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| screenwidth=300
 
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| name=Sonic CulT
 
| name=Sonic CulT
| owner=[[Sazpaimon]]
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| owner=[[User:Sazpaimon|Sazpaimon]]
 
| url=http://www.sonic-cult.org
 
| url=http://www.sonic-cult.org
 
| type=Research
 
| type=Research
 
| launch=February 1999
 
| launch=February 1999
| status=Online
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| status=Offline
 
}}
 
}}
'''Sonic CulT''' is a large information repository started by [[PACHUKA]] in February of 1999. It was inspired by [[Simon Wai]] and his discovery of the [[Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Beta]].  Ever since then it has become known as one of the largest information repositories for Sonic the Hedgehog in the community.  It is currently run by [[Sazpaimon]], who also runs the CulT side project [[X-CulT]].
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'''Sonic CulT''' was a large information repository started by [[PACHUKA]] in February of 1999. It was inspired by [[Simon Wai]] and his discovery of the [[Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Beta]].  Ever since then it has become known as one of the largest information repositories for Sonic the Hedgehog in the community.  It was last run by [[User:Sazpaimon|Sazpaimon]], who also co-runs the CulT side project X-CulT with [[PACHUKA]]. Sonic CulT eventually closed down in April 2018 due to the website software becoming incompatible due to a server upgrade and with the site not being updated in years there was realistically no point to upgrade the software.
  
 
==Early Days==
 
==Early Days==
PACHUKA first emerged in the emulation group as head of EmuCult, which challenged the status quo of then-prominent emulation sites such as Overclocked and Zophar's Domain by ridiculing and mocking them. In his spare time, Pach set up several small sites called the CultChyldren, including one named simply "Sonic CulT," stylized with a capitalized T due to the emerald in its logo. The CulT was basically a gathering of information PACHUKA had found via Game Genie codes (around this time, he published an early ''[[Sonic 2]]'' hack, Twiztid Sonic 2, which had basic palette/text/playlist changes) and the earliest pieces of the research scene—information on the Wai [[Sonic 2 Beta]] and magazine scans.
 
  
===PACHUKA vs. Saxman===
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{{Community-historical}}
As Sonic CulT began to grow, in 2000, [[Andy Wolan]] of the [[Sonic Stuff Research Group]] attempted to join the two together.  This failed due to the SSRG's hosting on ZTNet, which also hosts sites such as Emulation Camp and Zophar's Domain, both of which had been hacked by PACHUKA in the past during the time EmuCult was open.  The SSRG's host refused to host them, and PACHUKA was given access to the news script for the SSRG as a consolation.  A few weeks later, the news script was hacked by someone who began to post offensive content. Andy blamed PACHUKA, as he believed the IP's matched, and publicly lashed out at him on the main page of the SSRG. However, since both PACHUKA and the hacker used AOL at the time, and all AOL users are assigned dynamic IPs from the same pool, it was impossible to show that PACHUKA was the hacker based solely on the IP address. PACHUKA was proven innocent, but Andy refused to apologise. He claimed that [[Saxman]] wrote the news article and that he was the one to ask for an apology from. Saxman refused to give PACHUKA an apology, and the two quarreled for two years.
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PACHUKA first emerged in the emulation group as co-head of EmuCult, which challenged the status quo of then-prominent emulation sites such as Overclocked, Emucamp, Retrogamer, and Zophar's Domain by ridiculing and mocking them. In his spare time, Pach set up a site called CultChyldren, including "Sonic CulT," (Stylized with a capitalized T due to the emerald in its logo.) from the former EmuCult. The Sonic-CulT was basically a gathering of information PACHUKA had found via Game Genie codes (around this time, he published an early ''[[Sonic 2]]'' hack, Twiztid Sonic 2, which had basic palette/text/playlist changes) and the earliest pieces of the research scene—information on the Wai [[Sonic 2 Beta]] and magazine scans.
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===PACHUKA and saxman===
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As Sonic CulT began to grow, in 2000, [[User:NO CARRIER|Andy Wolan]] of the [[Sonic Stuff Research Group]] attempted to join the two together.  This failed due to the SSRG's hosting on ZTNet, which also hosts sites such as Emulation Camp and Zophar's Domain, both of which had been hacked by PACHUKA in the past during the time EmuCult was open.  ZTNet refused to host them, and PACHUKA was given access to the news script for the SSRG as a consolation.  A few weeks later, the news script was hacked by someone who began to post offensive content. Andy blamed PACHUKA, as he believed the IP's matched, and publicly lashed out at him on the main page of the SSRG. However, since both PACHUKA and the hacker used AOL at the time, and all AOL users are assigned dynamic IPs from the same pool, it was impossible to show that PACHUKA was the hacker based solely on the IP address. PACHUKA was proven innocent, but Andy refused to apologize. He claimed that [[User:Saxman|saxman]] wrote the news article and that he was the one to ask for an apology from. saxman refused to give PACHUKA an apology, and the two quarreled for two years.
  
 
===DUST HILL IS FAKE===
 
===DUST HILL IS FAKE===
[[Image:fake.gif|thumb|right|Infamous avatar of PACHUKA's during the DUST HILL IS FAKE flamewar]]
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[[Image:fake.png|thumb|right|Infamous avatar of PACHUKA's during the DUST HILL IS FAKE flamewar]]
After a four-month stint in jail in mid-2001, PACHUKA returned to the scene by posting "DUST HILL IS FAKE" to [[Area 51]]. Due to the [[Desert level]] picture and the first series of interviews with [[Brenda Ross]], it was widely believed in the Sonic research community that [[Dust Hill Zone]] was in fact the Desert Level. Though he had calmly and logically explained his justifications, the posters at Area 51 attacked him and bickered amongst themselves for more than 20 pages before [[Stealth]] closed the topic and forbade further discussion on the matter.
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After a four-month stint in jail in mid-2001, PACHUKA returned to the scene by posting "DUST HILL IS FAKE" to [[Area 51]]. Due to the [[Desert level]] picture and the first series of interviews with [[Brenda Ross]], it was widely believed in the Sonic research community that [[Dust Hill Zone]] was in fact the Desert Level. PACHUKA argued that it was very unlikely that the picture was real, and that the level had never made it out of the concept stage. Though he had calmly and logically explained his justifications, the posters at Area 51 attacked him and bickered amongst themselves for more than 20 pages before [[Stealth]] closed the topic and forbade further discussion on the matter.
 
