The Ages of CBR

From Rumblepedia

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First Age

• The First Age was wa before the Rumbles Board became a part of the CBR Message Board. During the First age, it was the message board for the Comic Book Universe Battles website, which featured battles between various comic, movie, TV, anime, and video game characters. Fans of the site would discuss the various matchups, create their own matchups, and pretty much anything related (or not) to come to mind. The CBUB Tournament of Champions, a set of four matches between various comic, video game, and anime martial artists, was inspired by a popular thread on the board.

Second Age

• The Second Age might have been when The Rumbles became a part of CBR.
• Birth of the Random Stuff Threads.

Third Age Around (2001-ish)-2004

• It might have been started by a server update.
• Forum format changed in January of 2002.
• Soap Operus appeared during these times as did RPs.
• Fall of the Jellyrobes.
• Moratorium on Truth or Dare threads (Yes, it's still in effect even now in the Fifth Age despite no longer existing)
• This Age might have ended with the great server crash of 2004. (This might have actually been a server update)
• The end of this age was called The Crisis of Infinite Threads, as all posts were deleted and post counts were reduced to zero.
  • This is not to be mistaken for the RP of the same name that attempted to combine the RPs of the Third Age into one super RP at the same time.

Fourth Age Around 2004-2005-ish?

• This Age probably started with the recovery of the CBR server around May, 16 2004
• The Ages were named.

Fifth Age 2006-2014

• The Rumblers of the past four ages are largely absent from CBR's Rumbles. Parrtly this is due to mass bannings by the mods, so that only their cronies are left. It still remains to be seen what will happen because of this.
• The beginnings of this fiasco are reasonably complicated, but there are two or three definite start points where everything started going horribly, horribly wrong.
  • Matt, aka Parallax (who was a long-term CBUB/Rumbles moderator and, later, admin) started micro-managing the board to an insanely pedantic level. Matt always disproved of the random chat threads (like SoapOperus), and put his foot down against them. Most of the posters who actually used the board had no problem at all with these threads. But Matt was in charge, and it was a losing battle.
  • Matt is also a huge fan of the character of Hal Jordan. Unfortunately, many people felt that Hal's reintroduction into the DCU was handled ... less than well. So (particularly in the Death Spiral of Comics thread), Matt was always unhappy when longterm posters were critical of the character. There was one such thread that Matt outrightly deleted, simply because the thread was critical of the character. When a half dozen posters took to the Information Board (justifiably annoyed at Matt's fanboy tendencies running amok), Matt just kept on deleting the posts from people who were critical of his actions. This was the turning point where Matt's attitude shifted. He no longer saw the longterm posters as his friends or as fellow Rumblers, but as nuisances working against him. So from that point on, he would automatically side against them on any issue (for the good of the board, he claimed. A board which he barely posted on).
  • Gordon Smith. Sycophant, hypocrite, and an all-around self-righteous, deceitful, two-faced person. The second that conflict arose between the longterm Rumbles posters, and posters from outside Rumbles, he sided against Rumbles.
    • Two noticable incidents were his hypocrisy regarding Yeoman (and Yeoman's subsequent ban from the board, although in the time since then, that ban had been overturned), and his hypocrisy (note the common theme here) regarding an Australian poster who was accused of sending a moderator death-threats. These death-threats did not actually exist (which the moderator in question outrightly admitted, although it should be pointed out, his story changed repeatedly in the days that followed), and despite a long history of disturbing things posted by his friends (including Mew posting pictures of herself castrating people, metaphysician torturing slayven, and a past moderator routinely using violent posts to keep Rumblers in line), he immediately expressed total outrage. Baffling, given the past history of incidents that he had no problem with. Gordon's attempts at painting himself as the persecuted victim culminated in a post where he states, "We're done with this crap. We've given you chance after chance to air your grievances, and we're not going to listen to them anymore" (this post is still there on the official board rules thread). Despite the fact these so called "chances" involved posters pointing out the lies and mistruths being used as justification to punish them, and getting immediately further punished (and having their threads locked). But Gordon still found a way to play the victim. This didn't impress many people.
  • Put it this way. When Gordon was made moderator, within two or three months, a dozen longterm posters (some of which had donated upwards of $100 to the CBR forum drive, back in the early 00s, when Jonah Weiland needed money to upgrade the site) were banned, or had left in disgust. Gordon never once saw the connection here, blaming all these problems (problems that either (a) never been problems previously, or (b) began with Matt) on the posters.
• It should also be pointed out that Gordon recently retired as moderator. Hopefully he got whatever it was that he wanted out of the experience. Somebody deserved to, and nobody else benefited from his time in charge in any way, shape or form.
  • To be fair, Matt probably got the board that he wanted, a virtual cesspool. But at least nobody is saying mean things about Hal Jordan anymore.
• And the current mods, who don't actually read comics, have created an environment riddled with bias and nepotism, blatantly ignoring their own rules on evidence-based decisions(see "Thanos has light speed reactions" and "Gladiator is as fast as the Flash") to support favorite characters/posters, and ban anyone who points this out.

Sixth Age 2014-

• The entire forum was wiped out again, requiring everyone to re-register. They even made an open post about how previously banned people were given a second chance.

• With the new board, Sharpandpointies made it clear that none of the old mod rulings would be in effect anymore and everything would need to be proven again.

• Sharp then stepped down as moderator not liking the the new forum rules prevented the chat threads that Rumbles had used so often. With his departure, all the old mod rulings were put back in effect. Further more, it was said by Siriel (who is not a mod but is somehow allowed to make the rules about how mod rulings work) posted a long list of mod rulings that were not longer even open to discussion via PM.

• With the lack of chat and roleplay threads and even more focus on mod rulings and specifically defined stats, the rumbled board is proving even less active and popular than before, with many users including those who were welcomed back after an (unjust) banning not even bothering with the place anymore.

• The sole improvement in the new board is that members were able to take advantage of the temporary lapse in mod rulings to make the argument that Thanos does not move at lightspeed.

• The current mods have proven to be as biased as ever, banning anyone who disagrees with certain protected posters, and allowing protected posters to troll.