How terrible is the loss of white wolf forums?

[Accelerator]

I have, yet again, tried to hunt down a collection of homebrew. This time she who lives in her name charms, with the links being on giant in the playground. And to my lack of surprise, the links in the homebrew doc are dead.

Just how much of a loss was the forums? Was there lots of good stuff, or was it mostly garbage?

[JohnDoe244]

Hmm...

To the elegant gentleman such as myself, it was like losing an arm. That doesn't mean it wasn't an utter cess-pit. But it was our cess-pit!

The unbridled creative energy of a bunch of misfits who truly loved the game. The content was staggering in volume. A lot of it was no use to me, but a lot of today's content is of no use to me -- just because something isn't for you, doesn't make it "garbage".

We lost a bunch of folks in the transition. Then OP said that what we got away with on the WW forums wouldn't fly here and winnowed us further. Some folks adapted pretty well. I, obviously, have not -- but I think folks appreciate that I mean well even if I am a little abrasive.

This is still the best resource for the game I love, so I try to fit in and share what I can -- I have a life and a job now, so my output is minuscule, but I was more of a lurker on the WW forums. And it's nice that the devs feel safe to show themselves without every thread turning into a ****-show. And I genuinely think the game mechanics are the best they've ever been so...

Discord is fine. You are probably the best person on the Reddit. RPG net is awful (objectively awful as a resource, as a community it's not to my taste, as a gamefinder it's adequate). Other sites... have never been a productive resource. I haven't been on the GitPG forums since Elan's dad stabbed him, but I'm honestly surprised they still even discuss Exalted (the most prolific posters of my time have long since given up).

Imagine if all those communities were rolled together into one forum, and you get a reasonable approximation of maybe half of what the old WW forum was like.

So, to answer your question, "yes".

[Ghosthead]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. More dynamic conversation, better mapping to experience with the actual influences Exalted was written under, and a higher range of quality of opinion and prose, at the high and low end (I don't think there's anyone whose too much good at making intricate, clear and persuasive claims that commonly posts on here, right now, by comparison. Neither are there any out and out trolls and folks who make provocative claims to get attention!). I think most of what that era did which was good should get reincorporated into our current discussion/errata/subconscious, or is just no longer relevant.

I still want to be able to reach for it when there's "Exalted History" discussion on here and I can either a) remember some dumb/crazy meme that was super-popular but have no evidence of it, or b) conversely someone else claims some dumb/crazy meme was super-popular but I believe actually never existed or wasn't important... but that's hardly the best or most essential use of such things.

(Still! A good reminder to us digital generations that if we're making posts on here as if they are going to be contributions that stand the generations and form a lasting body of work... don't do that. Forums and social media are place to hang out and try and get useful material for what you're interested in or doing at the time - your multiple hundred word post on some interesting facet of the game will end up being incorporated into the general ferment of ideas and lose its author and lose whatever nuances you put into it, or it'll end up totally forgotten. The actual content you upload itself is totally dependent on the whims and financial situation of whoever owns the hosting.)

[Dex Davican]

I mostly wish I’d saved the Ask the Unconquered Sun thread. I like to re-read my old work and I was proud of it, including the response it got. All my 2E homebrew, I saved.

[JohnDoe244]

I mostly wish I’d saved the Ask the Unconquered Sun thread. I like to re-read my old work and I was proud of it, including the response it got. All my 2E homebrew, I saved.

Man I miss that thread.

[Mockery]

I have, yet again, tried to hunt down a collection of homebrew. This time she who lives in her name charms, with the links being on giant in the playground. And to my lack of surprise, the links in the homebrew doc are dead.

Just how much of a loss was the forums? Was there lots of good stuff, or was it mostly garbage?

Sturgeon's Law--"90% of everything is crap"--is in full effect here. It was full of random stuff, some good, a lot of it not. But it was also the most active forum on the old White Wolf site at the time of its demise by a frankly staggering margin: regardless of the ratio, there was a lot of good or even great stuff to be found there, and its loss was just devastating.

[Blackwell]

Sturgeon's Law--"90% of everything is crap"--is in full effect here. It was full of random stuff, some good, a lot of it not. But it was also the most active forum on the old White Wolf site at the time of its demise by a frankly staggering margin: regardless of the ratio, there was a lot of good or even great stuff to be found there, and its loss was just devastating.