 
PACHUKA retaliated in what would become his signature style — by repeatedly starting flamewars. In [http://www.sonic-cult.org/community/index.php?showtopic=1560 one instance], he asked for the address of the X-Team server (a minor site at the time). He soon figured it out on his own, retrieved the file he was looking for, and then left. However, the site's owner ("thissideupxl") thought that he was preparing an attack against it. He cited a previous instance in which he had gotten the server taken down by making a "flase complaint" about child pornography. Stealth asked him why his host would take down the server if it was not actually violating the TOS, and in the middle of this argument, [[Friend of Sonic]] used one of Stealth's posts to bash Pachuka. At this point the argument shifted towards FoS's behavior, and Stealth warned him to cease his offtopic flaming. When he didn't, Stealth banned him. Stealth was accused of "kissing Pachuka's ass", among other things, in a two-day-long flamewar that culminated in him wiping the board and leaving a message about how everyone was stupid and ignorant.
 
  
During this time, the Sonic CulT Ikonboard first emerged, and though many people were familiar with the site, few visited the forums. However, the instability of Area 51 and the SSRG in the months following (forum switches, Area 51 being shut down due to "software piracy," etc.) led to a boon in traffic, where former members of Area 51 migrated to the CulT. In this time, the IRC Channel #area51 on Mirkknet became popular amongst forumgoers, which helped establish the true social order of the CulT, despite not being an affiliated channel. IRCops dosdemon and lord joined Sonic CulT and members who would later become Admins or Posse ([[Grap3fruitman|Grap3]], [[Ryoga]], [[Beta]], etc.) were among the most active and often opped.
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===First Cult Forums===
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The Sonic CulT Ikonboard first emerged, and though many people were familiar with the site, few visited the forums. However, the instability of Area 51 and the SSRG in the months following (forum switches, Area 51 being shut down due to "software piracy," etc.) led to a boom in traffic, where former members of Area 51 migrated to the CulT. In this time, the IRC Channel #area51 on Mirkknet became popular amongst forum-goers, which helped establish the true social order of the CulT, despite not being an affiliated channel. IRCops dosdemon and lord joined Sonic CulT and members who would later become Admins or Posse ([[User:Grap3fruitman|Grap3]], [[User:RyogaMasaki|RyogaMasaki]], [[Beta]], etc.) were among the most active and often opped.
  
===Sonic CulT vs. SSRG===
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===Sonic CulT and SSRG===
Andy's hatred of PACHUKA began in 2002 when Andy shut down Saxman's site, due to arguments between the two.  Saxman asked to have his work removed from the SSRG, and Andy refused, removing his entire site. Since Saxman and PACHUKA had recently made up, PACHUKA posted news about it on the front page of his website. This infuriated Andy, who proceeded to say many harsh things in an IM conversation to PACHUKA [http://www.sonic-cult.org/!trash/Andy%20and%20PACHUKA%20(After%20sonichacking.org%20drama).htm].  PACHUKA began to publicly retaliate against Andy, in hopes of helping Saxman get his site back, resulting in a major flamewar. PACHUKA was eventually banned from [[Area 51]].
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Andy's hatred of PACHUKA began in 2002 when Andy shut down saxman's site, due to arguments between the two.  saxman asked to have his work removed from the SSRG, and Andy refused, removing his entire site. Since saxman and PACHUKA had recently made up, PACHUKA posted news about it on the front page of his website. This infuriated Andy, who proceeded to say many harsh things in an IM conversation to PACHUKA [http://www.sonic-cult.org/!trash/Andy%20and%20PACHUKA%20(After%20sonichacking.org%20drama).htm].  PACHUKA began to publicly retaliate against Andy, in hopes of helping saxman get his site back, resulting in a major flamewar. PACHUKA was eventually banned from [[Area 51]]. During this time, the CulT moved to its current .org domain, established a #cult channel on Mirkknet and set up an Invision Board which became quite popular.  
  
Saxman never got his site back from Andy, so PACHUKA offered to host it. He purchased the domain and hosted it on the server Emucult was hosted on. Saxman tried to reason with Andy on the SSRG's forums, however all of his posts were deleted.  Later that year, GerbilSoft and Ultima were banned from the SSRG, because both expressed interest in joining Saxman's new hacking community, [[SHaCNet]].  Eventually, Andy claimed that SSRG is dead, and began posting Anti-PACHUKA and anti-Saxman articles on his site.  Saxman attempted to make a truce with Andy, who demanded that Saxman take down the history page on his site. Saxman did not wish to do this, but offered to edit out any negative comments towards Andy or the SSRG. Andy declined the offer and insited that the history page had to be removed completely.  Exhausted, Saxman gave up the truce:
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saxman never got his site back from Andy, so PACHUKA offered to host it. PACHUKA purchased the domain ([[SHaCNet]]) and hosted it on the server Sonic-CulT was hosted on. saxman tried to reason with Andy on the SSRG's forums, however all of his posts were deleted.  Later that year, GerbilSoft and Ultima were banned from the SSRG, because both expressed interest in joining saxman's new hacking community, [[SHaCNet]].  Eventually, Andy claimed that SSRG is dead, and began posting Anti-PACHUKA and anti-saxman articles on his site.  saxman attempted to make a truce with Andy, who demanded that saxman take down the history page on his site. saxman did not wish to do this, but offered to edit out any negative comments towards Andy or the SSRG. Andy declined the offer and insisted that the history page had to be removed completely.  Exhausted, saxman gave up the truce:
  
