Imperial Palace

Imperial Palace
Founded	July 29, 2010
Closed	N/A
Current Status	Active, undergoing hiatus
Preceded By	Prehistopia
Specialty	All manner of discussions
Security Level	High
Forum Provider	Zetaboards
URL	http://s4.zetaboards.com/Imperial_Home/index/
Founder	Spinosaur King
Number of Users	109

Imperial Palace is an active Zetaboards-based forum and the successor of Prehistopia. It is the second-largest forum used by the Topix Dinosaur Forum community (after the dinosaur forum itself) and likely the most secure. Ironically, it has been the victim of the most hacking attempts (at least twice), but neither attempt was successful.

After numerous disasters and troll attacks on TDF, Imperial Palace is now considered the proper home of the community.

History

Origins

Imperial Palace's origins can be traced to July 21, 2010. At that time, Prehistopia was in its prime, with Spinosaur King and Lord of the Allosaurs as its administrators. The forum was thriving, with civil, scientific discussions being held; however, there was about to be a disturbing change.

While posting a new thread, LOTA noticed that the option to access the admin panel from his account had dissapeared. He also noticed that he did not have the ability to ban users. He sent a private message to Spinosaur King, asking him to restore his admin powers. Spinosaur King agreed to help, but then realized that his admin powers, too, had gone.

Spinosaur King informed LOTA of the problem before sending an email to the forum service provider. The day continued with discussions continuing as normal, but by the following morning, the situation had become much worse.

Users began to lose ability after ability, including the ability to post and use threads. Spinosaur King decided to open up a backup board for the community to visit. He decided to choose a more secure forum provider than Xobor, Zetaboards.

He spent the next few hours setting user permissions and creating discussion sections. He decided to name the board "Paleo Insanity". Users from Prehistopia fled to Imperial Palace, and began their first discussions. Later, however, Xobor managed to repair the damage to Prehistopia and users returned to the forum and continued discussions. Paleo Insanity was largely forgotten, but later it would save the community from destruction.

After the Prehistopia Incident, during which Aequitas the Eliberator tricked LOTA into granting him admin rights and proceded to delete all of the content on the forum, the Prehistopian community began to gather on Topix, where Aequitas announced his attack on the board to the Topix Dinosaur Forum community.

Meanwhile, Spinosaur King re-opened Paleo Insanity, and posted a link on Topix, inviting all contributors from Prehistopia to join. A few, including Spinodontosaurus, Lord of the Allosaurs, Wilferrel, and Acrospinosaurus, did join, but most fled to PaudieN1's Paleo Place, as it was already an established forum.

Over the next few days, the chaos caused by Aequitas' arrival continued, but slowly began to settle. Meanwhile, Spinosaur King began his attempt to rebuild the Prehistopian community.

Formation

Several days after the reopening of Paleo Insanity, the shock from the Prehistopia Incident began to settle. Users discussed with one another in a more civil manner, and the first threads were created. Gradually, more and more topics were created, including dinosaur debates, vs. threads, community discussions, and some junk discussions. However, progress of Paleo Insanity was much slower than the progress of Prehistopia had been, and it took almost a week for the foundations to be completed.

Once the essential topics had been created, users began to post more frequently. Spinodontosaurus and Lord of the Allosaurs were among the most supportive users, attempting to freshen topics and start finer discussions. Other users, such as Wilferrel and Acrospinosaurus, also attempted to enrich discussions. However, there were few members, and the new forum functions were somewhat unfamiliar to them, so progress remained slow.

Meanwhile, Spinosaur King was working virtually non-stop behind the scenes, tweaking Paleo Insanity's settings and categorizing topics. To prevent a repeat of the Prehistopia Incident, Spinosaur King remained the sole administrator of Paleo Insanity; as moderators had the ability to block or ban users, they were far more useful than they had been on Prehistopia.

