Second Foundation

Board Title
Second Foundation
Board Type	Private
Board Number	822
Entry Requirements	Invite Only

Second Foundation is a private board on GameFAQs, owned by DarkstarRipclaw. Its co-admins are Devin Morgan, SnyperWolf and SonicRaptor. It was created on July 7, 2008, after the first 2008 private board contest. The board itself is named after the Second Foundation from Isaac Asimov's popular Foundation series.

Although the board allows social activity, much of Second Foundation's topics involve debate and argument on issues of the day, often geared to intelligent discussion. DarkstarRipclaw has stated himself that the Second Foundation should be thought of as a spinoff of The Forum, and as such, a few Forumites populate the board; however, the userbase is made up of posters from several different boards. Posters on the Second Foundation generally refer to themselves as "Speakers" (after the actual Second Foundation), with DarkstarRipclaw sometimes referred to as the "First Speaker".

The Second Foundation ToS also has a couple of quirks in it. Interestingly, trolling is not actually forbidden; instead, users are encouraged to post intelligent, witty troll topics, as opposed to resorting to 'run-of-the-mill ten-second trolling topics'. Additionally, foreign language topics are also allowed to be posted.

On April 1st, 2009, DarkstarRipclaw changed the boards name to "Shrine of the Foxgirls", as an April Fools joke. However, the name stuck until August 28, 2009. This did not deter the board's topicality, however, as it was still a place of discussion and debate.

New invites are given when a current board member nominates a user and links to a good-quality post made by the user. The nominee must also be at least level 30.

Second Foundation FAQ

Topic Title: Second Foundation Information Topic + ToS v2 (READ BEFORE POSTING)

Welcome to (the) Second Foundation. As many of you may know, this board was won by yours truly in a contest held by SBAllen, and takes its name from the Second Foundation organization itself (not necessarily the book). Subsequently, discussions over what to do with the private board took place on The Forum. The general consensus that emerged there was to try to preserve the atmosphere of intelligent discussion that exists on The Forum, but to also bring in new blood from other boards that will also participate, while being able to regulate the userbase so that no trolls ruin the overall experience. In essence, you can think of Second Foundation as a Forum spinoff with a relatively high intelligence, relatively mature personalities, and its own sense of community.

This does not mean that every topic and post has to be something discussing religion, philosophy, literature, science, current events, and so forth; on the contrary, you are still more than welcome to post social topics, though preferably still with some substance to the,. We merely encourage you to actively debate the issues of the day and in general. However, I personally do not have a problem if you prefer to read the topics but not actively post, which is quite understandable; again, I wished to create a spirit of discussion, and even just reading is satisfactory if it increases your knowledge of issues, and possibly even changes your opinions.

In effect, this means that the rules regarding usership are fairly laid back; so long as you do not create a disturbance, there really is not any impetus to boot you, and users can nominate other users that they feel would make a good addition (or at least a good reader) in the topic specifically designated for nominations. With that in mind, there are still some general rules and guidelines to follow on this board.

1. Debates, arguments, discussions, et al are meant to be just that. They are NOT meant to be flamefests, insulting other people, or trying to demean others’ opinions with irrelevant tripe. The same goes for social topics.

2. Sans the grace period when this board was created, only users at Level 30 are allowed in. Board members who are Warned (Level 5), in Purgatory (Level 3) or have had their accounts Locked (Level 2) will not be booted, unless their reason for moderation/locking occurred as a result of an incident on board.

3. No fads. Given the desired nature of this board, I think that explains it well enough. Parody topics are acceptable, however.

4. If you must troll, at least be witty about it. Instead of doing the same old general mindless trolling, try something tricky/witty. For example, say a Metroid Prime 4 were to be released: posting a topic title with “MP4 gets a 6.9 from IGN” a few days before its release and then inside posting a review to IGN’s review of Mario Party 4. Yes, it’s still trolling, but at least it’s good trolling (although my example this time may suck in comparison to the last one), and people can appreciate it.

5. No alts. There are a few exceptions to this (see the nomination topic for details), but due to abuse of lax invites in the past, this rule had to be put into place.

6. Foreign language topics are allowed. Yes, I have checked this out with a few moderators, and private boards _are_ actually allowed to have foreign language topics. While I do not think there is enough traffic from multilingual users on this board to support such a topic, the option is there.

7. Remember, this board is a part of GameFAQs, and as such the site’s own ToU still applies. While I think most of you already know the rules and the boundaries by now, be aware that the ToS was recently updated (see this topic):

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=6&topic=44118054

As a general rule of thumb, do not be a douche, and do not do anything explicitly to harm the nature of this board. I do not think that needs any clarification on interpretations.

I believe that is everything. This topic may eventually be updated if seen fit to be necessary. If you have any auxiliary questions, you can ask them in this topic.

External Links

• Second Foundation at GameFAQs
• Topic announcing DarkstarRipclaw as the winner of the first private board contest of 2008.