IB Investigations

[LoverDemon]

Little more historical stuff from various eras.

The List

Our first investigation, on December 28, 2007, was that of "The List".  It revolved around a message posted by Arachnomancer, claiming to have received it from an anonymous alt, and created forty pages of investigative efforts, something which is truly remarkable in IB.

The Omega

The second investigation, shortly after, is "The Omega".  On December 30th, messages were sent to several users containing hints related to "The Omega".  They were all sent by Virtuoso_Savant.  The Omega was solved, much more quickly and efficiently than the list.  The Omega was "I am a third of the devil", the devil being the number 666 and a third being the number six, so the solution was "Six"

The Omega: Round 2

The second part of the Omega was sent out on January 6, 2008.  It was also sent by Virtuoso_Savant, and followed the exact same format as the previous Omega.  The Omega, this time, was "What an odd time for Christmas", the answer being "July".

The Owl Forum

Since the days of Milarkie, Order of the Owl users have proliferated the rumor that they converge on a secret Owl Forum.  Lower ranking users are forever left to wonder: Is it real? A while back, I had compiled all the facts I can relating to The Owl forum, in hopes of discovering the truth of the matter before becoming an OotO.  Well, I found out the truth before becoming OotO.  I'm not going to tell you it, though. [It's fake]

The Zomega

The Zomega is a series of Omega-like riddles, with the same style, however they carry a much more comical tone.  At first, the FBI suspected the sole purpose of the Zomega was to mock the FBI and its riddle-solving.  We discovered, however, that FBI agent Fok had delivered it, and that it was intended as an actual riddle.  The Joke: "What kind of bee gives milk?"  The Punchline: "Boo-bees". DA-DUN, TSH!

The Chain

The Chain is yet another Omega-styled riddle, with a number of clues, each indicating their position and value.  It also had a new feature, a cipher which helped determine the order of the clues based on the number of sides in the shape assigned to each clue.  That answer thus acheived was "The number of these in our group is now".  Clearly, this is incomplete, and led the FBI to investigate the numbers in parenthesis further.  We discovered that by placing the clues in order of their (  ) numbers, and selecting a character from each clue based on the number of sides in that clue's shape [example: quadrilateral=4, 4th character in clue], we formed the remainder of the clue, "eight of them". 

Therefore, The Chain in its entirity reads "The number of these in our group is now eight of them", and the answer is "Planets", because Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Crop R

This is yet ANOTHER Omega-style riddle, with a general agricultural and mineral feel to it.  The solution, after a complex system of eliminating letters, is "Earth".

The Omega: Finishing the Trilogy

The Omega: "One rogue cook asked me to get eggs, milk and flour. She lied."

The Solution: "The Cake is a Lie".  Once again, we have use of IB memes.

Edited June 1, 2023 by LoverDemon

[The_annoying_one]

I remember the Owl Forum rumors. Whole lot of build-up for….absolutely no reward. 🤣

[eklipse]

I remember some of these!  IB was pretty fun.

I like the call out to specific posters too, I remember them now. 

[InsaneFox]

The most amusing part of this is the absence of the possibility that the Owl Forum did exist and just a few people got invited to it. Not everybody was connected via instant messenger channels in those days and that wasn’t something you could selectively post about on the forums anyway. Or that the Owl Forum would have only been a momentary novelty since what’s the point of a message forum for a message forum?

[LoverDemon]

6 minutes ago, InsaneFox said:

The most amusing part of this is the absence of the possibility that the Owl Forum did exist and just a few people got invited to it. Not everybody was connected via instant messenger channels in those days and that wasn’t something you could selectively post about on the forums anyway. Or that the Owl Forum would have only been a momentary novelty since what’s the point of a message forum for a message forum?

There was a supposed screencap to it at one point, which is what set off the rumors (amongst specific Owl's of the time stating so), but sadly, that like a lot of stuff is lost to time.

