Ah, McDonalds... bringing people together and then making them throw up since 1940!

I specifically remember a large post announcing it. For some reason, Foxboy comes to mind. But it wasn't him.

it is the forum...........they went in the wrong direction when they changed forums. the old one might have been old.....but it was much more user friendly.

the new format made it no longer enjoyable to post here.....or at least not as much fun as it used to be.

honestly......this "new" format we have going on isn't too much different than the old email list we had 10 years ago.

It's all about content - not buttons.

'Ah, McDonalds... bringing people together and then making them throw up since 1940!'

Sounds like a new campaign slogan for Ronald!

Anyway, the one major reason why I come here is because that YOU ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE I KNOW IN EXISTENCE THAT LOVE THE CHEMS AS MUCH AS I DO, AND NO ONE IN MY PERSONAL LIFE, FAMILY, FRIENDS, OR CO-WORKERS, HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THEM! So now you see that this chemical bridge between us all is something you can't get anywhere else.

This is the 'Brotherhood'... and we will never die!

No way, the last forum was shit!! It was great while it lasted, but it was old and outdated - and it was near impossible to keep the spambots at bay. There were times, in a matter of minutes, when the spam would fill up an entire page. It got old in a hurry constantly getting bitched out every morning because I wasn't babysitting the forum all night long and deleting spam. It got to the point where there were 5 or six of us, from various parts of the globe, babysitting the forum deleting spam at all hours. I don't mind moderating, it's an honor to mod my fave band's messageboard, but... It was totally ridiculous! The absence of an administrator didn't help matters, either. I mean, a little help here? Then one day the admin shows up after being gone for years and disables the moderator account for no apparent reason. Then the admin went awol shortly thereafter, leaving a trail of pink flowers and poo in the wake, spam clogging up the board so bad with no way to remove it. The Great Spam Debacle prompted Ed to start a freaking thread about it on his own forum. It was embarrassing, I felt embarrassed for the Chems... :( It is a bit irritating just thinking about it even now.

This forum is an improvement on the spam aspect.

Although cool and streamlined to look at, handy on the editing aspect, and it rocks because of the awesome people here - this place is a perfect example of form over function and has unfortunately been in dire, dire need of improvement. Since day 1. I'm grateful for a place to rant and rave with like minded people, but Slipvin is right - the code for this place leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't bother me much anymore but I was a bit irritated that my old whirlygirl account was disabled and never fixed.. But I don't give much a hoot about post counts anyway. One thing that I may as well mention while I'm bitching and moaning: I think I've figured out the whole broken thread thing may have something to do with my old username whirlygirl. And for some inexplicable reason all my old whirlygirl posts are gone somehow, and where my posts were are what cracks you see now in the broken threads. If you can even pull up a broken thread. Like I said I don't care much about my posts, it's just babble at the end of the day - but it really sucks that those threads I posted in under my previous account have affected other people's posts, too.

And really - We've ranted, raved, and bitched since this forum came into being and it's not done one bit of good in the improvement department.

OK, I need to take a Midol.

The good thing, whirly, is, your account still exists! Whenever I'm logging into my old pm account I can click on your old name:

Location: oh my gawd, it's like, the real o.c.!!!

Posts: 8962

The girl in you is still alive!!!

@ Slipvin - You haven't been here much yourself either to be fair.

Totally agree on the user-friendly thing though, I still don't even know how to quote previous posts! Its as though the board assumes we obviously know all this stuff already.

Must admit I do miss some of the regular posters on here - anType, Jeanine, mips, darkstar and probably others I forgot. Times change I suppose, people move on and do other things (as Whirly said).

@iggy: lol. "So how do you guys know each other then?" *silence* ;)

@inchemwetrust: Aw, you just made me a bit teary-eyed. :) ::sniffle::

Indeed, the Brotherhood will never die.

@whirly: Thanks for moderating all this time!! You're my favorite moderator. ;-)

@McMarsh: I also miss Jeanie & Mipps, although they seem to keep making one-off appearances every now and then.

whirly....I'd like to quote certain parts of your response and respond to them.............but I can't.

HAHA! I forgot about that MCMarsh XD classic

all I'll say here is this forum is like any friend we have. If we are bored with them one day, like you go over to their house and they're just watching something on tv, you don't stop becoming friends. same with the forum, yeah it's not too active right now, but you cant assume there won't be some enjoyable moments in the upcoming months. seems very fatalistic.

I feel his pain. Admittedly, I thought this place was a urine-soaked hellhole the moment I came. Since then, I've come to appreciate it for what it has, but there's a strong argument for some improvements. We need to, pun slightly intended, Galvanize this site with a stronger moderator system (not a knock at the current mods, simply a fact of life), a more organized topic program, and a clear set of rules (amongst them, possibly the suggestion of STARTING YOUR OWN TOPIC IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING NOT RELATED TO THE SUBJECT).

Hey souphead - quoting posts is a serious freakin reach around, but it can be done. I tried to keep the forum help topics tagged Forum Help but alas, the thread explaining how to quote is busted.

Anyway, I saved the code and pasted it on a notepad (on my desktop) so I'd have it handy. When you quote, just omit the spaces inbetween the < and > symbols:

< ol >

< li >

< blockquote > < strong > NAME < /strong > wrote:

< em >WHAT THEY WROTE < /em >

< /blockquote >

< /li >

< /ol >

Champi - I do agree the forums could use some more organization, and back when we had a normal and more user friendly messageboard it was easier to break off into different threads. We asked on the old messageboard to have an off topic forum for non-Chemical related stuff but that (obviously) never came to fuition. The lack of ease with regards to quoting also makes it extremely difficult and a right pain in the freakin ass to keep things organized.