Yeah, consider that by number of posts (impossible to say anything objective about "quality") the Exalted board was consistently more active than the rest of the WW forums, combined. Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Geist, Promethean, Mummy....

[Synapse]

Hmm...

To the elegant gentleman such as myself, it was like losing an arm. That doesn't mean it wasn't an utter cess-pit. But it was our cess-pit!

The unbridled creative energy of a bunch of misfits who truly loved the game. The content was staggering in volume. A lot of it was no use to me, but a lot of today's content is of no use to me -- just because something isn't for you, doesn't make it "garbage".

We lost a bunch of folks in the transition. Then OP said that what we got away with on the WW forums wouldn't fly here and winnowed us further. Some folks adapted pretty well. I, obviously, have not -- but I think folks appreciate that I mean well even if I am a little abrasive.

[...]

So, to answer your question, "yes".

This, precisely.

[Sandact6]

The loss of the old forums and wiki something that makes me seeth to this day. If you honesty gave me a list of the things that happened in the Exalted gameline that angered me, this would rank the first. To be clear I am not pointing fingers at anyone, but the fact that it was lost at all is a tragedy. So much great shit lost. The forums and the wiki were by far the biggest 2e resource on the net. I saved a few pages that interested me (Which turned out to be the only copies of those things on the net it seems). I know this seems excessive, but I take the preservation of past work very seriously. To me the past forums were all of the love, passion, creative energy, and even the rage and mistakes of the ones who came before us. To see it all flushed down the shitter makes me bitter beyond words. There's the unofficial wiki yea, and while good it's primarily 1e material.

It's to the point where I promised I wouldn't let that happen again. I scraped the entire unofficial wiki as a backup. I also found raw text dumps of all the charms that were on the 2e wiki. They're an unformatted mess that makes your eyes bleed, but damnit at least they're saved.

Here's my advice: Always, always, ALWAYS save a copy of something you like. There is absolutely no guarantee that whatever you like will be on the net tomorrow. It's what I always do now. I even have my own homebrew backed up three times (One in an external, one in Microsoft Onedrive, and one in Google Documents).

[Accelerator]

Hey Sandact6 you got a copy of any homebrewed 1st circle demons.

[Sandact6]

I can check when home.

[HighPriest]

For me, losing the wiki hurt more. None of that stuff got backed up by users because the Onyx Path people claimed they were on top of it. For a while, they claimed they were going to restore it, eventually, when they had time. Never happened - and why would they? There wasn't ever really any incentive for them to support 2E, and I can say from experience that trying to get that thing running properly without knowing how it was originally set up is a frustrating task.

This time she who lives in her name charms, with the links being on giant in the playground. And to my lack of surprise, the links in the homebrew doc are dead.

I have a semi-functional local copy of the old White Wolf wiki. If what you were looking for was on there, I might be able to pull out the charms IF you have charm names. Unfortunately the categories are borked in a way I can't figure out, so I do need charm names as I can't really browse by category.

[Sandact6]

I have a semi-functional local copy of the old White Wolf wiki.

Is that something you'd mind sharing? I only have PDF text dumps, which... well is better than nothing, but having a local wiki copy would be much better.

[KnightFenrirWulfhart]

I wasn't around here back then, but over the past few years I've seen so many mentions, and links to things I was so interested in reading, that I can't help but feel like I missed out on something really useful. And though a vast majority of it probably was just your average forum/wiki things, that parts that I know I would have been so excited to read make it feel like small digital Library of Alexandria to me. I think about it every time I go read any homebrew for 2e, and I wish I had it saved away.
I'm also really big on digital archiving. Today's age acts like data will stay around forever, but all too easily we can lose so much that is permanently gone. Art, text, videos, pictures. Gone in a snap, probably never to be seen again. Its tragic to me, and hurts me to think about.
So I'll confirm what Sandact said, if you like something, save it right away, because it could vanish as soon as your eyes are no longer gracing it.

[Synapse]

And on to that messy raw wiki copy, I will have a day off next week, I could try and do something to clean it up.