That idea, would suit ASMB to be frank, to have an urban legend that at one point was actually real but isn't any longer, and the novelty of it all would wear off, especially with the amount of Owl's there eventually were.

Edited June 1, 2023 by LoverDemon

[InsaneFox]

8 minutes ago, LoverDemon said:

There was a supposed screencap to it at one point, which is what set off the rumors (amongst specific Owl's of the time stating so), but sadly, that like a lot of stuff is lost to time.

That idea, would suit ASMB to be frank, to have an urban legend that at one point was actually real but isn't any longer, and the novelty of it all would wear off, especially with the amount of Owl's there eventually were.

Plus I’m pretty sure it ran on a free vBulletin host and it was absolute dogshit.

[LoverDemon]

I wasn't sure where to put this, since I feel making a thread on it would be a bit, pointless.

But this is a good place to put it, a little lore I found on the Owl Forum.

The goal of this investigation is to find out if the owl forum exists before I myself rank to OotO, and will know for certain.  That means I have til' the end of the month of January, 2008.  Most owls have always supported the idea that the Owl forum exists.  I have proof to the contrary, and proof that backs it up, and some proof that could do both.

Owls who say there is no owl forum could be making it up to mess with us, or may have never gotten their confirmation email. 

Owls who say there is an owl forum [the majority] could be supporting a large mythology for the fun of squashing our hopes when we get to OotO.

Runescapian: Whoa whoa wait...I thought there wasn't an Owl board...since I didn't see one when I ranked.

[and now, I break my 25,666 post count]

Duzitickle: check your bulk folder.
sometimes they go there.

see ya on the owl board!
Runescapian: I always think all that's just Viagra prescriptions. Lucky me I found something that WASN'T spam for once. Thanks!

I don't know much about Lithium, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have to e-mail you if they wanted to give you special access to a forum.  They'de probably just either attach the privledge to the rank itself somehow, or give special privledges to anyone who acheived that rank.

Here's a more convincing peice of evidence for the owl forum:

Half_Breed [swimstar]: The mod's/admins also have to have a group meeting to accept you, since they have to go and do all the work to modify your account to have the privlege of viewing the forum.

I did the same thing with a miniforum i had years back.

This sounds a lot more convincing than Duzi's conversation.  It makes sense that a person who's going to receive a bunch of privledges would have to have a background chech by the mods.  But let's think about it.  Would the mods really have to put that much work into allowing someone onto a forum?  Do they really have a group meeting for every owl? It doesn't seem like they would do that much work, that often.

 Duzitickle: w00t!
Luuv just made us a new gif posting thread.
(the old one was like 8000 posts, lawl)

If owls have GIF posting privledges, why would you need a thread just to do it?

Furthermore, why not just "picture posting priveledges"?  Why would they be restricted to GIFs?  It seems like duzi is saying this just to convince us more.  On the other hand, most Owls were IBers at one time, and IBers would surely jump at the chance to excercise/abuse any privledge given to them, even if it had no real meaning. 

 

Runescapian: On second thought...every third page is a fake banscreen, now that I'm looking through it. Apparently this is where they started...

Why would the mods allow banscreens on the owl forum, if they don't allow them in other places? Is it because they assume all owls will be able to understand that they're not really banned?  Or that owls won't abuse the same HTML in other forums?  If not, how did the banscreens spread outside the owl forum? 

Arachnomancer: Odin says it's real. Apparently, there is a thread right now about how you don't believe it's real...and they are all laughing at you

Most likely, Ara knows the truth about whether or not there is indeed an "Owl Forum".  However, she has deceived us before.  Making it seem like we're being laughed at for not beleiving it is a great maneuver to make us beleive it, one that owls have been useing for a long time.  But if I knew something, and it was a thing I was happy to know, I would probably laugh at people who denied it.

Now, the crowning piece of evidence.  This will be the hardest to prove or disprove...

Duzi:

 

this is the only screenshot i've ever gotten out of the board.
after i posted it initially, i got a PM from admin telling me i couldnt cap it anymore.

apparently, nonowls would "cause a stink".