[[Image:Peace1wylb4.gif|thumb|right|Image posted in the 'ENOUGH' topics on SSRG and CulT]]
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[[Image:Peace1wylb4.png|thumb|right|Image posted in the 'ENOUGH' topics on SSRG and CulT]]
{{quote|1=Well it's official -- the truce is off. He's going to update his stupid little "Saxman" page to include the e-mails and probably a bunch more lies. I'm so SICK and TIRED of this. I just want it to end.... but I refuse to change my site in unfair ways just to end it. It he doesn't like my generous offer of modifying that Story page and all, that's his problem. He can whine all he wants. It'll end when people who support him realize that "hey, this guy won't let this thing die." It might take the longest time, but it'll happen sooner or later. Well, let's keep a watch for an exciting new update to the Saxman page shall we?! =D|2=Saxman}}
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{{quote|1=Well it's official -- the truce is off. He's going to update his stupid little "saxman" page to include the e-mails and probably a bunch more lies. I'm so SICK and TIRED of this. I just want it to end.... but I refuse to change my site in unfair ways just to end it. It he doesn't like my generous offer of modifying that Story page and all, that's his problem. He can whine all he wants. It'll end when people who support him realize that "hey, this guy won't let this thing die." It might take the longest time, but it'll happen sooner or later. Well, let's keep a watch for an exciting new update to the saxman page shall we?! =D|2=saxman}}
  
 
===The Fall of SSRG===
 
===The Fall of SSRG===
Pachuka was later banned from the [[Sonic Secrets Center]], but this proved to be a misunderstanding and the ban was lifted. [http://www.sonic-cult.org/!trash/!turd/digi.htm]. When Andy found out about this he asked [[Digital Xeron]], the administrator who unbanned him, to reinstate the ban once more. Xeron put up almost no resistance to Andy's complaints and banned PACHUKA within minutes. [http://www.sonic-cult.org/!trash/!turd/andychat.htm]
 
  
Soon thereafter, Andy announced his retirement from SSRG.  He gave ownership of the site to [[Magus|Chaos]]. Chaos got along with PACHUKA better than Andy had, and the two managed to form a 'peace treaty'.  A topic called 'ENOUGH' was posted on CulT and SSRG, showing to everyone that there would be peace between the two sites.  An infuriated Andy Wolan stormed back onto the scene and banned PACHUKA from the SSRG. PACHUKA took down Sonic CulT in protest and refused to bring it back up until Andy agreed for peace. Instead, Andy replaced the whole of SSRG with a simple page declaring its death. Three days after the incident, Jan Abaza called it quits, and closed down the Area 51 community for good. Most of the former Area 51 users migrated to either [[Sonic 2 Beta]] or the Sonic CulT community forums.
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Soon thereafter, Andy announced his retirement from SSRG.  He gave ownership of the site to [[User:Magus|Chaos]]. Chaos got along with PACHUKA better than Andy had, and the two managed to form a 'peace treaty'.  A topic called 'ENOUGH' was posted on CulT and SSRG, showing to everyone that there would be peace between the two sites.  An infuriated Andy Wolan stormed back onto the scene and banned PACHUKA from the SSRG. PACHUKA took down Sonic CulT in protest and refused to bring it back up until Andy agreed for peace. Instead, Andy replaced the whole of SSRG with a simple page declaring its death. PACHUKA brought the CulT back up, stating:
  
==Rise to Power==
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{{quote|1=SSRG and Sonic Cult were SUPPOSED to be on friendly terms now. I approached Chaos and we agreed that the actions of Andy weren't going to be repeated, and we could be friends. And if we could be friendly, so could the 2 communities. I thought it was a good idea. Chaos thought it was a good idea. Both communities thought it was a great idea. But Andy, in all of his selfish glory, felt that peace with someone he didn't like was unacceptable. And Andy, not trusting ANYONE to make up thier own mind, came back from his "retirement of maturity" and decided to show everyone that a "25 year old man that can't be running a video game website" was in fact, so full of shit that his eyes are brown. Due to this, I took the cult down out of protest to show people I was serious.
When SSRG closed down, Sonic CulT took the spot as the largest Sonic research site in the community. Many of SSRG's previous members either migrated to Sonic CulT, or other smaller sites such as [[Sonic Classic]]. During this time, the CulT moved to its current .org domain, established a #cult channel on Mirkknet and set up an Invision Board which became quite popular.  
 
  
Pachuka returned to Sonic Classic. He quickly took offense at [[Sonic Sue]]'s behavior towards one of his friends, Sonique. He believed that Sue was being harder on her than she should have been. His response was to spam-bump old topics with offensive image macros. Sue banned him for it, later claiming that he failed to heed her warnings. This only caused more tension between the two, and [[LocalH]] eventually came to Sue's defense. He was a mod on Sonic CulT at the time, and his constant attacks on Pach for his feud with Sue became so annoying to him that he demoted LocalH. LocalH then began pressing for a peace agreement between Sue and Pach, which Pach eventually agreed to.
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So, why is it back? 3 reasons:<br />
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<nowiki>#1</nowiki> I do whatever I want to do.<br />
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<nowiki>#2</nowiki> I didn't think it was fair to punish the people of the CulT because of some asshole.<br />
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<nowiki>#3</nowiki> I got logs of Andy admitting he was full of shit, and just doing this to make everyone hate me.|2=PACHUKA}}
  
When Pach learned that Sue and LocalH were still attacking him in private, he deliberately got himself banned from [[S2Beta]] so that he could restart the flamewar in public. Then, on February 16 2003, Pach returned to SClassic and posted [[X._Astray_and_Confusion_Abounds#Sonic_Classic_vs._Sonic_Cult|a topic]]. In his post he linked to LocalH's chat logs, which he had found in a public directory. These logs showed him plotting with Sue against Pach. LocalH all but confirmed the authenticity of these logs, and later apologised to Pach. Pach then apologised to the SClassic staff in general.
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Three days after the incident, Jan Abaza called it quits, and closed down the Area 51 community for good. Most of the former Area 51 users migrated to either [[SWS2B|Sonic 2 Beta]] or the Sonic CulT community forums.
  
