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Cardboardia (Otherwise known as CBia) is an online message board loosely dedicated to such typical fandoms as Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, His Dark Materials, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in its many conflicting formats, and various other fantasy literature. The board doesn't simply revolve around these books and their corresponding fans, however. Indeed, the members are free to bring up any topic for discussion. Unlike many fan-based message boards, Cardboardia as a whole frowns upon bad grammar and use of l337 (Leet), "lol" and other such common Internet methods of expression. Board authority is divided so:

Admins

Uber Mods

Spiffy Mods

Cardboardians

Newbies

In an arguably wise move, newbies are set apart from the higher ranked members until a "mod" (moderator) decides whether they are Cardboardian material. For example, if a potential full-fledged Cardboardian is exhibiting aggression or is abusing other members, they will most likely not be promoted to full Cardboardian status.

Contributed by Flippancy

History

Cardboardia began some years ago as a place where people could review and ask questions for the chat show style piece of writing "The Pencil Show" by Hikaness (one of Cardboardia's administrators) where the narrators would kidnap Lord of the Rings characters and 'force them to reveal their most hideous secrets.' Originally, Cardboardia was meant to be an answer to Fanfiction.net's newest rule that forbade using reviews as a way to submit questions for a quiz show-type story. However, Fanfiction.net created and enforced their 'no scripts' rule shortly afterwards, while Cardboardia was still being established, and deleted The Pencil Show (TPS). Thereafter, Fanfiction.net was dubbed 'the evil machine' by the board members and TPS migrated to Hikaness' own website while the review/question asking process was moved to a free message board provided by EZBoards, dubbed 'The Pub.' The name came about because of the EZBoard style of URL: 'Pub[insert number here].ezboard.com'. Later, the community grew and got tired of the pop-up advertising rampant on EZBoards, so one of the members, known as 'Koushy,' moved it to a website that he paid for as a subdomain of his neotek site.

This was regarded a wise move by all, but the neotek site had little bandwidth at that time so the Cardboardians moved once again to their current domain: www.cardboardia.net

As with any website, the Cardboardian community suffers technical difficulties from time to time. At such times of peril, Cardboardia moves to backup locations. The Livejournal community 'cardboardia' and the free message board dubbed 'Neo-Cardboardia" (Cardboardia.shim.net) are two examples of these refuges. So far, apart from a few small hiccups, there have only been three major crashes of Cardboardia since the move to Cardboardia.net. One of these, the latest, was due to the payment for the domain being late, one was due to the website being hacked, and the oldest of these was a database crash. All of these events have resulted in widespread panic among Cardboardia's inhabitants, since several historic topics and threads have been lost due to database glitches or hackings.

Contributed by Guesty Type Personification and edited by PokeDigiManiac

Culture

Such as is the case with every community, Cardboardia has developed its own cultural "in-jokes," such as the phrases "Burn wench, burn!" in reference to their hatred of the character Arwen from Lord of the Rings due to her usurping of Glorfindel in the recent movie adaptions by Peter Jackson. Other examples of in-jokes include the exclamation "OMGWTFBBQ!", the use of "!!!11!one", and other variants on that theme, mocking the chatspeaking population of the Internet. Although these phrases did not originate in Cardboardia, they are still widely used by its citizens.

Aside from this, within Cardboardia, light-hearted roleplay wars are commonplace, with Chris Podima (PokeDigiManiac) attempting to take over the board regularly. This is seen by many as quite superfluous due to Podima being an admin, head of the order of moderators, and basically all powerful within the confines of the board. However, a fun time is still had by all involved. (The tradition of the wars began while PokeDigiManiac was still a standard Cardboardian; in the two years since, while his rank has changed, he still takes great enjoyment in 'tweaking things a little bit.')

Many other in-jokes, such as the use of 'immortality spray' (Immortality spray, can't live without it!), tprte (The snack you can eat!), clorse (Gackt approved!), the torture of being locked in the basement and fed Generic Brand Quality rats, and the action of kissing a bridge at weddings due to a typo by Hikaness are the typical examples of the widepread hyperactivity and fun-loving nature of the Cardboardians. It can be clearly noted from the examples given that these fun-loving Cardboardians can make a joke out of even the oddest typo.

The hierachy of Cardboardian society is headed by the three people who have been dubbed the Trinity by the ever-popular Cardboardian Chronicles (covered in a few paragraphs): Hikaness, the creator, Takeru (Keru) who paid for the domain in its early stages, and Koushy, who coded Cardboardia from scratch and remains Cardboardia's extremely talented and wonderful tech support guy. (And he loves the ladies, too, and they love him right back. He's Koushy Wayne, baby!) Arguably a sideways step from them is the administrator PokeDigiManiac, aka Chris Podima, mentioned above, who heads the Order of Modness and tackles social difficulties within the community.

Below these people are the Ubermods, outstanding citizens who have shown responsibility and distinguished themselves as outstanding citizens worthy of the extra responsibility and power that comes with the position. These ubermods have the capability to use the extra-spiffy control panel that administrators can also access; however, they cannot access certain records that the administrators can.

Below them are the Spiffymods. Although not as powerful as the Ubermods, they have control over the individual sections of the board, with approximately three spiffymods assigned to each of the major sections. This is largely a result of a recent reorganization of the Order of Modness, with nearly all the previous spiffymods being promoted to the rank of Ubermod, and several new spiffymods being handpicked from the ranks of Cardboardians. Prior to this reorganization, spiffymods had standard moderating edit-and-delete powers over the whole board. The reorganization was done with the intent of dividing responsibilities and easing tensions.

Below them are the normal Cardboardians and then lower still, the newbies as stated above.

The Cardboardian society is quite open and accepting of different minorities. It also has the tradition of in-board marriages and adoptions which, weird though they may sound, aren't anything like the real world equivalents, where instead of the bride, one kisses a bridge at the conclusion of a ceremony (The bride/groom is later closetdragged as a substitute). Any moderator or person of higher authority can oversee a marriage. The popularity of this has led to many people becoming their own in-board brother/sister/mother/adoptive cousin in law. An attempt was made previously to draw the Cardboardian family tree. While very impressive, it was too ordered to fit with the general attitude of Cardboardia. A later tree was made with just random differently coloured squiggles linking everyone and their uncles. This is the generally accepted genealogy of Cardboardia.

contributed by Guesty Type Personification and edited by PokeDigiManiac

Board Layout

Announcements - For general board-related announcements.

Updates - Many of the members write fan fiction and other such works, some of which are ongoing projects. Information on these projects is posted here.

*Cardboardia/NAC Updates

*Questions

The Pub - The main hub of Cardboardian activity.

As our world Turns

*life

**Evil Rantings - A place to vent some steam.

**Serious stuff - For things that don't belong in Random Blather but aren't rants.

**Happy Happy Fun Fun - For happy occasions

**Political Pandering - A section devoted specifically for political or religiously themed topics that might cause conflict.

*Cardboardian life milestones - A place to announce in-board marriages, adoptions etc.

*Look what I made - Where people can show off stories, art etc.

*Homework help - A place where people can ask for help with school stuff that is beyond their capability.

Stuff to obsess over

*The Fandoms - Where people obsess over particularly well represented fandoms including Harry Potter, LOTR, His Dark Materials, H2G2, Phantom of the Opera, Star Wars, Lost and Pirates of the Carribean.

*Entertainment - For less well represented fandoms

Playtime

*RPG's

*Random Games

*Video Games - Where people talk about video games (Not play them)

*TEH Mafia - A somewhat dead game of Mafia

Site Development

*Suggestions

*FAQ's

Contributed by Flippancy