The way things are done here (well before I started moderating) has always been different than other messageboards run by nannies, for lack of a better word, who spend their time making sure every single post is topical to the OP. And I kind of liked that. Not because I dig on anarchy, but because it set this place apart from other forums I lurked on or took part in. The fact of life is - the culture here and the history here, was never an empiracal process but more or less a series of endless conversations. Some of which took place as conversations within conversations. For example, if someone starts a topic about how awesome the Roundhouse gig was, someone may chime in and talk about how they had a similar experience when they saw the Chems play . And the topic tends to stray from the original path and into new territory. Sort of like when you're at a pub with a bunch of people - all are welcome at the table and the conversations tend to group off. There's not a ton of people who post here, so it's sort of our nature to find some common ground, somehow. If there were tons of members, hundreds, even thousands of members, then yes definitely there would be a call for some cold hard law and order (and more mods! ;) )

Anyway - to expand on that. When Ed posted for the first time, it was in a thread where people were talking about drugs. He popped in out of the blue to say the Chems were about done with (Push The Button) and they couldn't wait to share it. Aside from his post throwing everyone for a loop, it had absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand and it would've been weird to say "WTF miloco2forum, you should have started your own thread - Stay on topic please". I don't really like to mod this place with an iron fist - not because I'm lazy or can't be bothered. It's because I never really felt the need to lay down the law - people can think for themselves and in general, people here can police themselves 99.9% of the time. Modding here is great, because the people here are great despite the adversity we face with regards to a tempermentally designed messageboard.

That said, there are certain things I feel are out-of-bounds such as consistent personal attacks between members of the forum (I mean, I am guilty of it too as is anyone else whose patience is tried), and topics about Tom and Ed's personal lives is not cool forum fodder. Happy Birthday, congratulatory and "Oh my god I met the Chems" threads are OK of course (everyone loves a birthday!!) Even silly threads about Tom's hair are tolerated. But personal stuff... well... if anyone was around especially back at the early part of the year when Ed was practically villified in the media. I didn't want it here. It may sound arrogant, but that was my call. Tom and Ed are private people, they do read the boards (and I do know Ed reads the off topic banter as well) so I don't think it's appropriate to drag any negative negative personal Tom and Ed stuff to their forums.

And yeah, moderating those threads was tough and most certainly not enjoyable. There were some folks here who were quite pissed off at me, actually, at the way those topics were handled. But, bygones - you know?

As for a hard set of rules - there's not enough members, the forum is not user-friendly enough - to enforce certain things that are demanded of other online communities. There is a certain decorum that's rather self explanatory (don't post in annoying Text speak, don't troll other members, don't threaten other members, don't post boobs in your signature, stuff like that). I think people who post here are adult enough to self-police themselves but I will take it upon myself to remove, edit or delete posts (especially if there's a link to downloading Chems songs or remixes... consider those gone, I don't care regardless of whether someone gets pissed and resorts to calling me a moron for deleting posts like that). I do think it's a good idea in theory to start your own topic for fear of a thread getting derailed - but if it ever comes down to telling people what, where, when and how to post all the time then perhaps that will be the moment when I too may decide to call it a day. Or at least retire myself from moderating duties.

Anyhow - that's enoug rambling and whatnot from me for now. You're relatively new here Champ and I appreciate your feedback!

Somethings will never change....

Whirly is still the Queen of monster posts :-D Hihi!

Ah well, the forum. The forum was the most important thing in my life for a while, when i was travelling a lot. I was quite lonely and had no real friends around me and constantly moving from country to country doesnt make it any better. The one thing that was always there was the chems music and the forum.

Times have changed for me big time.

I work, live, party and have a boyfriend IN Amsterdam ( for those of you who are still not aware, Mips and i broke up in March, i've got a new boyfriends since 2 months and Mips has a new girlfriend since 5 months - we're still friendly with eachother ) and i've got a very busy life, both socialy and work-wise. I don't 'need' the forum anymore. I do read here everyday and i will always care about this place, about it's members ( some of you in particulair, one of you who became a very close friend, the great Whirls offcourse, even though we live miles away from eachother ), i care about the brothers and i will always have a very special place in my heart for what brought me here in the first place: the music.

I have to be honest - i don't listen to as much Chems as i used to. I still love the music and The Test will always be my nr 1 song, but i guess people move on musicaly as well.

As for Slipvin, well, i can't say i'll miss you cause you were hardly ever around as well ;-) And you've never been my favourite forum member. But have fun in whatever you do ;-)

As for the website's functionality, well, i'm not to fuzzed about it, but i did miss the old forum very much in the beginning.

So i didn't forget you all, i still care about the brothers, i'm going to buy brotherhood on Saturday and i'm excited about that!

Lots of love from me!

In my opinion, this "i have a life now" thing is just a little worn out because I believe most of the posters/members here are running a normal life, having friends, jobs etc. And so do I. But it doesn't prevent me from reading here and replying if there's a good occasion. And I don't care much either about the user friendliness as long as there are interesting people around that share interesting views/opinions. That's all that matters to me. One post in a year or one post a week, who cares.

And for the musical development in our lives, i do hope it won't go that far that I listen to schlager music one day just because "I'm moving on" ;). I rather like to call it expansion.

On the other hand, I can see where you comming from Jeanie and I understand it, really. It must have been tough times as a model.

The forum is what it is, a place to talk about the Chemical Brothers. When the chems aren't up to much then the forum is the same. I enjoy reading interesting posts, I love the Chemical Brothers music, but the forum has never been a major part of my life (that would be a bit sad, I think) ;)