Now, look closely at the areas around the text.  Here's a screencap of IB, as seen from my computer.  It looks the same as Duzi's screencap.  It was pasted into MS paint, and saved as a bitmap, so the file type wouldn't be a factor in the image quality.

However, don't you find it a little odd that all the threads are so infamous? Comrad's h4x thread, a giat "+1" thread, a thread by milarkie, an animated GIF thread... I don't really see much of the crap that commonly goes on in IB.

It's slightly suspicious that there can only be one screencap of the owl forum available.  But if owls really tried to keep it a secret, that may just be the case.

Here's another piece of evidence that's hard to deny:

Total Posts for Angelic_Scars [message tracker]: 68,963

Total Posts : 69,519

Where are the other 556 posts? One would assume they are in the owl forum, unless I added wrong or missed something.  However, there is another secret forum, for the purpose of quarentining questionable threads, which these posts could have been moved into and left in.

Now for a bit of anti-owl forum information:

Runescapian sent me a PM stating that there was no owl forum, and he couldn't keep lying to me in the thread.  He could just be screwing with me, but he seemed like he wanted to tell the truth.  However, so did duzi.  And I must admit, telling people there isn't an owl forum and having it be a surprise when they find there is one is a bit nicer than building up their hopes, and then letting them crash down.

Well, there's a lot of evidence on both sides of the issue.  If you have anything you'de like to point out, feel free to say it to me in the thread I'll undoubtedly be making.  I can't say I'm sure whether there's an owl forum, but I would certainley like to beleive there's one.

If not, hey, I'll make a PHBB and invite only OotO's to it, and let them post pics and swear.

Edited June 1, 2023 by LoverDemon

[InsaneFox]

While the Owl Forum may or may not be a sworn secret. The Boards did have a couple of secret forums that only certain people had access to that weren’t mod forums.

Example would be the playtesting forum for the on-site games they were developing.

[katt_goddess]

3 minutes ago, InsaneFox said:

While the Owl Forum may or may not be a sworn secret. The Boards did have a couple of secret forums that only certain people had access to that weren’t mod forums.

Example would be the playtesting forum for the on-site games they were developing.

There were also originally 3 boards for the HELPeR tier. It ended up being condensed into a single board as things became more solidified. 

One of the murdered boards had a thread of pretty much nothing but porn.  

[LoverDemon]

6 minutes ago, InsaneFox said:

While the Owl Forum may or may not be a sworn secret. The Boards did have a couple of secret forums that only certain people had access to that weren’t mod forums.

Example would be the playtesting forum for the on-site games they were developing.

Wow, it's been so long I completely forgot about the playtesting forum. I basically remember the HELPeR forums, and the mods were always going in about the stuff they were doing in their forum there. Haha.

Edited June 1, 2023 by LoverDemon

[crackymckrackin]

34 minutes ago, LoverDemon said:

I wasn't sure where to put this, since I feel making a thread on it would be a bit, pointless.

But this is a good place to put it, a little lore I found on the Owl Forum.

The goal of this investigation is to find out if the owl forum exists before I myself rank to OotO, and will know for certain.  That means I have til' the end of the month of January, 2008.  Most owls have always supported the idea that the Owl forum exists.  I have proof to the contrary, and proof that backs it up, and some proof that could do both.

Owls who say there is no owl forum could be making it up to mess with us, or may have never gotten their confirmation email. 

Owls who say there is an owl forum [the majority] could be supporting a large mythology for the fun of squashing our hopes when we get to OotO.

Runescapian: Whoa whoa wait...I thought there wasn't an Owl board...since I didn't see one when I ranked.

[and now, I break my 25,666 post count]

Duzitickle: check your bulk folder.
sometimes they go there.

see ya on the owl board!
Runescapian: I always think all that's just Viagra prescriptions. Lucky me I found something that WASN'T spam for once. Thanks!