Tommy15994 registered for an account on Paleo Insanity soon after its creation. He took part in community and junk discussions, and made helpful suggestions to the community, such as the creation of a media section. Based on Tommy's suggestion, Spinosaur King created Imperial Palace's media discussions section.

With the foundations of Paleo Insanity complete, the community was ready to rise from the rubble. However, they would face a few complications.

Early Weeks

Throughout August of 2010, Paleo Insanity grew at a steady pace. The forum centred around zoology discussions, and many topics were discussed, from vs. threads and new discoveries to discussion of living animals. The General Discussions forum also saw the creation of a number of topics. In late August, Ethan Dino, under the name of Stark, registered on Paleo Insanity and attempted to trick Lord of the Allosaurs into granting him admin rights, claiming to be Tommy15994. However, LOTA was not fooled, and hastily banned Ethan from Paleo Insanity. 

Paleo Insanity's growth slowed towards the beginning of September. A significant proportion of the members such as Zero Percent Wrong, stayed on PaudieN1's Paleo Place as it was already an established forum. Paleo Insanity, therefore, had few members, and its growth continued to slow as a result. Few of the topics from Prehistopia were recreated, and the forum became quite stale.

Throughout September and October, the members continued to work on rebuilding, but with the amount of work and information lost, and the sites that had made up the Prehistopian Empire abandoned, progress slowed almost to a stop.

Troll attack

On October 14, 2010, a troll registered on Paleo Insanity under the name of Aequiatus the Eliberator (a misspelling of Aequitas), claiming to be the forum's administrator, and to have ensured that Spinosaur King would not be able to return to Paleo Insanity. At the time, the only members on the forum were Lord of the Allosaurs and Acrospinosaurus. At first they did not take "Aequiatus" seriously, but LOTA soon realized that he was unable to ban him, and sent an urgent message to Acrospinosaurus, telling him to log out of his account and watch the forum, as per Paleo Insanity's hacking policy. Lord of the Allosaurs emailed Spinosaur King, informed him of the goings on, and then openly mocked "Aequiatus", stating that if he was going to delete the board's content, he would already have done so. "Aequiatus" simply replied, "Do not tempt me", before being banned by Spinosaur King, who had recieved LOTA's email. 

After banning "Aequiatus", Spinosaur King informed the members of Topix what had happened. The genuine Aequitas immediately denied the accusations, and Spinosaur King investigated the account's history. He found that "Aequiatus" had never had admin panel rights to begin with, proving the troll to be an impersonator. An outraged Aequitas threatened to take revenge on both the troll and the community, before leaving Topix, seemingly for the last time. 

Later, Spinosaur King was informed by Zetaboards that the reason for Lord of the Allosaurs' inability to ban "Aequiatus" was most likely server maintenance. The incident was quickly forgotten by most of the community. 

2012 Troll Crisis

In early September, 2012, two new users, Fegelein (A troll on Topix Dinosaur Forum) and Altanative Whatever registered on Imperial Palace. When their accounts were activated, they began contributing in a civil matter. AW was welcomed as a new user usually is, however, there was a lot of tension between Fegelein and the community. Feglein began posting at an alarming speed, and by the first day of his registration he had already posted over 100 posts. Because of this, the ammount of posts required to become a senior member was raised from 250 to 750 in order to prevent Fegelein from reaching the rank very quickly.

Meanwhile, Altanative Whatever created a popular yet controversial thread entitled "The One sentence Story". It retained quite a bit of contraversy due to it simply being used to increase post-averages. Although several users, namely Edaphosaurus wished for this thread to be closed, in remained open. Soon, however, Fegelein began making posts insulting homosexuals in that thread, and his account was banned, even though Fegelein later came out and rejected those homophobic comments. However, Altanative Whatever gave Fegelein his password so Fegelein began using AW's account to troll, so he was IP banned. Later, AW was banned due to giving Fegelein his password. After the crisis, the IP community returned to normal.

