16 replies to this topic

[ShaNayNay]

Haven't been on the site in idk, maybe six years? Sad to see the forums so dead. Anyone care to catch me up on the following?

 

1. What happened to NerfHaven?

 

2. Is modding Nerf blasters still a thing? If so, where do people congregate now?

 

3. What are all the old heads up to now?

 

4. Where's the best place to go to buy some Elite Alpha Trooper spare parts?

 

 

I'm assuming everyone grew up and the scene changed. Was feeling a bit nostalgic after dusting off some old blasters for a Nerf war over quarantine. I'm sure plenty of older members trickle in and out of here every so often and have the same questions I have. Hopefully the sheer level of ignorance that this forum contained (see: AT4Play) lives on elsewhere.

[Silly]

1 & 2: NH has fallen from prominence in the recent years, now the largest places for Nerf are r/Nerf on Reddit, various Discord servers, and Facebook groups. Modding blasters is certainly still a thing, and bigger than ever before!

 

3: Depends on how old you want to get. People like Spoon have been out of the scene for many years now, while people like Daniel Beaver and Slug still mod and post their contest on the aforementioned different sites. 

 

4: If you want stock parts, check out r/NerfExchange on Reddit, if you want replacement parts, the EAT has been out of limelight for a few years now, but I bet some manufacturers like Orange Mod Works or Worker still have stock laying around in a warehouse. 

 

If you have or are willing to get Discord, I can PM you my username and we can chat. Would be much easier than posting back and forth with eachother.

Edit: PMs are actually broken on here right now, so ill leave a link to the Discord server I run. We have plenty of older names from the hobby on there, some of which I bet you will know. https://discordapp.com/invite/53ykxVX

Edited by Silly, 27 April 2020 - 09:39 PM.

[Daniel Beaver]

The fragmentation of online nerf is distressing, there's no longer an compendium of all information. Some people are still around and active. I certainly still do mods and homemades (I'm working on a Fang QS-4 mod this evening).

 

As for nerfing itself, this is arguably the best time ever to do it.

[Silly]

Been working on some graphs for HONM stuff, figured that sharing one here contributes to this discussion: https://imgur.com/QNCWjM1

[Langley]

That graph doesn't look right.  For one, there was a period of around a year just before the hack when registration was closed.  

[Silly]

I got the data for the chart via the Members tab on the site. Sorted by join date and set the "account created before" to the end of each month. Here is my spreadsheet with all the numbers.

[Langley]

I checked and it looks like the graph is right but the annotations are wrong.  The leveling out part is when Talio shut down sign up:

http://nerfhaven.com...ion-fast-track/

 

Then the hack happened:

http://nerfhaven.com...1010-were-back/

 

Then FNG started:

http://nerfhaven.com...sorted-fuckery/

 

So the steepest part of the incline is probably some combination of Forsaken Angel or Uin13 posting a link to nerfhaven on their youtube channel, a different admin taking over membership approval and possibly approving more accounts, and possibly also automated spambots attempting to join and never getting purged.  Then it levels off when Talio stopped accepting new members without an email application.  Then when I opened membership again with the FNG system, it steadily increased at about the same rate as it did in the mid-2000s. It started to level out around mid 2017.  Membership numbers during that time are probably more to do with things like the Captcha on the sign up page breaking.  You'd have to look at new posts to get a real idea of activity on the site. 

 

A couple of notes about the way you're collecting info:

Registration date is not the date members were approved under the old system or graduated to members under the fng system.  It's just the date they signed up. 

Your numbers only include people who were members when you collected the data.  Members in the 'waiting' group and FNGs who never posted got purged if they hadn't logged in within a year.  Anyone left after that by definition must have posted at some point, or at least actively logged in recently.  I performed another one of these purges within the last couple of weeks.  

 

 

Anyway, I've interpreted data that you painstakingly assembled about the history of a dead internet forum, and I read my own writing from 10 years ago.  Now I need a beer and a shower, so thanks for that.  

[Silly]

Thanks for making the data clearer! Ill re-annotate it before HONM uses it in any official capacity.

[Spud Spudoni]

A huge problem (as said above) is the spread that our community has on different social platforms. While its certainly allowed for more people to explore and discover our hobby, it has really spread us too thin as a community. When I was younger, I really used to hate the strict rigidity the moderation team kept in running the site. While nothing is wrong at all with how its run now, nor any other online forum outside of this, but the tight ship that Nerfhaven was made sure that content and conversation stayed on track and was useful for the community's growth.

