Here are the entries that we have received for the TSR History Competition. You now have 2 weeks to vote for the winning entry. Please note: you must have a postcount greater than 250 and have been a member for longer than 3 months to vote.
In 2008, TSR has seen a miraculous increase in the number of moderators to the forum, which we are all sure has vastly enhanced this wonderful site. The TSR Wiki has been developed enabling members of the community to help their peers, give fabulous advice and create a general source of awesome knowledge. There have been several TSR forum makeovers and upgrades to the site making it more user-friendly and easy to navigate, and we are sure to see more improvements in the near future. There has been an introduction of new sub forums such as the Animal forum and Photography and digital imaging forum, which clearly displays TSR's amazing ability to cater for all different types of people. There have been lots of meets enabling lasting friendships to form and sparking off new love interests. Woo! In more recent news, we have gained a few members, lost a few members, and special congratulations go to our moderator "BlackHawk" on the wonderful news of the creation of our first TSR couple baby who we will be welcoming into the world in December. Since then, we've had a lot more mods too. Wahey! (I'd congratulate everyone individually but unfortunately i've lost track) The End.
The last year has seen a great number of changes on TSR: There has been a major redesign; the appointment of a million and one new mods; and even quite a substantial change in the demographic of users on the site. This history documents all of these changes, as well as offering five cautionary tales, based on the true stories of certain significant members over the last year. It was drafted in August 2008, and was kindly edited by the mods who stopped it being so funnynaughty. I am thankful for their contributions.
TSR is, of course, still the place it always was. Older members stick around, while new ones come and go. People still complain about trolls, members moan about mods, mods moan about members, and we all moan about LPK (who this year went through puberty). Whilst over time the structure of the site changes, its backbone of members giving helpful advice, leaving sarcastic comments, or anonymously posting single smilies remains the same.
One of the most important changes the forum has seen in the last year is a change in staffing. At the beginning of last year the mod team was rather diminished in size, after a set of resignations in April and May. The last year has seen a significant change in strategy in terms of mod appointments, with thousands of minimods being appointed, keeping the number of global mods constant (including a couple of crusty foreigners who were brought out of retirement to take up slack.) There doesn't seem to be much in the way of a reason for the proliferation of minimods, other than the fact that purple is quite a pretty colour. In the last few months these new swarms of mods engaged in a "crackdown" which made most people crack up. They came bearing banners with slogans of, "hr isnt for jokes", and "it's against the rules to be against the rules".
When minimods were first conceived of, they were for areas of the forum that the global mods either didn't want to mod, or couldn't mod through lack of expertise. Now they are used almost universally across the site, and there has certainly been a change from a system in which global mods would have their own areas of interest but would moderate globally, to one in which users with a specific area of interest are given minimod positions, and the majority of global mods barely post in the public forums. More recently we've seen the addition of "Forum Assistants" to the ranks of moderators. These users have even less powers, no access to AAM, and can still receive warning points (whereas naughty mods get bans). They exist in the House of Commons, and the PS Help forum, where they spend their time moving and renaming threads.
In early September last year, TSR underwent the most significant redesign in its history. Serious effort was put it in to make it look more "web2.0" (read: derivative of facebook). No longer did it look like a standard vBulletin forum, and the old skins were replaced with an interesting blue and orange colour scheme. The redesign process was rather problematic in its poor-execution. And, while there were a team of users asked to do dev testing, these dev testers and mods were only given 24 hours notice on the changes going live. Consequently, when it did go live it was full of bugs. The most serious was that the contrast between the background colour and the text was too high, so people were posting in the About forum, complaining of migraines, nausea, and epilepsy. Finally the font colour was changed to the grey you see today, and everyone was less ill. Hooray. The bugs from the redesign eventually took about four months to all be solved, although some of them (such as the problems with subscribed forums) are yet to be fixed.
Many people spent lots of time objecting to the redesign, with the About forum being filled with a cloud of grumpiness and negativity. The owners of the site weren't massively impressed with this at the time. Thankfully, though, they've come understand that when people moan in the About forum it's so the site can be made better.
One of the main points of this redesign was to move TSR away from being "just a forum". The wiki, which began its life as a small set of articles, became greatly expanded, particularly with the help of the WST ("We're Special" Troupe). The home page, for example, no longer showed all of the subforums, and all of the activity that was going on around the site, and instead, with the implementation of "tabs" at the top of the page, directed users towards portals, which in turn led to wiki and forum pages. Regardless of this, the wiki remains far less popular than the forums, even though it has a rather excellent page on tight foreskins, and a superb cheese toasty recipe.
December saw the return of the TSR Awards, in which regular users had the opportunity to vote to say which of their peers were the funniest, hottest, most useful, etc. and generally espouse some much-needed Christmas sycophancy. Fleur de lis, that supreme beast, won in nearly every category (although was disqualified from best male late in the day after admitting that she'd been stuffing her boxers with socks), despite only having started posting in January 2007. That girl sure knows how to make an impression. There was very little controversy here really, although block voting from chat peeps seemed to ensure many of the same people were in the line-up for lots of awards, and it remains a nice way to award people for their positive contributions to the site.