Pach later pissed off The Moogle Cavern's staff. TMC replied by adding rule stating that their members shouldn't mention the name PACHUKA or Sonic CulT. Everything calms down, then Grap3fruitman posts on TMC that Pach has a beta of Sonic Mega Collection. No one believed him. Pach posted screenshots of the beta, but he was flamed anyway.
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==Rise to Power==
 
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When SSRG closed down, Sonic CulT had already become the largest Sonic research site in the community. Many of SSRG's previous members either migrated to Sonic CulT, or other smaller sites such as [[Sonic Classic]].  
In approximately May of 2003, Pach shut down the Sonic CulT boards. He claimed that he didn't have passion for the site anymore, and that he was weary of everyone complaining about his dictatorship. A week later, he restoree the boards with a new name (SCARAD) and a new government style: Democracy. There was a new forum named "Community Forum" where users could add polls and vote on who should get kicked out and who should get family/posse/admin, etc. It didn't work well, so Pach decided to shut the boards down again, only to get a fresh new messageboard called SCARZ (in honor of Sonic Tsunami, and his SCARRRRRRRRRRZ) running under dictatorship yet again.
 
  
<nowiki>#</nowiki>cult moved on to AJ's Phasedisruptor ircd (which was originally created for injoke channel #nazis) in October 2003 due to Mirkknet's merger with Foxchat (On Foxchat, dosdemon was no longer an IRCop and aliases were limited to eight characters).  
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In approximately May of 2003, Pach shut down the Sonic CulT boards. He claimed that he didn't have passion for the site anymore, and that he was weary of everyone complaining about his dictatorship. A week later, he restored the boards with a new name (SCARAD) and a new government style: Democracy. There was a new forum named "Community Forum" where users could add polls and vote on who should get kicked out and who should get family/posse/admin, etc. It didn't work well, so Pach held a vote to see if people wanted to have it done the old way again. After the overwhelming "HELLS YEAH" response came in, CulT was treated to a fresh new messageboard called SCARZ (in honor of [[Sonic Tsunami]], and his SCARRRRRRRRRRZ) running under dictatorship yet again. During this time there were many forums added and removed from SCARZ, such as Ask Alice, Shit Talk, and "OMG, DRAW PLZ."
  
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<nowiki>#</nowiki>cult moved on to AJ's Phasedisruptor irc server (which was originally created for injoke channel #nazis) in October 2003 due to Mirkknet's merger with Foxchat (On Foxchat, dosdemon was no longer an IRCop and aliases were limited to eight characters). [[User:Boozer|Boozer]] then jumped in with his own server and customized IRCd, and after a while CulT IRC grew into pretty vast network. CulT IRC at this time caused a significant amount of [[lulz|controversy]] due to the abusive nature of its IRCops, who had taken a liking to some of the new commands the customized IRCd offered: the ability to make users "say" things that they hadn't really said, the ability to appear completely invisible in chat rooms to non-IRCops, and other similar things.
  
 
===Greenegg===
 
===Greenegg===
 
{{sectstub}}
 
{{sectstub}}
Many members, PACHUKA included, weren't pleased with how the site was laid out.  All pages were static HTML, and very disorganized. PACHUKA concluded that the site needed an entirely new [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system CMS]. [[Goomba]] was given license to create this new system, which came to be known as Greenegg. Upon completion, it was uploaded to the server, and PACHUKA shut down the site's main page while he rebuilt it. It's still being used by the site today. Greenegg is a MySQL-based CMS, and wound up being far better organized than the original static webpages. However, the system is showing its age, and closer inspection shows that it was very poorly written. The current owner of the site, [[Sazpaimon]], has given the task of rewriting Sonic CulT's CMS to [[drx]].
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Many members, PACHUKA included, weren't pleased with how the site was laid out.  All pages were static HTML, and very disorganized. PACHUKA concluded that the site needed an entirely new [[wikipedia:Content management system|CMS]]. [[Goomba]] (Co-founder of EmuCult) was given license to create this new system, which came to be known as Greenegg. (based around a theme of a green Death Egg) Upon completion, it was uploaded to the server, and PACHUKA shut down the site's main page while he rebuilt it. It's still being used by the site today. Greenegg is a MySQL-based CMS, and wound up being far better organized than the original static webpages. However, the system is showing its age, and closer inspection shows that it was very poorly written. The current owner of the site, [[User:Sazpaimon|Sazpaimon]], has given the task of rewriting Sonic CulT's CMS to [[User:Drx|drx]].
  
 
==Recent years==
 
==Recent years==
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===CulT Buyout and Ownership Change===
 
===CulT Buyout and Ownership Change===
In mid-2004, PACHUKA announced that he was no longer interested in running his website, and decided to sell it to the highest bidder.  Many CulT members put up funds to buy the CulT, totaling $850.  Member [[Tigress]] fronted the money, and was later paid back by others who had promised to pay.  The consensus was that the member Sazpaimon, and at the time maintainer, would be appointed as head of operations of the website. On August 18th, 2004, PACHUKA gave the team temporary hosting on his current server, which ended up being a bad decision, as the host was asking for sums totaling $200 per month, whereas PACHUKA received free hosting.  Soon after, Tigress gave her share of the site to [[InsaneSonikkuFan]], her boyfriend at the time.
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In mid-2004, PACHUKA announced that he was no longer interested in running his website, and decided to sell it to the highest bidder.  Many CulT members put up funds to buy the CulT, totaling $850.  Member [[Tigress]] fronted the money, and was later paid back by others who had promised to pay.  The consensus was that the member Sazpaimon, and at the time maintainer, would be appointed as head of operations of the website. On August 18th, 2004, PACHUKA gave the team temporary hosting on his current server, which ended up being a bad decision, as the host was asking for sums totaling $200 per month, whereas PACHUKA received free hosting.  Soon after, Tigress gave her share of the site to [[User:InsaneSonikkuFan|InsaneSonikkuFan]], her boyfriend at the time.
  
