PB Nation dead...?

[GattoDiavolo]

Holy crap, I didn't know PBN still existed! I was last logged in on 6/27/2017, apparently... Doing a little more digging shows I joined on 7/26/2006! Hot damn

[Pumpytrilly1]

I thought some company bought them. There plan seemed to be to buy websites, kick out mods, then maybe sell information to ai companies? They don't seem to run long enough for ad revenue after buying to make a difference.

Lots of good knowledge will be gone, like when pbreview left.

[DocsMachine]

I thought some company bought them. There plan seemed to be to buy websites, kick out mods, then maybe sell information to ai companies? They don't seem to run long enough for ad revenue after buying to make a difference.

-They got bought out long before AI. Just as FB was taking off, a couple places were going around and buying up discussion boards or their hosting, with the idea of monetizing them with ad revenue.

Except that, as FB took over, ad revenue through pretty much anyone that wasn't FB or Google, fell through the floor. Couple that with the board's regulars moving to FB, basically all those boards eventually died. The new hosts basically did only minimal moderation and zero promotion, so people just... left.

I may have some of the details wrong, but that's essentially what happened to a bunch of boards I was on- one of the welding/fab boards, a hotrod/musclecar board, at least two of the paintball boards...

Doc.

[cockerpunk]

i talked to mike a few years ago about buying PBN. you know, just for the ultimate lulz.

[Hp_lovecraft]

Thats neat. My login still works.
There was a time around the late 90s when alt.sport.paintball, and rec.sport.paintball was turning nto trash, and people starting forming small forms everywhere. Pigtalk was popular. I liked OldGunOwnersGroup. All the different owners grops, like Beog and vmempire. THey started to consolodate with pbc, and pbf. PBN seemed to sucked everyone up as the place to be.

Certaintly the Tom Kaye/Smart Parts thread was the greatest paintball thread in history.

But it was a younger crowd. And all those gold ups, and constant need to sticky everything made the entire forum hard to read. But.... really, its the near death of paintball, and facebook groups that have mostly killed it off

[DocsMachine]

I started the Tinker's Guild back in the days of all the "owner's groups" like that. Since a lot of them were marker specific (Rainmaker Owner's Group, Automag Owner's Group, Palmer's Owner's Group, etc.) I started one more or less for the custom marker owners. The guys that were auto-cocking PGPs and Nelsons, one guy made his own Angel- from scratch, using a Cobra grip frame and barrel- another guy had a side-by-side dual VM with motorized triggers and 'chainsaw' grips...

We're still around, though not specifically paintball at this point.

Doc.

[cockerpunk]

whats annoying is that while facebook groups killed forums ... they are demonstrably worse at what forums provided. like in almost every way they are worse.

and ive never figured out why that is. is it really just more convenient?

[martix_agent]

Doc is right. Plus, good luck finding a discussion you didn't post in, but want to look at later.

[vijil]

Facebook was better at holding attention overall, which meant you spend less time elsewhere.

Literally that simple. Not really about paintball or otherwise, just that it held paintball players attention as well as anyone else's, thus they spend less time in the nation.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Facebook feeds the Dopamine addiction better. The restrictions on content will be its demise. I left for a few years tried to go back at one point and couldn’t even speak its language to conform to its restrictions. Nah I’m good you can keep that BS.

[gabe]

Never really got into PBN but the early forums were the best. SCP was probably the first one I was on back in 2003 but I remember reading PGPOG like it was the bible.

Hopefully with the editorializing of Facebook, the forum era returns. The beauty of forums is they really drove the community in real life. Seeing BEOG field a team of rainmakers back in the day was really neat.

[Hp_lovecraft]

Doc is right. Plus, good luck finding a discussion you didn't post in, but want to look at later

Thats the real problem. I remember lots of great threads on old forums that are all completely gone forever now.

Especially on the old usenet, and listserv forums. At one point, Google bought the Usenet archive, and you could search old paintball threads going back to 1992, but Google gradually phased that out, eventually ending support for the archives completely. ie via Dejanews.

A few companies took over the archies on a volenteer basis, like usenetarchive, but its mostly imcomplete

[trashcollector]

the Tom Kaye/Smart Parts thread

Details, pls. I didn't leave the Tippmann subforum much

[Chuck E Ducky]

I use to frequent PBN a lot. When Facebook took over its content market I followed it to Facebook then realized I like old school paintball way more. Found MCB at a time when politics were influencing every facet of life. Sold all my electros bought a bad ass pump and left the bougie side of paintball for the classic experience revival and never looked back.

Long live MCB! By staying true to its roots it’s outlasted them all.

[kevin qmto]

There's really no substitute in any hobby for a good message board with a search feature. Reddit and Facebook are horrendous at actually learning anything, because anytime a question is answered, it gets immediately buried and then someone else comes along and asks the same questions over again.

[RPP]

There's really no substitute in any hobby for a good message board with a search feature. Reddit and Facebook are horrendous at actually learning anything, because anytime a question is answered, it gets immediately buried and then someone else comes along and asks the same questions over again.

This. Even if you try searching something on FB or Reddit it gives you what IT thinks you want... not just based on your search keywords.

[Cunha]

Pbn is technically functional so archive what you like. I started there January 2002 but liked pbreview better. I think I joined automags.org first. I got a long barrel nelson at a swap meet and came here for info.

Message boards are the best. Good job keeping this one rolling painthappy and team. Good job Doc w the guild. Thanks u guys.

Reddit and fb suck the life out of the internet and flush it down the toilet. This isn't an ethical judgement it's objective reality. It sucks to see message boards disappear because of all the info we shared with each other that was easy to reference.

Similar as mentioned when image hosts like photo bucket disappeared.

[Cyberpyr8]

Yeah I have quit using reddit to maintain my mental health. It is so toxic! There are so many idiots there and they all know more than everyone else. I wanted to rip into them about so many things but I just stepped away and I don't miss it. Facebook is a black hole of information. If I find something there I want to go back to I have to save it or I will never see it again. It's ridiculous that you can't really scroll back and see stuff that was posted because they keep changing the algorithm on you so you can't find stuff again. But that doesn't help you maintain any history for others to reference. This really is the best format for that type of stuff. I am grateful to have MCB!

[Tarsun2]

reddit is a wild place for sure. I got into it a few years back and can see how people go overboard with it. Ive heard it called an "echo chamber" and never really understood what that meant until later on. when you start seeing the same posts over and over again in the same sub or spread across similar subs, it becomes obvious. and when youre there for over a year, you start seeing old posts being reposted and making the rounds. i much prefer the old school forums like this.

[vijil]

Reddit is built from the ground up on the concept of self-reinforcing echo chambers. That's the whole point.

It's everything that's wrong with the internet in one tidy package.