#ponibooru

[takashi0]

I find the existence of /mlp/ to be really odd. For a fandom that started in 4chan it wasn't like /mlp/. Probably because the fandom was small at the time. Ever since /mlp/ was created it became a magnet to the worst qualities of 4chan but with ponies.

I blame Ponibooru and it’s useless excuses for Mods letting the site die a slow, painful, unregulated death of assholes and idiots. 

Before /mlp/, Ponibooru’s comment section was easily the embodiment of everything wrong with the pony fandom, because the mods did fuckall to corral the never-ending hoards of /b/tards and /pol/lacks.

You think the humanized race wars on Derpibooru are bad? You’ve should’ve seen comments on all the non-white humanized pictures on PB. Constant warring between people with actual morals and anonymous cowards who act like they just crawled out of Stormfront.

And yet they were the LEAST numerous group of jackasses. 

Before Season 3 started and everyone’s expectations got so ridiculously high that it was only a matter of time when an episode or season happened that was less than perfect and everyone started throwing a shitfit screaming “RUINED FOREVER!1!1!” ad nauseum, Ponibooru argued about shit that was even STUPIDER than what we argued about now.

Instead of having pointless shitstorms over the quality of the show, Ponibooru had pointless shitstorms over the quality of FANFICS.

Past Sins in particular.

I’m barely even exaggerating when I say that you couldn’t go a single page without stepping on either a stupid forced advice animal meme meant solely to be a Take-that against other users of the site, or a poorly-drawn picture of some 2edgy4u non-badass trying to roast Nyx alive. 

It was so bad even some of the people who hated Nyx were all like “this is unbelievably stupid.”

Pretty much the only good things to come out of Ponibooru were the Youtube caption threads, the dance parties, and the ever lovable Roboshi, he who faves all.

So when the deadbeat owner of PB whose name I forgot couldn’t pay the (incredibly shitty and slower-than-fucking-molasses) server bills and the site went out with a smile, I have a hunch that all the shitheads from there either migrated to Derpibooru where they ragequit because the the mods such as #Basedthe-smiling-pony actually DO THEIR JOB, or they went to /mlp/ where the only mod who did anything worthwhile was Scruffy, who instead of punishing shitposters or doing anything worthwhile, decided to ban several beloved generals where all the people who WEREN’T shitty hung out.

But I guess he either mellowed out, quit, or got booted out when Moot HYRDRA’d halfchan, because I haven’t heard complaints about him in a while.

I could always be wrong and I may have some chronology out of whack, but that’s the theory I’ve just now realized might serve as to why it got so shitty (apart from the aforementioned “RUINED FOREVER!!!!!11” crowd).

[cetaceanhandiwork]

Running Ponibooru was an interesting experience. Harrowing, but I think I learned some important stuff during the 1-2 years it was alive.

If you define "success" as a userbase and an income stream, being in the right place at the right time is 75% of the battle. Ponibooru happened to be the first site for its niche in what became a huge community, so even though it was badly moderated, badly coded, and never designed to be a place where people congregate, it ended up in a situation where it was getting 200k daily ad hits and people relied on it as their main entertainment pipe. If I'd been more responsible, dedicated, personable, and/or manipulative, that place could have been a source of money and clout for me for years. All because I set up a ten-minutes-to-installation imageboard about ponies while the fandom was still gathering momentum.

Cheap solutions don't last, people will congregate on any site with a communications mechanism, and if you don't want to be crushed by success you need to plan for it. Using Shimmie as the base for Ponibooru was my second-biggest mistake, and it was compounded by the fact that I didn't have the inclination to brew an actual, scalable replacement for it. I've put thought into alternatives, if I ever get back into building online social platforms, but they're the kind of solutions that will take hard work to implement. There's really no alternative, though; if it takes off like Ponibooru did, or even one tenth as well as Ponibooru did, I need to be ready. Cheap solutions can get you in, but they can't get you the win.

Administration of a website doesn't require you to deny your nature, and attempting to do so is unsustainable. This - not server problems, not money issues, not trolls or pressure - was what killed Ponibooru in the end: I decided at the beginning that I had no right to impose my ideals on the community, but in the end, the community became something I could no longer support in good conscience. Looking back, I think that decision made the whole project doomed from the start; if you pledge your assistance to a community, but deny yourself the right to help guide that community, sooner or later it'll become something you can't stomach. If you're going to be a leader, you need to lead, and you need to lead from your own ideals. Anything else is setting yourself up for a contradiction.

[fishermod]

Is Ponibooru gone?

I didn't think it was supposed to go down for another two weeks...

[fishermod]

I suppose none of you would have a way of contacting Eco, admin of Ponibooru, would you?

If I can get Ponibooru's pageviews/day from him, I can complete my calculations and determine if Ponibooru can be revitalized.

[derpyhoovestechsupport-blog]

[theroyalcanterlotvoice]

The Tragedy of Ponibooru, Prince of Imageboards

Ponibooru, succumbing to poison, uttered its dying words,

"O, I die, EQD; the virulent spamming quite o'er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from Season Three; but I do prophesy the succession lights on Derpibooru: it has my dying voice; so tell it, with the occurrents, more and less, which have solicited. The rest is silence."

Ponibooru died.

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet imageboard: and flights of pegasi sing thee to thy rest!"

-Teddington