fluff Message Board]] opened to provide a forum for Daria fans who wanted to post on a message board that allowed the discussion of sexuality and other adult topics. However, PPMB remains the central message board of Daria fandom.
The board remained run by Paperpusher who kept control of the board in the hands of its staff of moderators. In 2005, Paperpusher turned the control of the PPMB over to [[Kara Wild]]. For the sake of continuity, Wild declined to change the name or alter the message board's design.
As part of Paperpusher's desire to maintain the message board as a separate entity from the show, his caption described it simply as "A place to talk about stuff." In January 2011, after a couple of fans noted that there was nothing marking the board as a Daria board, Wild changed it to "A place to talk about MTV's Daria. And other stuff."
When the fandom had a post-DVD resurgence in the early 2010s, the PPMB was the primary forum for new and lapsed fans to hang out on. By the late 2010s, it was the only forum and so had become the social and creative hub of the fandom. If a new fanfic was written, 90% of the time it was written on PPMB.
Kara Wild would transfer control of the forum to long-time moderator [[Scissors MacGillicutty]] in 2019.
In August 2021, the board went down due to technical issues; this had happened before as the code aged but this time, the board stayed down for weeks. (Fans shifted to [[Lawndale-High Message Board]] for the duration). It was confirmed in mid-September that the database was secure but the install was in serious need of updating, and Scissors MacGillicutty was unable to maintain it any longer. A call went out for anyone with a serious ability to take over hosting and technical support.
As of November 13, 2021, the PPMB is back up!
==Forums==
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When Kara Wild took over the PPMB in 2005 at thepaperpusher.net, she added an Announcements (with Comments) forum so that users could respond to the various announcements, whereas before, they did not have permission. She also created three more ranks for people with the most posts: 5000-7499 was Mind Controller; 7500-9999 was World Dominator; and 10,000 and above was Darian. Posters with Mind Controller/World Dominator status have brains that blink and move. The Darian visual consists of a pair of glasses superimposed over the usual brains, complete with eyes that blink.
Notably, Wild also made a new Rules list because Paperpusher's original list never made the transition to PPMB 2.0, which meant that users could get cited for violations of rules they never knew about. Wild expanded upon the original list and attempted to clarify in areas where the first list had been vague. (At the time, she did not have the web archive for use, and therefore had to go by memory.) Her PPMB rules were: 1) no posting just to advertise, 2) no activity that would be considered illegal in the United States, 3) no explicit sexual material, 4) no hard swearing, 5) no racial or sexual slurs, 6) no attacking your fellow board members, 7) no oversized images/avatars/signatures/links, 8) no posting entire articles, 9) stay on topic, and 10) the moderators and administrators enforce the rules at their discretion. The last rule generated some controversy and caused some members to leave as it was felt that it gave the staff too much leeway to interpret the rules so that they would not apply to staff (although these members generally could not articulate how or when such favoritism occurred).
Over time, Wild would add an Other Languages forum in an attempt to cater to the non-English speaking Daria fans. However, this proved less than successful, and she wound up scaling it back. She also created a DVDaria and More Forum for fan attempts to get the show onto DVD. The PPMB was upgraded to
In October 2010, due to an increasing number of server errors, Wild decided to move the PPMB to Site5. Over the next two months, with guidance from Scissors MacGillicutty, she copied files, built a database, and even tested a "mirror" PPMB on a different site. The move finally took place on December 30, 2010. Board members complimented the smoothness of the transfer and the speedier posting. However, some files still needed to be copied as of January 2011 to make the transition complete.
On January 2, 2011, Wild set up a Twitter account: PaperpusherMB. She would use it in the event of a major crash, but stresses that board members can also contact the Site5 support staff and keep track of the server on the SIte5 main pages. Having a support staff on hand to answer questions is what drew Wild to Site5 in the first place.
The PPMB went down in August of 2021, due to technical reasons. The database has been preserved, but the fandom is still figuring out the best way to get the forum back online.
==Administrators and moderators==
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Because Chad Page and J had stopped visiting the PPMB, Wild appointed new moderators after taking over the board in 2005: [[Richard Lobinske|RLobinske]] and [[Ranger Thorne]]. [[Quiverwing]] (then nmorgendorffer) soon followed. Steven Galloway was appointed a co-admin, because Wild did not want another situation where the board got out of control and no one was available to delete users. Ranger Thorne and Steven Galloway eventually chose to step down, citing time constraints due to real life, and Wild appointed [[E. A. Smith]] to be the moderator, while making RLobinske her co-admin.