 
Many members of the site voiced their general displeasure with the ownership change, calling the site "[[The CAD Room|TCR]] CulT." Angry forumgoers hacked the site several times.  Soon after the ownership change the hosting was cut for unknown reasons and without any backups.  A strategy for bringing the site back up was established, and on October 3rd the site was back online.  Unfortunately, the team could not come up with the money pay for December's hosting bills, and Sazpaimon decided to shut the site down.
 
Many members of the site voiced their general displeasure with the ownership change, calling the site "[[The CAD Room|TCR]] CulT." Angry forumgoers hacked the site several times.  Soon after the ownership change the hosting was cut for unknown reasons and without any backups.  A strategy for bringing the site back up was established, and on October 3rd the site was back online.  Unfortunately, the team could not come up with the money pay for December's hosting bills, and Sazpaimon decided to shut the site down.
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PACHUKA had noticed the team's difficulty with maintaining the CulT, and offered his hand in helping them. PACHUKA's plan was to pretend that he was returning to the site as owner, while Sazpaimon could do as he pleased with the site. Sazpaimon would receive free hosting because the server admin believed that the site belonged to PACHUKA. Sazpaimon agreed, and informed InsaneSonikkuFan of Pachuka's plan. ISF did not trust Pach, and  even went so far as to ask for a signed and written statement from him. When he was informed of this, Pach pointed out that ISF's opinions were immaterial - Saz owned the domain, and he was the one in charge. Sazpaimon dismissed ISF and gave the domain to PACHUKA for him to use as proof to his host that he ran the site again.
 
PACHUKA had noticed the team's difficulty with maintaining the CulT, and offered his hand in helping them. PACHUKA's plan was to pretend that he was returning to the site as owner, while Sazpaimon could do as he pleased with the site. Sazpaimon would receive free hosting because the server admin believed that the site belonged to PACHUKA. Sazpaimon agreed, and informed InsaneSonikkuFan of Pachuka's plan. ISF did not trust Pach, and  even went so far as to ask for a signed and written statement from him. When he was informed of this, Pach pointed out that ISF's opinions were immaterial - Saz owned the domain, and he was the one in charge. Sazpaimon dismissed ISF and gave the domain to PACHUKA for him to use as proof to his host that he ran the site again.
  
Pachuka was arrested shortly thereafter on charges of sexual intercourse with a minor. The site was taken offline by a friend of his with no way of bringing it back.  A temporary forum was established, but the main site would be offline until February of 2005.
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Pachuka was arrested shortly thereafter on charges of sexual battery. The site was taken offline by a friend of his with no way of bringing it back.  A temporary forum was established, but the main site would be offline until February of 2005.
  
 
===The Slow Return of the CulT===
 
===The Slow Return of the CulT===
 
During 2005, the site saw numerous server changes due to problems with different hosts. In February, the site was hosted on a friend of Sazpaimon's server for a very low price. Random outages prevented the server from being online at normal times, and a few months later the entire server went offline. The site was deleted before Sazpaimon could back it up.
 
During 2005, the site saw numerous server changes due to problems with different hosts. In February, the site was hosted on a friend of Sazpaimon's server for a very low price. Random outages prevented the server from being online at normal times, and a few months later the entire server went offline. The site was deleted before Sazpaimon could back it up.
  
Shortly afterward, Sazpaimon received hosting from a member named Dark, a friend of [[Tweaker]]'s. The CulT would reside on this server for a number of months before it was decided that it simply wasn't adequate as host to site as large as CulT. The site was moved onto a more powerful server, but it was DDoSed shortly thereafter and the host cancelled service.
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Shortly afterward, Sazpaimon received hosting from a member named Dark, a friend of [[User:Tweaker|Tweaker]]'s. The CulT would reside on this server for a number of months before it was decided that it simply wasn't adequate as host to site as large as CulT. The site was moved onto a more powerful server, but it was DDoSed shortly thereafter and the host canceled service.
  
 
Later that year, Sazpaimon had managed to get into PACHUKA's domain adminstrator account and recover the sonic-cult.org domain, as well as PACHUKA's other side-project domain, anti-otaku.com, mere weeks before the domains would have expired.
 
Later that year, Sazpaimon had managed to get into PACHUKA's domain adminstrator account and recover the sonic-cult.org domain, as well as PACHUKA's other side-project domain, anti-otaku.com, mere weeks before the domains would have expired.
Line 77: Line 79:
 
The CulT now owns a dedicated server which is used to host a number of community sites, including [[Hacking CulT]], [[Hidden Palace]], and NiGHTSintoDREAMS.com. Since then, the site has since regained its spot and popularity in the Sonic Community.  Though PACHUKA has been released from prison, he has no interest in maintaining the site, though he does keep in close contact with Sazpaimon.
 
The CulT now owns a dedicated server which is used to host a number of community sites, including [[Hacking CulT]], [[Hidden Palace]], and NiGHTSintoDREAMS.com. Since then, the site has since regained its spot and popularity in the Sonic Community.  Though PACHUKA has been released from prison, he has no interest in maintaining the site, though he does keep in close contact with Sazpaimon.
  
==External links==
+
On the site's tenth birthday, someone (possibly PACHUKA) posted on the site's front page that the information database would no longer be worked on and that its community had merged with X-Cult.
* [http://www.sonic-cult.org Sonic CulT's home page]
 
