Ok, first thing is first, I am not advertising any board.

Now... I joined a board about a week ago. I was pretty bored and asked myself how I felt as a newbie. I joined the board and signed up with a new moniker (it is not legacyme3 or any of the usernames I have ever used before, I used fake aliases, a separate email, and a proxy, so you will never find out unless you are seriously obsessed with me for some creepy reason).

So I joined and here is my detailed log of how things happened - copy pasted from word document.

Day 1 - This is pretty cool.

I get caught up with the different features of the board, and admire the simplicity. I simply edit my profile to give the people a sense of who I am. I answered a welcome PM by one of the users (one of those lame people who PM every single new user on site, the SECOND they sign up. Vizzed has a system user to do that.)

I ask a few questions, get an answer, and decide to venture into the forum. I posted in a few threads, and made a newbie thread.

I wait till the end of the day, and there is no response. They had a total of 23 posts the 2 hours I was online, Vizzed is a luxury with all the posters.

Day 2 - Well this is lame.

Today I got new replies to my newbie thread. They were the most generic copy and paste greetings I have ever seen. I check other newbie threads and they get the same exact response. No sense of individuality here... oh well, I'll work on that.

I'm not in a posting mood so I decide to go into the IRC chat. They are talking about pot and other mature subjects.

I meet a person , and we have an interesting chat, I learn of the site history, and I learn about key members of the site. After 20 minutes of chatting I leave. She sends me a message while I am posting, and we back and forth. I still feel like the people here are lame and don't care.

Day 3 - Happy Days

Today was a happy day. I officially talked to a member of the site without being called a noob. It was a tremendous feat apparently, since I noticed all the other users who joined 3 weeks before me, were still being called noobs. Pride sets in.

I made a few more posts, I'm up to 50 on this site now. They tell me that I am active for a person who only registered 3 days ago. I tell them I could do 50 a day if I wanted to.

People are recognizing me as something of a cool person, so I'll stick here a few more days.

Day 4 - Secrets

I logged on and found my message box crammed. The girl from the other day had a secret to tell me. Apparently she was a mod a week before I joined, but drama caused her to leave her position. I told her I could relate, and then she asked how. I guess now is as good a time as ever.

I told her how I was actually a member of a site called Vizzed Board, and I signed up for this site to relive being a noob so I could document it for the site. I have no idea if she signed up, but she promised to keep it a secret.

Day 5 - The lost day

I decided against logging on, to see if anyone would notice my disapearance. Also testing if she spread the secret out.

Day 6 - Read Above.

Day 7 - The Last Day

She didn't tell anyone apparently, so I played around for 5 hours on site, in chat and on the forum. Near the end of it I told her I was going to leave, because my experiment was over. She asked me to stay, because I was a fun user and actually made the site a better place. That I would eventually probably be a mod there.

I told her I wasn't interested. Being an active member here, and helping run another doesn't leave more time for more forums. So I told her I was sorry, but I was going.

I made a leaving thread telling them I was sorry for using their time and explaining what I did.

I logged out and came back to reality.

Aftermath - The Aftermath.

So I guess in conclusion, when I was a newbie I was treated a little worse than when I was a newbie here. It took 50 quality posts on a semi inactive board to convince them I wasn't a total noob.

Any newbies signing up for this board should be thankful.

We have a mostly decent community, and there's a lot to be said for the ability to have almost any question answered in less than a day. This place is pretty amazing because everything seems to mesh.

I'm never going to become a newbie for that purpose again, but I made a good friend out of it, so it wasn't a total loss. For the most part I was ignored until I became known as a quality poster.

Wow, that site sounds pretty lame. If you would have had the same number of posts on that board as you have on here you would be a legacy on that board(You see what I did there?)

Actually this site sounds pretty interesting. I'd like to know what it is (not your account or anything, just the board), and maybe I'll check it out. You can tell me via IM/PM if you'd like.

Anyways, this sounds like a cool experiment. It was a pretty interesting read.

the_casualty :

Nope =3

The point of this experiment was to choose a random site to be a newbie on. The whole thing means less if people are able to trace my account through it.

All I will say is that the board is relatively small compared to this board but is still big enough that they need a team of 5 mods.

that's an interesting experiment how many friends did you make while you were on that site just that one?

hackerman :

I made a few, but I didn't obviously elaborate on every thing. It wasn't neccesarily the point of the experiment to make friends. The main focus was to relive the newbie experience and see things from a new perspective.

Whats the board called? I would love to see it for myself...

I was suprised when you said some guy waits for every new member to sign up.

pieman9 :

I'm not disclosing the site to anyone on any site. I've explained this to 3 people already.

It's more or less a couple people from what I hear. They have like 3 people, and they take shifts greeting people to the site in case someone signs up. They apparently check the new member page once an hour, and I happened to sign up near the hour.

legacyme3 : Oh...I haven't been to any other message board other than this, so I thought the just had a "newest member" thing like vizzed. Half of the users here don't even post, so the newbie forum doesn't really help. A new member page makes more sense.

funny how that works. I have noticed that there are a lot of sites where the top amount of posters is really either 1000, or 2000 plus, and u would immediately be recognized on there if u became that active. Interesting reflection though.

same here. I haven't ever been noticed except on this site. I tried 3 other forum/post sites, and I was treated like no one existed. Yet, here on the other hand, I am able to be notice and actually treated like a Human being