Paperpusher's Message Board

The Paperpusher's Message Board, also known as PPMB, is the major gathering place for Daria fans. Founded in 1999, it gets its name from the original owner, the Paperpusher.

History

The PPMB was originally founded by the Paperpusher as early as October 13, 1999; its earliest saved copy can be found at www.webarchive.org, with its original address of paperpusher.simplenet.com. In the beginning, it served as a replacement board when Lawndale Commons, the premiere message board, abruptly closed its doors in late 1999/early 2000. Until then, Lawndale Commons and the Outpost Daria Fanfiction Message Board were the two main message boards. When Lawndale Commons shut down, fans scrambled to find an alternative. The Paperpusher offered the Paperpusher Message Board, while Martin J. Pollard, the owner of Outpost Daria's message board, expanded its topics beyond fanfiction. Because Outpost Daria's message board was already well known to fans, most spent the bulk of their time there, while the Paperpusher Message Board, with its single forum, was a slower-paced alternative. When the Outpost Daria website was "Foxed", or sent a letter by Viacom asking Outpost Daria to cease the alleged infringement of its intellectual property, the Outpost Daria Message Board was closed. The bulk of Daria fandom then migrated to the PPMB, which became the major message board of Daria fandom.

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 messageboards 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.

Forums

Originally, the PPMB had a single forum devoted to all topics. As with the Outpost Daria Message Board, threads formed long strings that could take up an entire page. Circa February or March 2000, the Paperpusher created two forums, with one devoted to general topics and the other presumably devoted to "Daria." He also enacted a list of policies, including 1) no illegal activity, 2) no personal attacks, 3) no antagonistic behavior, 4) no hate posts, 5) no cussing, and 6) rules are subject to change without notice. Paperpusher wanted to maintain a welcome board, but was adament that he and the moderators have a free hand when things got rough.

Paperpusher appointeed his first two "elves," or moderators, in early 2000: Diane Long and Kara Wild. Since traffic was low, the moderators seldom needed to act, and Kara Wild notes, "At times, I forgot that I even was a moderator." That would change when Outpost Daria's Message Board shut down permanently. As the PPMB post count surged, Paperpusher annointed several more moderators, including Chad Page, Steven Galloway, Crazy Nutso, Kemical Reaxion, Canadibrit, Ben Yee, and J. The most the PPMB ever had at one time was seven, with Kara Wild, Crazy Nutso, and Steven Galloway among the most active mods. Moderators had the option of deleting posts, deleting users, and muting users (denying them the right to post).

In July 2003, to cope with the ever-growing traffic, the Paperpusher created Paperpusher Message Board 2.0 at thepaperpusher.com. The new message board contained more forums than the original, and threads were now self-contained. The original forums were: News and Announcements, Suggestion Box, General Forum, Nick's Corner, The Box, and Creative Writing. (In time, Paperpusher would add two more forums: Deep Thoughts and The Easel.) Of all of the Paperpusher moderators, just Kara Wild, Steven Galloway, Chad Page, and J remained. They agreed to moderate the new board, which now gave them the option of moving threads, deleting entire threads at once, checking IP addresses of users, and locking threads. However, notably, this new message board stripped them of some powers they had on the original PPMB, specifically the power to delete users, mute users, or "undelete" posts that might have been deleted accidentally. This arrangement would prove problematic when

When Kara Wild took over the PPMB in 2005, she added an Announcements (with Comments) forum so that users could respond to the various announcements, whereas before, they did not have permission.

Staff

2000

2000-2003

2003-2005

2005-2006

2006-present

External links

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