  
<!--- This section is so utterly convoluted that it needs to be completely rewritten. However, it can still serve as a reference to those editing in the future, so I'll just comment it out. --Aurochs
+
===Now===
==Crap==
+
The site has not been updated since 2012 and the main YouTube video is no longer available. The site was taken down on April 2018 along its sister site, the X-CulT forums due to a PHP upgrade on the server, breaking all the website and message board software with every page redirected to a enlarged Sonic death sprite.
Was sold to [[Tigress]] until [[Sazpaimon]] is 18, the site was on hiatus due to lack of a stable hosting solutio
 
  
n. Forums are known for being no-bull**** and, at the time, were operating under "Uber Ghetto Chinese Democracy" rule.
+
The exact reasons for the shutdown were provided on IRC:
 +
<nowiki>[20:04:18] <@Sazpaimon> I upgraded php on the server and couldn't be assed to retrofit all the old code for it
 +
[20:04:29] <@Sazpaimon> so i killed it
 +
[20:04:57] <@Sazpaimon> literally every piece of software on both sonic and x cult was incompatible
 +
[20:06:02] <voice> php5
 +
[20:06:09] <@Sazpaimon> php 5.3
 +
[20:06:19] <@Sazpaimon> pretty much the last version the site could run on
 +
[20:06:46] <voice> oddly enough the only thing that broke on rsn when I bumped to 7.x was a lot of the files had <? instead of <?php and
 +
apparently thats no longer acceptable
 +
[20:07:04] <@Sazpaimon> my dude
 +
[20:07:13] <@Sazpaimon> sonic cult's cms was literally written for php 4
 +
[20:07:45] <voice> sounds like fun
 +
[20:08:02] <@Sazpaimon> i would also need to upgrade invision board
 +
[20:08:12] <@Sazpaimon> which means paying for a license for invision board
 +
[20:08:21] <@Sazpaimon> which means porting the old skins to invision board
 +
[20:09:22] <voice> never understood why people didn't just go with free shit like phpBB
 +
[20:09:35] <voice> even the pay-for boards end up having massive security holes
 +
[20:09:42] <@Sazpaimon> that doesn't detract my second point
 +
[20:10:01] <voice> oh I understand the skins problem
 +
[20:10:08] <@Overlord> oh
 +
[20:10:26] <@Overlord> Sad to hear, it's the end of an era
 +
</nowiki>
  
A short time after, Tigress handed her responsibilities over to [[InsaneSonikkuFan]], as she wished to leave the scene.
+
==External links==
 
+
* [http://www.sonic-cult.org Sonic CulT's home page]
On August 18, 2004, PACHUKA abandoned the website to InsaneSonikkuFan and Sazpaimon. Later, the server it was on learned of the switchover and cut the Sonic CulT's space. As of now, the entire website is offline; there was a backup of their message board SCARZ, but it was currently off and the Sonic CulT's new administrators were asking for Paypal donations and money via ad banners.
 
 
 
On October 3, 2004, the site returned to a half-complete status; although the administrators were still asking for donations. A short time after, the site returned to full operational status.
 
 
 
In late 2004, PACHUKA returned and brought the site and forums back up completely, co-administrating the site with Saz.
 
 
 
This would be short lived as PACHUKA was soon arrested in December 2004 on charges of sexual abuse on a minor. At this point, PACHUKA was working on more revisions, and everything was down. The fact that he was arrested prevented bringing the site back up again.
 
 
 
As of February 2005, Saz brought the forums and website up completely again at the new domain, [http://www.sonic-cult.net sonic-cult.net], originally owned by Tigress.
 
 
 
--->
 
  
[[Category:Sites]]
+
[[Category:Fansites]]

Revision as of 03:55, 23 April 2018

Template:Infobox Website Sonic CulT was a large information repository started by PACHUKA in February of 1999. It was inspired by Simon Wai and his discovery of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Beta. Ever since then it has become known as one of the largest information repositories for Sonic the Hedgehog in the community. It was last run by Sazpaimon, who also co-runs the CulT side project X-CulT with PACHUKA. Sonic CulT eventually closed down in April 2018 due to the website software becoming incompatible due to a server upgrade and with the site not being updated in years there was realistically no point to upgrade the software.

Early Days

Sonic Retro emblem.svg The page or section you are about to read is a product of its time.
It may depict some of the arguments, prejudices, and uninformed opinions that were commonplace in the community, either in the history of or the recording of the same. These affairs were wrong then and they are wrong today. While the following does not represent our view of today's community, it is being presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming that these mistakes never existed.

PACHUKA first emerged in the emulation group as co-head of EmuCult, which challenged the status quo of then-prominent emulation sites such as Overclocked, Emucamp, Retrogamer, and Zophar's Domain by ridiculing and mocking them. In his spare time, Pach set up a site called CultChyldren, including "Sonic CulT," (Stylized with a capitalized T due to the emerald in its logo.) from the former EmuCult. The Sonic-CulT was basically a gathering of information PACHUKA had found via Game Genie codes (around this time, he published an early Sonic 2 hack, Twiztid Sonic 2, which had basic palette/text/playlist changes) and the earliest pieces of the research scene—information on the Wai Sonic 2 Beta and magazine scans.

PACHUKA and saxman

As Sonic CulT began to grow, in 2000, Andy Wolan of the Sonic Stuff Research Group attempted to join the two together. This failed due to the SSRG's hosting on ZTNet, which also hosts sites such as Emulation Camp and Zophar's Domain, both of which had been hacked by PACHUKA in the past during the time EmuCult was open. ZTNet refused to host them, and PACHUKA was given access to the news script for the SSRG as a consolation. A few weeks later, the news script was hacked by someone who began to post offensive content. Andy blamed PACHUKA, as he believed the IP's matched, and publicly lashed out at him on the main page of the SSRG. However, since both PACHUKA and the hacker used AOL at the time, and all AOL users are assigned dynamic IPs from the same pool, it was impossible to show that PACHUKA was the hacker based solely on the IP address. PACHUKA was proven innocent, but Andy refused to apologize. He claimed that saxman wrote the news article and that he was the one to ask for an apology from. saxman refused to give PACHUKA an apology, and the two quarreled for two years.

DUST HILL IS FAKE

Infamous avatar of PACHUKA's during the DUST HILL IS FAKE flamewar

After a four-month stint in jail in mid-2001, PACHUKA returned to the scene by posting "DUST HILL IS FAKE" to Area 51. Due to the Desert level picture and the first series of interviews with Brenda Ross, it was widely believed in the Sonic research community that Dust Hill Zone was in fact the Desert Level. PACHUKA argued that it was very unlikely that the picture was real, and that the level had never made it out of the concept stage. Though he had calmly and logically explained his justifications, the posters at Area 51 attacked him and bickered amongst themselves for more than 20 pages before Stealth closed the topic and forbade further discussion on the matter.

