Animal Crossing Community (also referred to as "ACC") is a fansite for the Nintendo video game series "Animal Crossing" created by video game company Nintendo. Animal Crossing Community was created in late 2002 by IGN users jader201 and hoggle. It has become one of the most popular Animal Crossing fansites, having over 293,000 registered members. The site is well known for its strict family-friendliness rules.

History

In late 2002, two IGN members, jader201 and hoggle (known then as "tiepolo"), launched Animal Crossing Community. The site quickly became popular, and soon began accepting donations to pay for a new server. On January 17, 2003, the site made that accomplishment. In March 2003, Scouts were added as a new staff position. There were originally four Scouts - Nin10dude, NintendoFreak, partyp00per, and Rick's Rage 2003, although the current amount is much higher. Their purpose is to assist new members by "adopting" them and helping them learn how to use ACC's sometimes complicated features, as well as with the Animal Crossing game.
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<br />In late 2005, the second US version of Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: Wild World was released, and the site received an unexpected rush of members. Due to bandwidth issues, jader201 temporarily cut off new user registrations. After a couple weeks, limits were put on as to how long members could spend online. Staff members were not affected by this limit. In January 2006, Amazon.com and Google advertisements were implemented on the site, and donations were once again being accepted, and the limits removed. On April 22, 2006, the Site Improvements Committee (AKA "SIC") was added to help in coming up with and discussing new ideas and features for the site. Lately, there has been a huge outbreak of spam due to the change in the way users report violations of the rules to moderators.
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Site Features

Animal Crossing Community is known for having some innovative features, including:
<br />- Flash "Pattern Maker" for members to create and share patterns with others.
<br />- "Friend code request" system - Allows members to easily exchange friend codes for Animal Crossing: Wild World and many other Nintendo DS games, and also leave feedback to reduce scamming.
<br />- "Trading Post"- Members can set up trades to exchange item passwords for Animal Crossing.

Current Staff Members

The current staff of Animal Crossing Community is as follows:

Site Owners & Developers
<br />jader201, hoggle

Site Managers (Assist the Developers with site updates)
<br />Poppet, queenzentar

Moderators (Make sure the site rules are enforced)
<br />Agarwaen, BowserBasher, cmh, Dalek, gameguy888, herd2001, Highguy7612, krazykay, ManekiNeko, Ms.Mitzi, RoseMS21, VenusKamal, Will616636

Scouts (Assist new members by "adopting" them)
<br />balletdancer, blizfan, camilla, Jerry555, Kareth, Kelly2010, masterd, Peter01, prshack, scotch, SDOG1234, SeaLion, Shadow_in_Arizona, Soccerluvver, sunmarsh

Site Improvements Committee

In late April of 2006, the ACC staff decided to add a committee of normal members to assist in coming up with new ideas for features on the site. The current members of the committee are as follows:
<br />cosmickitty, Hungry_Myst, hunt, Johntown327, justinguy, Nin10dude, PhoenixFlight82, The Crossing Raven, zoezoose

Site Bans

ACC has a recently added system of "points" to warn users. In the rare event that a user is to be banned permanently, they usually have committed a serious offense worth of 5 points. Users may also receive a temporary ban for a 3 or 4 point offense, and a user isn't usually banned for a series of minor offenses. Bans are private, and kept between user and staff. The offender will get an email regarding the ban. Many users have complained about the new system, however, staff has stressed the system has been used for years, and has just now been made public. The Staff are holding strong in their system and are not planning on changing it anytime soon.