The other way that good members are acknowledged, the reputation system, has been rather more controversial over the last year. The trouble is that a few users just won't shut up about it, however boring it is. Of course, only 0.3% of users have red gems, but sadly they are often the most vocal. All of this, along with sustained rants from a few idiots (and the suggestion from ukebert that we should have molluscs in our postbits) caused the powers that be to poop themselves. Consequently they set up a survey, but are yet to release the results to the public. Anyway, we're told that it's all set to change in the near future, regardless of the fact that the only people who care about rep are the admins (who don't use the site as users) and a few trolls who end up with red gems for, erm, trolling.
This issue of rep was all rather exacerbated by the fact that the last year has seen what seems to be a death of useful discussion in the About forum. It was once a place where issues regarding the site were debated, mods would get involved in the arguments, and admins would keep a keen eye on it. In the last year points directed at admins have been answered a lot more slowly than during the pig era, and many have been left unanswered, while lot of the mods seem to have withdrawn from posting in there other than to lock threads that become filled with spam. As such, the only threads that remain are the thousands of rather boring ones about rep and n00bs asking how they make a signature.
That being said, the issue of admin communications with the membership, which has been so poor for the last year, is apparently being worked on, and sources are hopeful that it will be rather better in the future. They've set up a blog, but for the moment it seems to mainly have pictures of really ugly soft toys and car crashes. With any luck, this should liven up the debate a little more in the next year. That being said, the familial aspect of communication has been broadly extended in the last year. Something that has sadly been omitted in previous histories has been the nepotistic element of the running of TSR, and this lack will hopefully be rectified by publishing the following diagram (which may or may not be entirely truthful):
Out of the football forum, in December, came an idea for a TSR football meet. The first one of these being a success, these events have continued to happen and in fact have grown in popularity. Groups of ethnic, male TSRians descend on the parks of London and hack a ball around for a few hours. In fact, meets of TSR members are becoming more and more common, particularly amongst the subscribers, but also at universities around the country. Often, such as with the football meets, these will be attended by the regular users of one particular subforum.
As the community of TSR has grown it's started to split into a whole range of micro-communities, which have become increasingly developed over the last year. These range from Indian Friends to Grumpy Old Graduates. As the site becomes bigger, there are fewer globally-recognised users. These smaller communities are also encouraging different types of users to access the site, and, for example, where the exams forums have developed so significantly over the last year, there are now more school-age users than ever before. Amazingly though, given quite how rife teenage pregnancy seems these days, it is not one of these kids who's having the first TSR baby:
So TSR just does what it always does, and presents us with a diversity of material, from petty frustrations, to children, to more petty frustrations, to laughing at someone posting an impotence thread in H&R, to friendships, to arguments. In some ways the place has got a lot smaller in the last year, there's more room for familiarity than there ever has been before, but also more room to just disappear. It's also still evolving: In the last weeks we've seen the implementation of widgets, and soon enough you'll be able to make TSR look pink, which I'm sure will be very useful.
Who knows what we'll see in the next year of TSR: Who will be next to get 65535 PMs? Who will leave in a strop? Who will moan about rep? Who will complain about the moderation? Will any new members ever be funny? Will gossamerthreads ever reach the bottom of the devlist? I guess to find out you can either stick around, or just wait for the next episode of this history.
P.S. Acaila was written out of this history because her ego was too big already.
This last year has seen TSR grow bigger than it has ever been before. The site has at this exact moment of writing 594,464 threads, 13,589,878 posts and 206,712 members. The last year has been full of funny threads, interesting debates and of course hasn't been without its fair share of controversy.
A year of ... change
In 07/08 TSR changed in a number of ways. The most obvious change occurred in September '07 with the site redesign. This took TSR away from the standard vBulletin format and forward to a more unique design. The switch-over wasn't without its problems and as well as a number of bugs there were also issues with the aesthetics of site. Opinion as to whether the design was an improvement was and still is split. However as time has passed the new appearance of the site has grown on people and complaints surrounding the change died down after a few months. The second major change occurred in July '08 when the fully customisable widget feature was introduced. This allowed users to view who has quoted them or to see recent popular threads without having to visit My Home. The demographic of TSR has changed considerably over the last year. To the casual observer it seems that the proportion of the users of the site who are doing their GCSEs and A-levels has increased. This, as with any sort of change on TSR was met with complaints by some of the older members.
The year of ... The minimod
As the site has expanded so has the need for new moderators. Over the last year we have said goodbye to several old mods and hello to many more. Perhaps the most noted departure of the last twelve months was lessthanthree (<3) who had been an active presence in Health and Relationships and TSR in general for a number of years, she left amid much controversy. Other departures over the last year include Hubert Poo, who was a minimod in sports; beachsurfbabe of H&R; Amy who was a minimod of the gallery; Agent Smith of D&D; and Chicken, who was a global mod. But we shouldn't dwell on these sad departures as there have been new people who have joined the moderation team as well as some who have returned. This year saw the return of wes (wesetters) and Apollo to the moderation team, both as global mods. nota bene, calcium878 and Wildebeest also became global mods having previously been minimods. Alongside these global appointments we have had twenty-one minimod appointments, more than can really be mentioned individually. There are now minimods in most areas of the site, as their expertise is recognised and then put to use. Study Help has seen the biggest influx of new mods, with suuuuuuseh, Vesta, Wildebeest and hobnob being appointed. February of 2008 saw RK (Roger Kirk) joining the team at Acumen as a full time employee having previously been an academic minimod, now working in the headquarters in Brighton.