I don't know much about Lithium, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have to e-mail you if they wanted to give you special access to a forum.  They'de probably just either attach the privledge to the rank itself somehow, or give special privledges to anyone who acheived that rank.

Here's a more convincing peice of evidence for the owl forum:

Half_Breed [swimstar]: The mod's/admins also have to have a group meeting to accept you, since they have to go and do all the work to modify your account to have the privlege of viewing the forum.

I did the same thing with a miniforum i had years back.

This sounds a lot more convincing than Duzi's conversation.  It makes sense that a person who's going to receive a bunch of privledges would have to have a background chech by the mods.  But let's think about it.  Would the mods really have to put that much work into allowing someone onto a forum?  Do they really have a group meeting for every owl? It doesn't seem like they would do that much work, that often.

 Duzitickle: w00t!
Luuv just made us a new gif posting thread.
(the old one was like 8000 posts, lawl)

If owls have GIF posting privledges, why would you need a thread just to do it?

Furthermore, why not just "picture posting priveledges"?  Why would they be restricted to GIFs?  It seems like duzi is saying this just to convince us more.  On the other hand, most Owls were IBers at one time, and IBers would surely jump at the chance to excercise/abuse any privledge given to them, even if it had no real meaning. 

 

Runescapian: On second thought...every third page is a fake banscreen, now that I'm looking through it. Apparently this is where they started...

Why would the mods allow banscreens on the owl forum, if they don't allow them in other places? Is it because they assume all owls will be able to understand that they're not really banned?  Or that owls won't abuse the same HTML in other forums?  If not, how did the banscreens spread outside the owl forum? 

Arachnomancer: Odin says it's real. Apparently, there is a thread right now about how you don't believe it's real...and they are all laughing at you

Most likely, Ara knows the truth about whether or not there is indeed an "Owl Forum".  However, she has deceived us before.  Making it seem like we're being laughed at for not beleiving it is a great maneuver to make us beleive it, one that owls have been useing for a long time.  But if I knew something, and it was a thing I was happy to know, I would probably laugh at people who denied it.

Now, the crowning piece of evidence.  This will be the hardest to prove or disprove...

Duzi:

 

this is the only screenshot i've ever gotten out of the board.
after i posted it initially, i got a PM from admin telling me i couldnt cap it anymore.

apparently, nonowls would "cause a stink".

Now, look closely at the areas around the text.  Here's a screencap of IB, as seen from my computer.  It looks the same as Duzi's screencap.  It was pasted into MS paint, and saved as a bitmap, so the file type wouldn't be a factor in the image quality.

However, don't you find it a little odd that all the threads are so infamous? Comrad's h4x thread, a giat "+1" thread, a thread by milarkie, an animated GIF thread... I don't really see much of the crap that commonly goes on in IB.

It's slightly suspicious that there can only be one screencap of the owl forum available.  But if owls really tried to keep it a secret, that may just be the case.

Here's another piece of evidence that's hard to deny:

Total Posts for Angelic_Scars [message tracker]: 68,963

Total Posts : 69,519

Where are the other 556 posts? One would assume they are in the owl forum, unless I added wrong or missed something.  However, there is another secret forum, for the purpose of quarentining questionable threads, which these posts could have been moved into and left in.

Now for a bit of anti-owl forum information:

Runescapian sent me a PM stating that there was no owl forum, and he couldn't keep lying to me in the thread.  He could just be screwing with me, but he seemed like he wanted to tell the truth.  However, so did duzi.  And I must admit, telling people there isn't an owl forum and having it be a surprise when they find there is one is a bit nicer than building up their hopes, and then letting them crash down.

Well, there's a lot of evidence on both sides of the issue.  If you have anything you'de like to point out, feel free to say it to me in the thread I'll undoubtedly be making.  I can't say I'm sure whether there's an owl forum, but I would certainley like to beleive there's one.

If not, hey, I'll make a PHBB and invite only OotO's to it, and let them post pics and swear.

