Here are my opinions on the closing of the Nintendo Forums as well as possible legal issues Nintendo has on closing it. Please find evidence proving or disproving my case. I heard a lawyer mention it once, but I'm not sure of all of the circumstances for it to be enforced and all. On the other hand, the TOS of the forums states that it's a privilege. Also, Nintendo's legal department probably knows all of the loopholes and whatnot. I apologize for not doing extensive research on it; I was honestly more focused on making the video quickly and was blinded by assumptions.
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All empires have their rises and falls. The Nintendo NSider forums can relate to an empire through its system and how overexpansion or size tends to overwhelm itself as various factions try to overule it. Now, from my understanding, the forum was shut down due to coorporate decisions, not that of former cheif web supervisor of NOA, Andrew Hartpence had no say in the matter and is rumored to have defended the forums for a while. (I'm not sure if he's laid off or resigned, but he now works for Pokemon USA a couple of miles down I-405 in Bellevue, WA) Into a real world analysis, the Roman empire fell due to invading Barbarians and internal political corruptness (as well as an indolent consumer society relying on the concept free bread and circus). The Nintendo NSider Forums has been tumbling downhill when its immense size filled its moderating capacity.
As the forum grew, so did its fame throughout the web and spammers as well as trollers create multiple accounts to raid the forum. Many simply attack the newbie boards, while others wait until it's time. In February 2006, I was impersonated by a spammer named KEK_IN and KEK_1N who posted explicit content via the PM system. As the dam holding the spam reservoir broke, the administrators had no choice but to strengthen its rules by adding more restrictions. There were also phishing incidents where a third party managed to acquire a user's username and password and started to post expiclit content.
On the other hand, there were certain rules that were added for legal privacy protection such as exchanging friend codes. Also, many restrictions are put in place such as the elitist rank system. It promoted people to flood instead of its real purpose to limit new spammers from abusing the abilities granted to the special ranks.
Another issue that the forum adopted from its size was the lack of discussion. As time goes by, the discussions wear thin and redundancy sets in as new users start to repeat the chain. Trivial games and comics start sprouting out and discussions wind down to a halt. One option to stop the redundancy were Role-playing games, which were prohibited after it was abused back in '04. The Power On board turned into a "post your destkop" board with some mild spam and threads titled, "I'm leaving NSider" with a post saying, "...for the night. Good night! :)". The moderators then would attempt to erase record of the spam on the Power On board and a flock of members start to complain on the help board about their posting numbers depleting.
In conclusion, the forums just became too large to support itself and had a small active staff to govern and enforce it. Discussions wore thin and trolls attacked the forums relentlessly.
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I just noticed I made a couple of typos in the vid. As many of you noted, my obsession of overusing emoticons is quite prevalent throughout this video.
Anyways, I enjoyed helping all of the NSiders that needed help who I've came across with and I wish the best luck to all of my cyberfriends out there. ^_^
~ KEK
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Song: Delfino Airstrip Arrival (Super Mario Sunshine; (C) Nintendo 2002)
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