Summer of 2013

The Summer of 2013 was marked by several changes in the forum's users. Raptorialhawk joined Imperial Palace during this time while Fegelein was allowed back, and both users began posting rapidly. The forum's activity was high during this time and both users were quickly (re)welcomed into the community.

Autumn-Winter 2013 Activity Lag

After the beginning of September, activity on the forum decreased rapidly. Few users were frequently active, with several exceptions such as Fegelein, Tyranna and raptorialhawk. Some days only two to four posts would be made on the forum.

Tyranna quickly attributed this to the imminent collapse of the forum, noting how most activity had been relegated back to the Junk Section and little was being added to the science-related parts of the forum. This, he said, was partly due to how Fegelein's rapid low-quality posting had turned other users off. These ideas received a mixed reception from other users, with some prematurely concluding that Tyranna was correct.

During some times of late Autumn activity spiked back again, but at the beginning of December daily posts would usually number three or four. LOTA attributed this to Christmas holiadys, and, despite Tyranna's pessimistic observations, beginning with January activity increased tremendously.

Moderator Elections 2014

On the last day of the year, Spinosaur King posted the annual moderator election thread. Within an hour, Fegelein, Tyrant Dino King, Lord of the Allosaurs and Tyranna had all voted.

Within a day nearly all users had voted, with LOTA strongly in the lead and ZPW and raptorialhawk far behind but nearly tied. Fegelein was one of the first to suggest that there should be at least three moderators, as before that three people had also had moderator powers - Spinodontosaurus, Tommy (after retiring from his admin position) and LOTA.

Then the situation got muddled. On the last day of the election another vote was cast, pushing ZPW ahead of TDK and raptorialhawk while having raptorialhawk and TDK tied with 4 votes. The fact that happy_happiest was indeed the one who had voted was confirmed by his own (last) post on IP.

Several users declared that happy_happiest's vote should count and raptorialhawk among others congratulated LOTA and ZPW as the new mods. Afterwards the elections quickly dissolved into chaos, with no permament agreement reached regarding whether or not the vote should be counted. After the elections ended another vote came in, though its source is still unknown.

In the end, LOTA and Zero became mods, though when LOTA was promoted SK had to make a choice whether to use TDK or raptorialhawk as a backup mod. In the end TDK said he was too busy, leaving raptorialhawk and Zero Percent Wrong as moderators with LOTA and Spinosaur King as admins.

Forum Revamping

After the elections, attention was re-focused on the future of the forum. Perhaps spurred by Tyranna's predictions, many felt that changes were necessary and that IP could be on the verge of an increase in members and general size. Not only that but the achievement of the 20 000th post on Imperial Palace earlier during Autumn might have contributed to these ideas, especially with some users declaring that the 30 000th post was imininent. As of early March, the post count has already exceeded 26 000.

Both the new ideas of those on the forum and the rapidly increasing numbers indicated that IP's future seemed to be arriving fast. Raptorialhawk created a thread called the Future of IP in which he proposed inviting new members from other science forums and expanding the focus of the board from paleontology to science and history in general. Spinosaur King also created a similar thread in which he asked users to comment on what their thought about the direction the forum should go in.

LOTA quickly began addressing user suggestions. Almost immediately after his promotion he created the much-requested Video & Image Gallery section. During February's staff meeting, the main topic was discussing what changes should be made to the forum. Included were solutions to an "overlapping signature" problem detected by some users, revamping the science & technology section of the board and further refining the Video & Image Gallery section.

Based on suggestions by moderators, LOTA was quick to create an entirely new Science & Technology section, including new forums to reduce clutter and accommodate the needs of the forum. Over the course of the following week staff members moved topics from old forums to new ones, completing the largest change in the forum itself since its creation.

Now the Science & Technology section of the board contains the following forums and subforums:

• Earth Sciences
• Biology
•      VS Forum
•      Cryptozoology
• Prehistory Debates
•      Cave Drawings (paleontology in the media)
• Expanding Knowledge
• Technology
• Other Sciences

Forum

Activity

The forum has gone through many activity lags and periods of high activity.