Secret General Discussion

Sometime during V2, Otakuboards experienced a technical failure that rendered General Discussion (as Otaku Lounge used to be called) inaccessible. Over a year’s worth of posts were seemingly lost. The staff eventually decided to simply replace the lost forum with a brand new one, and OtakuBoards survived the momentary crisis.

Many users bookmarked GD directly, and the bookmarks worked for the new forum as well. However, sometime later, those who used the bookmarks noticed something strange; all the threads were different. Somehow the old GD had fixed itself, and was accessible without actually showing up on the front page. While many discovered this either by using the bookmarks or stumbling upon it while viewing “Who’s Online,” credit went to i_am_me for the original discovery.

The Secret GD quickly became a clubhouse for older members such as thimoc, will2x, i_am_me, and the like. New members who discovered the forum were chastised, and told to get out. Predictably, the lack of moderators and the presence of older members made Secret GD an unofficial spam forum of the boards (the official, of course, being the Test forum).

The secret GD lasted a few weeks before it was discovered by the staff and quickly deleted (merged?). For many oldies at the time, this was viewed as a last hurrah in the face of more restrictive staff and comprehensive rule enforcement.

Categories: Forums, History