Forum member list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
--Updated for Feb 2022 (<-- technically this is the date which I last remembered to update this title :p)--
**DISCLAIMER** First, keep in mind this is the best list I could compile according to what was archived at archive.org. This means that there may have been members that were never archived, and also that several bot accounts or accounts with not enough information to tell whether they were bots or not were also archived. Therefore, this list is not and will never be 100% accurate, because some profiles will never be able to be determined to be legit or not (more on bots below)
How the list defines:
Generations - are broken down based on where the forum was located domain-wise at the time. Generation 2 is further broken down as described below. I only know so much about the history that I'm able to recall.
G0 - Proboards (2003-2004). Without knowing more, it appears to be where Mat and other key figures that made up Pastel Games first convened to set stuff up.
G1 - Revolutions (2005-Jun 2008). The first forum. Possibly closely tied to his website at the time when it was first starting out.
G2.0 - BBPress (Aug 2008-Jan 2010). The second forum. This one was definitely tied to the Pastel Games site, as there is evidence of plugins that matched color schemes between the two sites and everything.
G2.1 - BBPressDark (Jan 2010-Oct 2010). At this time the BBPress forum switched to the historical dark theme because apparently Pastel Games had a joint venture with some mobile company that had this theme. Not sure of the details here.
G2.2 - BBPress 3 (Nov 2010-Sep 2012). The forum switched back to the original lighter theme and Mat made a comment on how during the dark theme time some things transpired that he would rather forget (company related?) so he thought that returning to the lighter theme would rejuvenate the forum.
G3 - Pastel Portal (Nov 2012-Oct 2014). It was originally headed by Mateusz at pastelportal.com at the end of December 2012 until late 2014, when Mat gave chief adminship to AK.
G4 - Pastel Land .com (Nov 2014-Apr 2020) - Pastel Land, headed under AK at pastelland.com/forum. This generation was characterized by the growth of Mat's YouTube and Twitch audiences, as well as the formation of his Discord server and the fan Discord server.
G5 - Pastel Land .net (Apr 2020-present). - The current state of the forum, after the email system and the php broke and AK went missing. Now being headed under Vortex and Ancient Crystal at pastelland.net/forum.
**NOTE: I can't find out when exactly the forum switched from G2.1 to G2.2. I've searched all the available captures, and there was a site-wide gap of archiving anything between October 23 2010 - December 8 2010. So the boundary between 2.1 and 2.2 is unclear. I've kept the accounts that were registered during that time at the bottom of the 2.1 list and they're not included in the total members per generation graph.
**NOTE2: There is a gap in registration between the recorded end of G2.2 and G3 of about three months (Sept. 2012 to December 2012). I have no information on the status of the forum at that time, including when specifically it was up or down and if new members registered as part of G2.2.
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Members have two different numbers:
1) their number according to the Master List (yellow) which attempts to keep track of all unique members ever to be in the collective forum community. If there's a colored box next to their name, that means the member had an account previously registered in a previous forum. If the box is black, I've labeled the archived profile as almost certainly a
bot. This number list is liable to change if any future information reveals if profiles were in fact bots or real people when they were noted otherwise.
2) their number according to numbered tags of members for each forum (green). These are typically found in the urls of each member profile on the forum, which automatically makes a new member profile when a new member registers. You'll see the numbers get quite big in G2, because the forum also counted bot profiles that were probably automatically deleted. G2 was swarmed with bots in its history.
If you ever wanted to call yourself by a Pastel ID number (and cast off any lingering remains of humanity you have left), I'd recommend the green number because while it might be a bit more unwieldy, it will never change because it doesn't rely on my slightly subjective standards for determining who was a real member or not in the past; it just logged everything in the system. (And bots won't ever ask for their ID number...)
Suggested format for yellow numbers: P-X (where X is the yellow number)
Suggested format for green numbers: GY-X (where Y is the generation number and X is the green number)
For example: I would be labeled as either P-1145 or G3-846.
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How I identified bots: I tended to use a method of "proving that it's a bot and assuming it's a real person" rather than vice versa. This means that there are potentially less legit users than the yellow numbered list states.
Bots were identified by a combination of factors; they were more likely to:
-have very similar names to other profiles that did not follow a typical "internet username model" (aka they were common names from a specific country, random combinations of letters and numbers, or were names of website domains)
-have websites that led to merchandise, pornography, or other clickbaity sites that appear to have been run by bots, or very basic site domains like Google.com or Yahoo.com
-have seemingly or autofilled or repetitive responses to fields of personal information (ex. Interests: women/study/job, or Location: Nepal/NY)
**addition: I'm aware that some users may be mischaracterized along this criteria due to cultural blindnesses I may have; I've tried my best to remain open and objective when figuring this out.
Profiles filled out or named in a seemingly trolling fashion tended to be still counted as legit users.
When no outstanding information was present in someone's profile, I tended to assume they were legit people even if they didn't post anything. If their profile had a profile pic other than the default little creature (including a randomly generated wordpress pattern), I assumed they were a legit user.
If there was any post activity logged for a user, I assumed they were a legit user. If they had posts but no history, I still assumed they were a legit user (unless something told me otherwise) because it was always possible that they later retracted their own posts or the threads that they posted in were deleted.
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On the right side of the document are the graphs of the total number of members (deemed as legit in the yellow list) that registered by year, by month, by day, and by generation.
If you have any further questions as to how things are arranged or can suggest improvements to the list, let me know! As far as I know this is the best categorization method of the members in the entire Pastel history that's available.