There was no owl board but as Fox pointed out in the post above, there was a host of hidden folders. Most were just dead show folders or special event folders....also dead. Two were mod/admin folders. One was a board for abuse reports and the other was the mod cave. Nothing about either of the mod folders were exciting or special  by the time I was modded. 

[LoverDemon]

1 minute ago, katt_goddess said:

There were also originally 3 boards for the HELPeR tier. It ended up being condensed into a single board as things became more solidified. 

One of the murdered boards had a thread of pretty much nothing but porn.  

That's what I always assumed that mod forums were filled with, that or a bunch of feet pics.

[katt_goddess]

Just now, LoverDemon said:

That's what I always assumed that mod forums were filled with, that or a bunch of feet pics.

[crackymckrackin]

I forgot the dead threads folder where we moved all the garbage to. You would think it would be mostly porn but in reality it was a massive folder of threads where we put all those ax grinding threads.

[The_annoying_one]

I think we all know the mod forums were full of you all talking crap about us normal folks. I’m on to you!

[LoverDemon]

1 minute ago, The_annoying_one said:

I think we all know the mod forums were full of you all talking crap about us normal folks. I’m on to you!

I'mma be honest with you, that's what the HELPeR forum did too, we had a special rant thread, just for us to vent... all... about... you.

[crackymckrackin]

1 minute ago, The_annoying_one said:

I think we all know the mod forums were full of you all talking crap about us normal folks. I’m on to you!

It really wasn't. It was more just a place to bitch about work.

[InsaneFox]

1 minute ago, The_annoying_one said:

I think we all know the mod forums were full of you all talking crap about us normal folks. I’m on to you!

I’m technically in the mod group for the UEMB discord (I say technically because I haven’t taken a moderation action in over a year) and that’s all we use that mod chat for. So it’s a solid assumption.

[The_annoying_one]

2 minutes ago, LoverDemon said:

I'mma be honest with you, that's what the HELPeR forum did too, we had a special rant thread, just for us to vent... all... about... you.

And I (probably) deserved every damn bit of it. 

[Raptorpat]

1 hour ago, katt_goddess said:

There were also originally 3 boards for the HELPeR tier. It ended up being condensed into a single board as things became more solidified. 

I remember being in our nightly massive aimchat when the helpers first launched, and I suddenly realized that literally everyone in the chat was either a mod or a helper... except me and Fox.

LOOKS LIKE THE TURNS WERE TABLED

[crackymckrackin]

4 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

I remember being in our nightly massive aimchat when the helpers first launched, and I suddenly realized that literally everyone in the chat was either a mod or a helper... except me and Fox.

LOOKS LIKE THE TURNS WERE TABLED

And we all laughed and pointed.

[Raptorpat]

Fox was like busy staring at nothing while drooling, but I certainly heard the laughs.

[crackymckrackin]

2 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

Fox was like busy staring at nothing while drooling, but I certainly heard the laughs.

I'm pretty sure aim was still going when I was modded but we had mostly switched over to tinychat. At the end of aim it was coaster, shadow, ramo, girl with dreads, panic and me. There was one other guy and for the life of me....I cannot remember his name atm.

[Raptorpat]

The chatchit lived on in a much smaller FB chat for an ungodly eternity, long after there was any enjoyment to derive from using FB. Mostly just ramo, panic, me, slappy, and a few select guests.

Now I guess the discord service is the modern version of that.

[InsaneFox]

21 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

I remember being in our nightly massive aimchat when the helpers first launched, and I suddenly realized that literally everyone in the chat was either a mod or a helper... except me and Fox.

LOOKS LIKE THE TURNS WERE TABLED

I couldn’t be relied upon to follow rules. And would have abused any amount of power given.

Remember the IB wiki?

[Raptorpat]

10 minutes ago, InsaneFox said:

Remember the IB wiki?

the cockblockatiel?

[InsaneFox]

2 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

the cockblockatiel?

Oh that was a classic!

[Raptorpat]

you were almost certainly doing the world a service given how young we all were