The year of ... The TSR couple
There have always been some TSR couples but in 07/08 the number seemed to explode. Last year there were congratulations all round when Blackhawk and Wzz got married and this year it has been announced that they are expecting their first baby. Worthy winners of the Best Couple award indeed. There are also too many new couples to mention, one of the more notable ones being Scarlet Ibis and FadeToBlackout who this year have bought a narrow boat together! Sadly 07/08 also saw some several relationships coming to an end, with Charl and mute ending their long term coupling. As 07/08 was the year of the TSR couple it can only be asked will 08/09 be the year of the first TSR baby boom!
The year of ... The Forum restructure
The long overdue rejigging was finally implemented, with the entire My Forums page getting a drastic makeover, as General Discussion was moved to sit beside Chat, Societies and the Welcome Lounge. The Current Affairs area was introduced, encompassing the House of Commons, the Model UN and Have Your Say. Two other new areas are Life Advice, featuring the H&R forum, as well as Fashion and Beauty and the economics forums and Hobbies and Interests, which contains everything from Sports to Food and Drink. The universities forums are now organised regionally so as to enable people to know their options for study within specific parts of the UK.
The year of ... the flashy gem
Prior to this year, pig was the only member to be in possession of one of the pixellated rainbow blobs, but since the new year, with the help of "repflation" there are now eleven flashy gems in circulation (at the time of writing), with rep powers of over 500 now being commonplace on the first page. Gold gems are now far less unusual than they have been in the past, as they stretch back as far as the sixth page of the memberlist. As the number of users with multiple green gems increases, the number of users with several red gems also appears to have increased.
The year of ... The wiki
The TSR wiki really took off for the first time in 06/07, and over the last year it has grown even further. The redesign that took place in September made the wiki more prominent and accessible with its own tab and a recent edits box in the My Home page. Each section of the wiki is growing with new articles being added regularly. The redevelopment of the site saw the formation of the Wiki Support Team (WST) which is comprised of a small group of users who monitor and work to improve the Wiki. A competition was held in the autumn of 2007 which gave users the opportunity to tell TSR members about their universities. Winners received amazon vouchers for their contributions and the university guides were greatly improved by the end of the competition.
The year ... everyone and their gran became a subscriber.
When the subs features were first introduced, there were only about twenty users willing to dish out the £3.50 required for the privileges. Now there are around three hundred subs, and the Back Room is one of the busiest forums on the site. Because of this, subs culture has became friendlier and more welcoming, as new sub communities spring up and new subs integrate more easily than ever before, even coming to meets within weeks of braving the waters of the secret forums.
The year of ... the TSR meet
Since August '07 saw the largest meet ever, the frequency and popularity of meets has risen massively, with the first meets ever to be arranged outside the subs forum taking place. The first football meet occurred in December '07, and since then, six more have been arranged and been highly successful, even managing more attendees than the majority of the subs meets. In the space of the last year, there have been an incredible fifteen subs meets in various cities around the country, with thirty-five members turning up to the most recent London meet. Some of these meets have been known to overrun by many days, as the participants get caught up in a drunken frenzy and their thirst for meeting internet randoms goes unquenched. Beyond the view of even the subs, the mods have been having regular meet-ups, with a certain person flying in from as far afield as Sweden.
A year ... to look to the future
The past year has been a transition period for the site. One can only guess as to what will come next. Some things will always remain the same: there will always be a fittest TSRer poll in chat, current university students will always be infuriated by the tenth post of the day asking about entry requirements and at least once every few days someone will post a thread in health and relationships asking if the girl they like fancies them. New members will never learn to use the search function and rep (no matter what people say) will always mean a great deal to a lot of people. And who knows maybe next year Jangrafess will again be sponsored by Acumen to go to America to play in the Pokémon world championships. The site will continue to evolve and people will always find something to complain about. People will stick around because TSR is something special and in our humble opinion completely unique.
Get voting!
Last edited by fleur de lis : 19-08-2008 at 17:13.
I genuinely enjoyed all of them. Jen's was short and sweet, Musicbloke's was witty and entertaining, and Jangra's & Random's was accessible and informative.
I liked them all. Jen's was nice and short , Musicbloke's actually made me lol (particularly the bit about LPK, don't know why), and Jangrafess and randdom's entry was a good mix (sentimental, funny and informative). I'll have to vote on my old account, but argh I don't know which one to choose!
Last edited by Electric_Dreams : 20-08-2008 at 14:42.
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TSR History Competition: winner announced
Jen. Thank you.
(particularly the bit about LPK, don't know why), and Jangrafess and randdom's entry was a good mix (sentimental, funny and informative). I'll have to vote on my old account, but argh I don't know which one to choose! 