First Cult Forums

The Sonic CulT Ikonboard first emerged, and though many people were familiar with the site, few visited the forums. However, the instability of Area 51 and the SSRG in the months following (forum switches, Area 51 being shut down due to "software piracy," etc.) led to a boom in traffic, where former members of Area 51 migrated to the CulT. In this time, the IRC Channel #area51 on Mirkknet became popular amongst forum-goers, which helped establish the true social order of the CulT, despite not being an affiliated channel. IRCops dosdemon and lord joined Sonic CulT and members who would later become Admins or Posse (Grap3, RyogaMasaki, Beta, etc.) were among the most active and often opped.

Sonic CulT and SSRG

Andy's hatred of PACHUKA began in 2002 when Andy shut down saxman's site, due to arguments between the two. saxman asked to have his work removed from the SSRG, and Andy refused, removing his entire site. Since saxman and PACHUKA had recently made up, PACHUKA posted news about it on the front page of his website. This infuriated Andy, who proceeded to say many harsh things in an IM conversation to PACHUKA [1]. PACHUKA began to publicly retaliate against Andy, in hopes of helping saxman get his site back, resulting in a major flamewar. PACHUKA was eventually banned from Area 51. During this time, the CulT moved to its current .org domain, established a #cult channel on Mirkknet and set up an Invision Board which became quite popular.

saxman never got his site back from Andy, so PACHUKA offered to host it. PACHUKA purchased the domain (SHaCNet) and hosted it on the server Sonic-CulT was hosted on. saxman tried to reason with Andy on the SSRG's forums, however all of his posts were deleted. Later that year, GerbilSoft and Ultima were banned from the SSRG, because both expressed interest in joining saxman's new hacking community, SHaCNet. Eventually, Andy claimed that SSRG is dead, and began posting Anti-PACHUKA and anti-saxman articles on his site. saxman attempted to make a truce with Andy, who demanded that saxman take down the history page on his site. saxman did not wish to do this, but offered to edit out any negative comments towards Andy or the SSRG. Andy declined the offer and insisted that the history page had to be removed completely. Exhausted, saxman gave up the truce:

Image posted in the 'ENOUGH' topics on SSRG and CulT
Well it's official -- the truce is off. He's going to update his stupid little "saxman" page to include the e-mails and probably a bunch more lies. I'm so SICK and TIRED of this. I just want it to end.... but I refuse to change my site in unfair ways just to end it. It he doesn't like my generous offer of modifying that Story page and all, that's his problem. He can whine all he wants. It'll end when people who support him realize that "hey, this guy won't let this thing die." It might take the longest time, but it'll happen sooner or later. Well, let's keep a watch for an exciting new update to the saxman page shall we?! =D

— saxman

The Fall of SSRG

Soon thereafter, Andy announced his retirement from SSRG. He gave ownership of the site to Chaos. Chaos got along with PACHUKA better than Andy had, and the two managed to form a 'peace treaty'. A topic called 'ENOUGH' was posted on CulT and SSRG, showing to everyone that there would be peace between the two sites. An infuriated Andy Wolan stormed back onto the scene and banned PACHUKA from the SSRG. PACHUKA took down Sonic CulT in protest and refused to bring it back up until Andy agreed for peace. Instead, Andy replaced the whole of SSRG with a simple page declaring its death. PACHUKA brought the CulT back up, stating:

SSRG and Sonic Cult were SUPPOSED to be on friendly terms now. I approached Chaos and we agreed that the actions of Andy weren't going to be repeated, and we could be friends. And if we could be friendly, so could the 2 communities. I thought it was a good idea. Chaos thought it was a good idea. Both communities thought it was a great idea. But Andy, in all of his selfish glory, felt that peace with someone he didn't like was unacceptable. And Andy, not trusting ANYONE to make up thier own mind, came back from his "retirement of maturity" and decided to show everyone that a "25 year old man that can't be running a video game website" was in fact, so full of shit that his eyes are brown. Due to this, I took the cult down out of protest to show people I was serious.

So, why is it back? 3 reasons:
#1 I do whatever I want to do.
#2 I didn't think it was fair to punish the people of the CulT because of some asshole.
#3 I got logs of Andy admitting he was full of shit, and just doing this to make everyone hate me.

— PACHUKA

Three days after the incident, Jan Abaza called it quits, and closed down the Area 51 community for good. Most of the former Area 51 users migrated to either Sonic 2 Beta or the Sonic CulT community forums.

Rise to Power

When SSRG closed down, Sonic CulT had already become the largest Sonic research site in the community. Many of SSRG's previous members either migrated to Sonic CulT, or other smaller sites such as Sonic Classic.

In approximately May of 2003, Pach shut down the Sonic CulT boards. He claimed that he didn't have passion for the site anymore, and that he was weary of everyone complaining about his dictatorship. A week later, he restored the boards with a new name (SCARAD) and a new government style: Democracy. There was a new forum named "Community Forum" where users could add polls and vote on who should get kicked out and who should get family/posse/admin, etc. It didn't work well, so Pach held a vote to see if people wanted to have it done the old way again. After the overwhelming "HELLS YEAH" response came in, CulT was treated to a fresh new messageboard called SCARZ (in honor of Sonic Tsunami, and his SCARRRRRRRRRRZ) running under dictatorship yet again. During this time there were many forums added and removed from SCARZ, such as Ask Alice, Shit Talk, and "OMG, DRAW PLZ."

#cult moved on to AJ's Phasedisruptor irc server (which was originally created for injoke channel #nazis) in October 2003 due to Mirkknet's merger with Foxchat (On Foxchat, dosdemon was no longer an IRCop and aliases were limited to eight characters). Boozer then jumped in with his own server and customized IRCd, and after a while CulT IRC grew into pretty vast network. CulT IRC at this time caused a significant amount of controversy due to the abusive nature of its IRCops, who had taken a liking to some of the new commands the customized IRCd offered: the ability to make users "say" things that they hadn't really said, the ability to appear completely invisible in chat rooms to non-IRCops, and other similar things.

