Yay! I get to talk about myself!
Also, to warn, this post is pretty much
No dates, either. I'm bad at remembering them.
Back in late 2005/early 2006, I was extremely active reading Pokemon fanfiction. It was how I spent my free time. One site that I read fanfiction on was SPPf, and there was a story there that I wanted to comment on. I didn't want to join the forums yet because I didn't have my own computer. Soon, though, I did get my own laptop for school reasons, and since it could hook up to the Internet, I finally signed up to SPPf in February of 2006 to comment on fanfiction.
I didn't stay in fanfiction though. For years, I missed having Pokemon fans to talk to about the franchise. Now that I had the wide world of the Internet and all the forums on it, I pretty much went crazy. I posted all over the place, making noobish mistakes. But I was having fun.
And I figured that SPPf wasn't the only forums out there for Pokemon, so I entered a Google search for "pokemon forums" and explored the results. Or explored so far as the first two results. The first result was for PokeCommunity, which I joined without thinking about it. It was just another forum!
But what a difference PC was compared to my experiences on SPPf. For one thing, people were friendlier here. For another thing, PC was smaller (at the time there weren't mad rushes of people joining for the new generations of games), so you got to know other members much easier. Even though I was still active in fanfiction, I had a few friends here and there in other sections.
For a few months, I wasn't active. I just wasn't interested in forums for a while, so I left and entered the real world. Soon, I started to miss the friends that were here, so I came back. Instead of being active all over the forums, I focused on Pokemon Fanfiction (before the merge and the rename and all that). I reviewed fanfics and reported threads/posts as much as possible. Did that so much, I thought I was rather annoying.
Instead, my efforts were rewarded, and I was modded in November of 2007. This was my first shot at modding on such a large forum, and boy, was I confused. I had so many big dreams of changing PFF in so many ways. My friends were a tremendous help at this time. Most of my mod duties at that time were goofing around and making mistakes from time to time.
Still, between being a moderator and real life problems, I had to quit for a few weeks to get my head on straight. (This was in the summer of 2008 I believe?) During those weeks, I talked over my concerns of modship with Audy and explained that I would like to be a mod again, if the staff would let me. Fortunately, they agreed, and I never thought of quitting the staff again.
During my second go-around as a mod, I still had a lot to learn. I made a lot of mistakes and acted immature quite a few times. But over the years, I matured as a person, which helped me mature as a moderator. (Massive thank yous to my friends who stuck with me when I was a PITA. You are all awesome.
)
Also during this time, PFF went through the major changes I originally thought. Originally, the fanfics themselves were buried under the activity of the FanFiction Lounge (FFL). People rushed to that to talk instead of writing stories and posting reviews. With the backing of someone awesome, I closed down the FFL and proceeded to change PFF. PFF combined with Other Writing to create Fanfiction and Writing (FF&W), and I worked on the current set of rules there today.
For a while, though, I could feel my interest in Pokemon fanfiction slipping, so I began to float around to different sections and post. I had returned to my original intentions for joining a forum: talking about Pokemon with other fans. I had fun again, and doing this made me enjoy PC much more than dreading coming on to "work".
I should also mention my friends who helped me. With the exception of one (Hi, boobandbill, my mod partner-in-crime-busting!), they don't get the recognition they deserve. I'm not going to list them by name (uh...) but the intention is there.
And, after signing up for quite possibly nearly twenty forums, PC is the only one I'm active on. It's been a long five years, but I have no intentions of leaving any time...ever.