 

Also abiding by the older rules of forums before reddit's rise is just too much work for most people now and is a turn off now that other alternatives exist. Information and posting is much easier on reddit and facebook, but you'll rarely ever see a composed writeup or build guide there which is why Nerfhaven remains a beacon to some in that way to easily work through the archives.

 

I just really wish there was a way for reddit/facebook and NH to coexist in a way where both could be utilized together, but theres too much overlap for new users to jump backwards I'm afraid.

[ShaNayNay]

I've interpreted data that you painstakingly assembled about the history of a dead internet forum, and I read my own writing from 10 years ago.  Now I need a beer and a shower, so thanks for that.  

 

Poetic.

 

The fragmentation of online nerf is distressing, there's no longer an compendium of all information. Some people are still around and active. I certainly still do mods and homemades (I'm working on a Fang QS-4 mod this evening).

 

As for nerfing itself, this is arguably the best time ever to do it.

 

I agree with you and spud. What the Nerf community needs is an equivalent to what the Lego community has with bricklink.com. Tight regulations/no BS policy, strong buy/sell marketplace for new/used/incomplete blasters & parts, price tracking, and a complementary forum for discussion and organizing. Then you've got MOCPages for sharing custom mods and builds, and the instructions on how to make them. Reddit is cute for showing off completed projects and capturing the culture, but not the proper layout for sales, write-ups, and organizing wars. I am assuming Facebook groups are more local and great for organizing wars?

 

Regardless.. yeah, nerf is pretty great for breaking the monotony of quarantine. Pulled out my old blasters for the first time in 5+ years and lasered those homemade washer darts (why were these ever a good idea?) at my roommates until they joined in. Had a fun six hours or so. Most of those washer darts fell apart upon their first use. Dented the fridge and put a knick in the wall of the place I'm renting. Oh well, more projects to work on while stuck indoors.

 

Glad to see things are still thriving elsewhere; albeit less efficient.

[Daniel Beaver]

Reddit is cute for showing off completed projects and capturing the culture, but not the proper layout for sales, write-ups, and organizing wars. I am assuming Facebook groups are more local and great for organizing wars?

 

Facebook has been a good tool for connecting with new nerfers in the Minneapolis/St Paul area of Minnesota. We have the very searchably named  "Minnesota Nerf" page and "Minnesota Nerf Community" group, which draws in a lot of randos to wars hosted by various people in the area. I do post war announcements on reddit and some of the discord channels, but I've never had anyone show up who didn't see it on NerfHaven or Facebook. I could see Facebook dropping off in usefulness in the near future as young people shun the platform en masse.

 

The disintegration of forums and the balkanization of online social media is not unique to Nerf at all. It's completely common nowadays to have multiple parallel social groups of a particular hobby active in the same geographic area, and be completely unaware of each other. It's interesting how the internet of 2000-2010 had a lot of centralized hobbyist forums that really brought everyone together, and how much that has disintegrated in a few short years.

Edited by Daniel Beaver, 13 May 2020 - 06:14 PM.

[snakerbot]

We use meetup.com (among other things) here in Houston. I won't say it's been the most successful tool we have, but there are several regulars that found our group through that site.

[Meaker VI]

 

The disintegration of forums and the balkanization of online social media is not unique to Nerf at all. It's completely common nowadays to have multiple parallel social groups of a particular hobby active in the same geographic area, and be completely unaware of each other. It's interesting how the internet of 2000-2010 had a lot of centralized hobbyist forums that really brought everyone together, and how much that has disintegrated in a few short years.

Yeah this is my read on it. Monolithic social media platforms emerged; niche hobby sites died. Several of the big ones are likely to survive for some time, and may survive beyond social media, but we weren't big enough to weather the storm.

 

I will say though, The reddit is now nearly to 50k subscribers, so there still are a few major bastions of the hobby.

[Daniel Beaver]

We use meetup.com (among other things) here in Houston. I won't say it's been the most successful tool we have, but there are several regulars that found our group through that site.

I'll have to give that a try.

[bpso86]

[Daniel Beaver]

You can't hide from us 

[NerfMonkey]

Sup Brandon? It's Mike. I met you at a war in Cinci in March of 2008. Then I believe we had one in Columbus that summer that Twitch was at (don't remember if you made it to that one) and maybe both went to Apoc in 2010? You used to use a Tech Target with which you could hit running targets from 50' away? I'm like 90% sure about this. Good to know you're still out there somewhere dude.

Edited by NerfMonkey, 25 June 2020 - 12:42 PM.