Greenegg

Sonicretro-round.svg This short section needs expansion. You can help Sonic Retro by adding to it.

Many members, PACHUKA included, weren't pleased with how the site was laid out. All pages were static HTML, and very disorganized. PACHUKA concluded that the site needed an entirely new CMS. Goomba (Co-founder of EmuCult) was given license to create this new system, which came to be known as Greenegg. (based around a theme of a green Death Egg) Upon completion, it was uploaded to the server, and PACHUKA shut down the site's main page while he rebuilt it. It's still being used by the site today. Greenegg is a MySQL-based CMS, and wound up being far better organized than the original static webpages. However, the system is showing its age, and closer inspection shows that it was very poorly written. The current owner of the site, Sazpaimon, has given the task of rewriting Sonic CulT's CMS to drx.

Recent years

Between 2004 to present, Sonic CulT has had several changes.

CulT Buyout and Ownership Change

In mid-2004, PACHUKA announced that he was no longer interested in running his website, and decided to sell it to the highest bidder. Many CulT members put up funds to buy the CulT, totaling $850. Member Tigress fronted the money, and was later paid back by others who had promised to pay. The consensus was that the member Sazpaimon, and at the time maintainer, would be appointed as head of operations of the website. On August 18th, 2004, PACHUKA gave the team temporary hosting on his current server, which ended up being a bad decision, as the host was asking for sums totaling $200 per month, whereas PACHUKA received free hosting. Soon after, Tigress gave her share of the site to InsaneSonikkuFan, her boyfriend at the time.

Many members of the site voiced their general displeasure with the ownership change, calling the site "TCR CulT." Angry forumgoers hacked the site several times. Soon after the ownership change the hosting was cut for unknown reasons and without any backups. A strategy for bringing the site back up was established, and on October 3rd the site was back online. Unfortunately, the team could not come up with the money pay for December's hosting bills, and Sazpaimon decided to shut the site down.

PACHUKA had noticed the team's difficulty with maintaining the CulT, and offered his hand in helping them. PACHUKA's plan was to pretend that he was returning to the site as owner, while Sazpaimon could do as he pleased with the site. Sazpaimon would receive free hosting because the server admin believed that the site belonged to PACHUKA. Sazpaimon agreed, and informed InsaneSonikkuFan of Pachuka's plan. ISF did not trust Pach, and even went so far as to ask for a signed and written statement from him. When he was informed of this, Pach pointed out that ISF's opinions were immaterial - Saz owned the domain, and he was the one in charge. Sazpaimon dismissed ISF and gave the domain to PACHUKA for him to use as proof to his host that he ran the site again.

Pachuka was arrested shortly thereafter on charges of sexual battery. The site was taken offline by a friend of his with no way of bringing it back. A temporary forum was established, but the main site would be offline until February of 2005.

The Slow Return of the CulT

During 2005, the site saw numerous server changes due to problems with different hosts. In February, the site was hosted on a friend of Sazpaimon's server for a very low price. Random outages prevented the server from being online at normal times, and a few months later the entire server went offline. The site was deleted before Sazpaimon could back it up.

Shortly afterward, Sazpaimon received hosting from a member named Dark, a friend of Tweaker's. The CulT would reside on this server for a number of months before it was decided that it simply wasn't adequate as host to site as large as CulT. The site was moved onto a more powerful server, but it was DDoSed shortly thereafter and the host canceled service.

Later that year, Sazpaimon had managed to get into PACHUKA's domain adminstrator account and recover the sonic-cult.org domain, as well as PACHUKA's other side-project domain, anti-otaku.com, mere weeks before the domains would have expired.

The CulT now owns a dedicated server which is used to host a number of community sites, including Hacking CulT, Hidden Palace, and NiGHTSintoDREAMS.com. Since then, the site has since regained its spot and popularity in the Sonic Community. Though PACHUKA has been released from prison, he has no interest in maintaining the site, though he does keep in close contact with Sazpaimon.

On the site's tenth birthday, someone (possibly PACHUKA) posted on the site's front page that the information database would no longer be worked on and that its community had merged with X-Cult.

Now

The site has not been updated since 2012 and the main YouTube video is no longer available. The site was taken down on April 2018 along its sister site, the X-CulT forums due to a PHP upgrade on the server, breaking all the website and message board software with every page redirected to a enlarged Sonic death sprite.

The exact reasons for the shutdown were provided on IRC:

[20:04:18] <@Sazpaimon> I upgraded php on the server and couldn't be assed to retrofit all the old code for it
[20:04:29] <@Sazpaimon> so i killed it
[20:04:57] <@Sazpaimon> literally every piece of software on both sonic and x cult was incompatible
[20:06:02] <voice> php5
[20:06:09] <@Sazpaimon> php 5.3
[20:06:19] <@Sazpaimon> pretty much the last version the site could run on
[20:06:46] <voice> oddly enough the only thing that broke on rsn when I bumped to 7.x was a lot of the files had <? instead of <?php and 
apparently thats no longer acceptable
[20:07:04] <@Sazpaimon> my dude
[20:07:13] <@Sazpaimon> sonic cult's cms was literally written for php 4
[20:07:45] <voice> sounds like fun
[20:08:02] <@Sazpaimon> i would also need to upgrade invision board
[20:08:12] <@Sazpaimon> which means paying for a license for invision board
[20:08:21] <@Sazpaimon> which means porting the old skins to invision board
[20:09:22] <voice> never understood why people didn't just go with free shit like phpBB
[20:09:35] <voice> even the pay-for boards end up having massive security holes
[20:09:42] <@Sazpaimon> that doesn't detract my second point
[20:10:01] <voice> oh I understand the skins problem
[20:10:08] <@Overlord> oh
[20:10:26] <@Overlord> Sad to hear, it's the end of an era

External links