In May 2007, Wild granted Quiverwing and E. A. Smith administrator status, marking the first time the PPMB counted on a main staff of administrators only. The change only lasted four weeks, but signaled a new direction for the board as Wild later announced that she would be discontinuing her moderator duties in mid-August. She promoted Quiverwing to administrator and, after E.A. Smith indicated that he no longer wished to continue, modded [[UU]] and [[Dervish]]. In 2008, Dervish gave up her modship when it looked as though she would be spending less time online, and Wild appointed [[Scissors MacGillicutty]].
In October 2010, Wild promoted Scissors MacGillicutty to admin so that he could use his technical knowledge to fully dissect the board's problems and help with the move to Site5. Wild later promoted UU, which meant that all of the moderators now had administrator status.
December 2014 saw an unusual crisis: the backend database had reached the maximum size allowed by the Site5 for the PPMB's hosting plan, and service was suspended. The alternatives were to upgrade to a more expensive hosting plan and charge for memberships, change to another hosting company, or trim the database. The last was the alternative chosen, and four forums—General, Nick's Corner, Weapons of Mass Distraction, and Deep Thoughts—were shorn of threads older than a year. Those threads and posts are not lost: there is a pre-trim database snapshot. However, as of this writing (16 January 2015), no member has asked for any posts or threads from it.
==Staff==
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| [[Crazy Nutso]] || Moderator ||
|-
| [[Chad Page]] || Moderator ||
|-
| [[Kemical Reaxion]] || Moderator ||
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| [[Kara Wild]] || Moderator ||
|-
| [[Chad Page]] || Moderator ||
|-
| [[Steven Galloway]] || Moderator ||
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| [[TerraEsperZ]] || Registered user || Foreign language moderator
|-
| rowspan=7| 2008-2010 || [[Kara Wild]] || Administrator || Site owner
|-
| [[RLobinske]] || Administrator ||
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| [[TerraEsperZ]] || Registered user || Foreign language moderator
|-
| rowspan=6| 2011-2012 || [[Kara Wild]] || Administrator || Site owner
|-
| [[RLobinske]] || Administrator ||
|-
| [[Quiverwing]] || Administrator || Also foreign language moderator
|-
| [[UU]] || Administrator || Also foreign language moderator
|-
| [[Scissors MacGillicutty]] || Administrator ||
|-
| [[BlackHole]] || Registered user || Foreign language moderator
|-
| rowspan=6| 2012- || [[Kara Wild]] || Administrator || Site owner
|-
| [[RLobinske]] || Administrator ||
|-
| [[Quiverwing]] || Administrator || Also foreign language moderator
|-
| [[Scissors MacGillicutty]] || Administrator ||
|-
| [[BlackHole]] || Registered user || Foreign language moderator
|}
</div>
==Rosetta Stone==
Fanfics that were written in Word and then copied to the board years ago may, circa 2018, have garbled characters. Some really old fanfics have goine through ''three'' garblings.
There are ways to fix this:
===Bookmarklet solution===
Suggested by user Heir of Norton: " I wrote a little javascript function that cleans up the junk characters. It is available here: [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/HeirOfNorton/52ac8f7eb8bc9a2e9ce4e8729eb89786/raw/c93d068f814b2fc010d2c63d7127497cbd12cdaf/errordecode.js Error decoding script]. You can actually paste that into the debug console of the browser (hit F12 to find it, usually), but that's annoying. Instead, go here:[ http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/bookmarklet.html Bookmarklet Crunch] Copy and paste the script into the box and click Crunch. This will create a "bookmarklet". If you bookmark the new link, you will get a bookmark or favorite that you can click to decode the junk characters. Just go to one of the affected stories, and click your new bookmark to clean it up. You may need to click it two or three times before it is finished."
For AndroidS:
"save the bookmark on Chrome on your desktop as I explained above. Make sure to give it an easy to find name.
"Sync your bookmarks with your android device [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en (see here)]
"Go to the page you want to clean up. Then tap in the address bar, and start typing the name of the bookmark. It should come up in the dropdown suggestions, then you can tap it."
===Old school text work===
1) Copy the old post into some sort of text file. I used a .doc file.
2) Using find-and-replace, make the following substitutions
… is replaced by ... (ellipsis)
’ is replaced by ' (back apostrophe)
– is replaced by -- (long dash)
‘ is replaced by ` (front apostrophe)
“ is replaced by " (front quotation)
†is replaced by " (back quotation)
For even older stuff:
‘ - opening quotation mark
’ - ending quotation mark and apostrophe
– - dash
In general, this should get rid of the "special characters" and replace them with normal ones.
==External links==
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* [http://www.thepaperpusher.net/ The Paperpusher's Message Board]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/19991008000618/paperpusher.simplenet.com/Message_Board__Beta_/message_board__beta_.html The inital portal to the PPMB]
* [http://twitter.com/PaperpusherMB Kara Wild's PPMB Twitter account]
* [http://thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46025 Rosetta Stone thread]
[[Category:Forums|Paperpusher's Message Board]]
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