[quote][b][u]The History of The Flood Forum, Revised 2nd Edition[/u][/b][/quote][quote][b]Preface[/b][/quote] This year was the year of the first class of The Flood Hall of Fame. I hope The Flood finds this year inductees to be acceptable because you were the ones who voted for them. You can find the inductees at the end of the history. Even though I strive for accuracy, and having as much information as possible, I still make mistakes. All ideas and suggestions submitted before February 20th, 2011 will be considered. Moving forward, I will not be writing another edition of Flood History next year. I planned to, but writing contemporary history is much harder because most people simply aren't sure what is truly memorable until they are able to properly remember it. I'll look to return to this sometime farther in the future, but not next year. I will be doing another project in place of The Flood History next year. I also expect to recreate The Flood Library, with more posts. I'm just out of room at this point. I don't expect to stop doing it any time soon, so I'm going to need room. The Flood Hall of Fame will have another class next year, and each year following that. However, I am looking to try and improve the voting process by having a select group of voters each year. I plan to send out messages to find those willing to put in the time during the summer. I would like to have at least 50 voter when all is said and done. I have considered creating a group for it, but don't expect anything there. If you would like to be a voter, contact me in this thread, or by PM. The ultimate goal of studying Flood history and having a Flood Hall of Fame served a more subtle purpose. If there is a history of a certain, then there is almost always a culture and an identity that the group has. Often it is based on that history. The reason I did the Flood History was to try and answer the question of what the culture of The Flood is, if there was one. I now believe that there is one, and next year I hope to have a writing on what exactly that is. That idea of a culture is central to central to these projects. I wanted to show that, unlike any other forum on Bungie.net The Flood has a unique identity. I'm still sure what that identity is. I plan to answer it in the future. For now, enjoy the Flood History revised 2nd Edition. [quote][b][u]The History of The Flood Forum[/u][/b][/quote][quote][b]2004[/b][/quote] [u]Birth of The Flood[/u] 4/15/2004 Discussion of an Off Topic forum can be traced to as far back as this point. When proposed by a member(now unknown), Stosh informed him that Sketch had begun to think about the creation of an Off-Topic forum. Members had called for it because of the spam and off-topic threads that had become so common in other forums, especially The Underground. Sketch predicted that if this off-topic forum did materialize that it would "turn into a spam pit the likes of which no website has ever seen before." Also, the phrase "spam pit" seems to have originated from this thread. There will never be another thread like Laser Wars. [u]Laser Wars[/u] Pre.6/30/2004-Post.6/13/2006 The exact start and end points of this even are not known because of how widely spread the phenomenon is. It was at one pint a pinned topic, and then it spread into it's own group and countless other threads. Laser wars was simply a forum game based on building armies and fighting other players. It's popularity was massive, greater than any other singular trend in forum history. [quote][b]2005[/b][/quote] [u]Twitch[/u] 2005 Twitch did a whole bunch of spamming, trolling, flaming, and beyond, but he was still a major part of the community, and had himself a fanbase. The fanbase would eventually coin the phrase "Twitch for pres." He felt that the "spam was tha -blam!-," and that "it just need to be said." If he hadn't said it he "would be doing the world a disservice fo real." He would also target a group run by Gold Templar II. He was a character that Twitch found odd so naturally he "-blam!