Tangency Timeline

This is intended as a reference for interested posters, and those new to RPGNet, and Tangency in specific. Each item will be in chronological order, with the title, date and description of the event. Contributor in parentheses.

January 2001

Tangency Opens 

the creation of the new forum for the discussion of things not game related (NoCarrier)

June 2002

Tangency learns of the Scree-Fice menace. The screefice are aliens wanting to eat your eyes and kidneys. Mango tea keeps them away. (David Johansen for suggestion, Lazarus for description, teucer found the date)

Octopi can't find Germany on a map.

The infamous Skarka Clone Wars

July 2002

The first "Cast Tangency" thread ever

August 2002

Killfuck Soulshitter is introduced.

January 2003

A Silent Wail posts "My hate of d02 know no limit." Before the end of the day, it gets moved to Open. (Within a few months, the meme comes to include the typo of "hat" for "hate", not in the original.)

July 2003

First appearance of Bonesaw

October 2003

The infamous bigfoot flamewar results in the meme that bigfoot is one of those touchy subjects you shouldn't mention, like tipping.

The troll Uncle Franco has a thread turned into a cookbook of yummy Jewish (and a little bit of Indian) food.

September 2004

Vigorous Aliveness

January 2005

Creation of Tangency Cliff's Notes

August 2005

Creation of the Tangency Timeline 

This wiki page came into existance.

Undated

The great Open crash 

brought about the exodus to Tangency and led to the growing sense of community that still makes Tangency really unique. (David Johansen)

The new software. 

In which the old threaded, fast loading, and stable software was replaced with the current slow loading, unstable software. (David Johansen)

In the olden times, before 2001, RPGnet used a non-standard threaded messageboard software. This software was antiquated and made moderation and maintenance extremely difficult. Because of this, it was decided to move to a more standard UBB form of messageboard software to improve these factors as well as to have future software support available.

The first characteristic of the new software which caused much uproar was the lack of threaded view. The old software this type of view, and it was predicted that the loss of threaded view would end all discussion on the forums.

The next characteristic which caused some argument was the ability to have an avatar image. Many people liked having an image next to posters' names. Many other people didn't, and insisted the ability be removed from the forums.

In the early days of the new forums, a user could select custom colors for their particular browsing of the site. This feature seems to have been removed somewhere along the way.

Since the change to the "new software" the forum has been updated at least once. This update allowed people to browse the forums with threaded views. Despite the return of this feature, it is not believed many people use it.

The Gay greeks thread and following coming out of various posters. 

Tangency's gay dawn. Before this gender issues were generally unexplored. (David Johansen)

The great religion flamewars. 

This being roughly equivilant to the Last Alliance of Men and Elves in terms of its long term effects on Tangency's character. (David Johansen)

The Mod Wars and attendant exodus I - III. 

In which various popular posters and moderators went head to head over the policies by which Tangency is ruled. The mod wars are often cited as beginning with the banning of a popular poster, but I believe that the war was generally on for a few weeks before the banning. The instigation of the first draft of the rules comes in around this time. Many posters flee to needcofee, monkeyambrosia, and other sites.

The banning of the Bistromath. 

This guy had the highest post count of all time for a long while but he eventually was banned for unpardonable sins. His banning was unusual in that it didn't instigate a modwar. (David Johansen) Initial departure: 14.2.2004 Return and permanent banning: 5.5.2004 ((un)reason)

The GMS bannings 

also fall into the modwars period. (David Johansen) Date occured: 4.16.2004 ((un)reason)

The separation of Other Media and Other Games Open. 

In my opinion while this helps to prevent the blatantly hostile environment from overflowing into more peaceful threads, it also guts Tangeny leaving little more than goofiness and flamewars. I was in favour of it but wouldn't be if asked again. (David Johansen) Date occurred: 4.14.2004 ((un)reason)

Judas' Revelation 

the revelation that the poster Judas is really an other-worldly horror in a cup. (David Johansen)

SteveD's American Journey 

(David Johansen)

Undated Memes

Blame Mike Gentry (or, It's all Mike Gentry's fault!) 

An ancient RPGnet meme. It began on the "old software" boards when flames and ill will towards others was high. In a symbolic gesture, a poster named Mike Gentry stepped forward and offerred to take all responsibility for all inflammatory posts. Instead of blowing up and attacking another poster, all someone had to do was blame Mike Gentry for whatever was wrong. Since then, Mike Gentry has been blamed for nearly every infamous thing under the sun and then some. Possibly this is why the meme is no longer useful.

Cast Tangency 

threads in which posters are given certain roles. Cast Tangency as Fruit is one such example. Seems to have gone by the wayside for now. (David Johansen for suggestion, Lazarus for description)

This appears to return cyclicly; the first such thread was simply called "Cast Tangency!" and was started by Magic Pink on July 19, 2002. It included a rule that you were not to read previous casting decisions before doing your own. Tangentials were cast as Hollywood people. I'll come back later to date the various waves of frequent casting.

Hawt Chick Threads (David Johansen)

Holy Bear's Tangency Turf 

a nifty comic by Holy Bear. Since gone away. Now days, the meme is to ask Holy Bear when he's bringing it back. (David Johansen for suggestion, Lazarus for description)

Keetooms and Pie 

The good stuff in life. (David Johansen)

Porn Monday 

Monday is the day of the week for discussing all things porn. Came about as a wish to reduce the proliferation of such talk on other days, I believe. (David Johansen for suggestion, Lazarus for description)

Tangency Clique 

This term was probably invented during the arguments for an Other Media forum. It was coined to describe the high profile and high post count forum users who seem to exclusively post to Tangency Open or post in other sections of the forums with extreme infrequency. These posters allegedly drive the topics of discourse in Tangency Open. Further allegations state the Tangency Clique dogpiles and incessantly flames all those with any views that are outside of theirs, or threadcrap those who they desire to silence. This creates arbitrary divide between the Tangency Open community and some of the other posters to the site who do not feel like part of that community.

The regulars of Tangency Open deny the existence of this clique. Its existence is open to debate.

There was a time when the concept was mocked by people forming lots of named cliques, many of which persist to this day. New ones are added sometimes.