- with him... alot." His fan group launched a spam attack on his group, while Twitch created an alt that looked very similar to Gold Templer ll, and would spam the forums. Gold Templar told the mods that he had been hacked by Twitch, and that was all they needed. He has since been permabanned, but it is rumored he still posts on alts, like almost everyone does. People don't like to talk about Twitch for fear of it still upsetting moderators. [u]VII Toast[/u] 2005-2006 Still an active member, VII Toast was once a moderator. It was when he was a moderator that he got into trouble with other members of The Flood for allegedly deleting their posts and banning them for no reason. Eventually members started to respond to him in threads about the deleting of their posts, and began to complain to other moderators about his response. Not long after this, he was no longer a moderator. No questions were asked about the incident because everyone knew what had happened, and what brought on the change. [u] The Flood-Zanzibar War[/u] Summer 2005-May 2006 In the summer of 2005, the forum Zanzibar tried to blitzkrieg the Flood Forum by flaming and spamming the forum into submission. The resulted in a full-out flame war. Floodians started flaming and spamming the forum Zanzibar in retaliation, until late in 2005. The Flood halted the flaming and spamming, and the Zanzibarians claimed a victory for themselves. However, in the late spring of '06, the Floodians won, as the Zanzibar forum was deleted to make room for the Halo 3 forum, merging with New Mombasa. [u]The Flood Nightbar[/u] 8/14/2005 bacon greese1521 created The Flood night bar. It is important in that is laid the template down for what every following forum bar. The first few posts are the ordering of drinks, with the OP serving as a bartender. Within a few pages, however, the bar quickly devolves into barfights, card games, and shenanigans of every kind. Flood Bars of this template are now opened on every holiday(that extols drinking) from January 1rst to December 31st. [u]Shiska is a Pegboy[/u] 8/16/2005 A spammer named Watermelon King created at least 15 pages of nothing but "Shishka is a Pegboy" as the title and body of each thread. It is believed that it was because Shiska had called him a Pegboy, and that he did not take very kindly to this comment. At this point in Bungie.net's history, there was not post limit or cooldown; so he was able to create that many threads fairly quickly. Floodians, including Shiska, look back and laugh at the event. [u]Glory Days of Forum Fiction[/u] 6/1/2005-10/26/2008 During this point in time The Flood experienced a wealth of talented writers, as well as a fanbase that was will to read more than 4 paragraphs in a single post. Among the Floodian writers that it would produce were Douglas Brown, Sniper McGee, bacon greese1521, Mabian, Commander Locks, Tartan 118, GameJunkieJim(Yes, the moderator), Colonel Corbec, and the Laureate of The Flood, Halifax. Multiple members would write for years, and even create fan groups, to themselves which became quite popular. Halifax is easily the most voluminous writer of them all at this point, even after many of his works were lost on Day After Bungie Day. There was even a point in time where writers were treated like rock stars when they announced that they were going to do a story. However, many like Sniper McGee and squirrel dude only got through the first couple of chapters and then simply didn't have the energy to continue with their work. The Golden Age is marked at ending on 10/26/2008, when Halifax posted his final story, but it had been falling off long before that. Although Mabian was writing a very popular story called The Floodiad, many other authors were no longer receiving the attention they used to, the attention that was often the reason for their writing. This, combined with a resurgence of The Gallery forum has limited Floodian forum fiction since. [quote][b]2006[/b][/quote] [u]The Flood Becomes a Monarchy[/u] 2006 There was a poll made about who should become the queen of The Flood. The winner of the poll was Jannelle4Now. It turned out that Jannelle4Now was actually an alternate account of the male member "L8teRunner (or something like that)." Cortana 5 was named Princess of The Flood as the runner up of the election, and with Jannelle/L8te forced to step down on account of not being the necessary amount of female required to be a queen, she took over as Queen of The Flood. Cortana 5 holds onto that title to this day. [u]One Day War[/u] Mid-August 2006 A thread in late summer reported that the moderators created a thread in HCFS, it was titled "We will attack at dawnleave no Floodian standing." However, the contents of the thread is unknown, because any non-moderator b.net member who even attempts to join the group will be in some pretty big trouble, or so says the group's motto. Anyway, the Floodians decided to be prepared for an attack from the mods(For mods, forum attacking is the act of locking threads for no apparent reason). Unfortunately, the next day, the thread was locked by a moderator. It is unknown if the moderators really were planning a surprise attack, but stopped because some bold Floodians found out, or if they are still planning for a surprise attack on The Flood to this day. [Edited on 01.29.2011 10:00 AM PST]