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Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: Taffeta on June 16, 2017, 04:05:00 PM

Title: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 16, 2017, 04:05:00 PM: Recent discussions in other threads made me stop and think about about the community over the past several years, and I wondered exactly how much internet archaeology we have left behind over the years. We all talk about waybackking the most recent DV site and other recently lost sites, but I don't think we spend a lot of time digging around in the fansites and hot topics of the distant past.

These are just some of the bits and pieces I found from the wayback when...in the years around 2000.

What's interesting to me is that some of the things here are much more archaic in style, but some of the ideas sound very familiar and current to who we are today.

I could not find any trace of Dream Castle, though I tried. I had a link for it, but the wayback didn't have it and couldn't access it.

I did find LM's old site, Moondancer's Dream, and I would love to post the link to that with her permission, as it contains not only a lot of old pony stuff and fanfiction (that seems to be there) but also a guestbook with entries left by people long since gone away. To me those people aren't "lost" but are pieces of our past - pony memories that all contributed something to this place.

Edit to add: Thanks LM. These are the links I found. You will know better than me how much is there :)
http://www.oocities.org/area51/shadowlands/9518/
http://www.oocities.org/area51/shadowlands/9518/library.htm
And the guestbook
http://www.oocities.org/area51/shadowlands/9518/geobook.html

In the meantime, I do have a few sites, which I did on screencaptures as some of them had some loading issues, and some had some personal information on that I wanted to remove.

I did also find the old page link for the original DV and the original DV Chat, but the chat and images are long since gone, so I didn't screengrab that.

The old black and pink Trading Post is also long since gone. But this early 21st century version still lurks.
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Some of the old fansites I found mention of I found through the relics of the 'Ring of Rainbows', the webring centred from Dream Valley in the days prior to Google and in a world when we used mailing lists, not forums, to communicate for the most part. The Ring of Rainbows to me is probably the original thread linking together our community. You could sign up to join it at Dream Valley, by filling in a form on Kim's site.
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The Ring of Rainbows led me to this ghost of Tabby's site, with tantalising links to a now-nonexistent MLP newsletter:

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A really old version of my site also contained this image, belonging I think to Silverfall (although the direct image link no longer works) advertising International Pony Day, 2001. I think the UK mailing list automatically still sends out reminders for IPD, but I don't know if the community still observes it. It was devised to be the 2nd August because MLP began in America in 1982, and August 2nd in American date order is 8/2. We even had a vote on it.
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There was even a petition in 2000-1, set up by I think, Patchwork, to try and bring back a commemorative line of G1 ponies. Yes, some things do never change. This ideology is still probably as strong now as it was then, although interaction with Hasbro now is far different from what it was in that pre-convention pre-fair time.

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And of course, it wouldn't be the pony community if there weren't people expressing doubts. This is absolutely not anything from the dark days of genuine all out pony warfare, but there were conversations even back in 2000-1 about G2 and their differences to G1. Some snippets of real conversation from back then.

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It's really interesting going back and seeing those pieces of the past that probably a lot of people have forgotten or don't even know about. But one thing is exactly the same as then. That was the pony community. This is the pony community. And in the next seventeen years or so, I wonder what kind of paper trail we'll leave behind for the pony collectors then?

I'm a historian, so this stuff makes me geeky. But I also think that sometimes it doesn't hurt to look at bits of our past....just to know where we came from to be here as we all are now.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: ColdRuru on June 16, 2017, 04:10:11 PM: Great post!
I personaly thinks it's sad that most of the sites speaking of G1 are missing now... They where pure legacy.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Leave a Whisper on June 16, 2017, 04:11:36 PM: This is really interesting Taffeta!
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 16, 2017, 04:13:16 PM: Quote from: ColdRuru on June 16, 2017, 04:10:11 PM
Great post!
I personaly thinks it's sad that most of the sites speaking of G1 are missing now... They where pure legacy.

Sadder for me is the fact so many of them are tricky to find or impossible to load on the wayback. That old TP actually loops and doesn't load. You can get a screen grab of it in a split second when you hit refresh, and that's all. I was especially sad Dream Castle wasn't there because it was a big favourite site of the past. And of course the broken links for the newsletters as well.

But at least those fragments kind of show where we came from to what we are today. And though we're totally different today, it's kind of nice to think that we have been around such a long time and that some pieces of that past can still be found into the present day.

There are some folk here who are much better at using the wayback machine and at digging up old stuff than I am, so if anyone feels inclined to look for any other sites to add or any luck with Dream Castle, it would be great to see it.

That last post strongly suggests it was made by a male fan of MLP, as well. I knew a few MLP male fans way back who were major stalwarts of the community for a long time looong before "bronies" happened, but sadly haven't yet managed to dig up stuff from them :/.

Edit to add: Looking at the old DV pages, I saw mention there of the Friendship Gardens G2 CDROM game. Does anyone else remember that? Ponies obsessed with animals and an annoying butterfly(?) with a sing-songy voice constantly telling you "you have to move your pony out of the way" whenever you wanted to do something? I remember you got the pony to the end and it disappeared. Which made my sister cry and me sad so we gave up playing it...but I also remember you could print a picture out of the pony you 'created' for the game and also give them a name?

Ah, memories :D I probably still have the CDROM somewhere but I bet no PC now would run it.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: northstar3184 on June 16, 2017, 06:39:00 PM: Thank you so much for sharing this, Taffeta!
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: LadyMoondancer on June 16, 2017, 06:39:09 PM: I'm only partway through reading your post, Taffeta, but yeah you definitely have permission to post my old site! I love reminiscing about Ye Olde Days, so thanks for making this post! *goes back to reading post*
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Cobblestone on June 16, 2017, 07:36:00 PM: Let's see

I remember frequenting the Golden Autumn all the freaking time. Such a beautiful site. I think it gets a lot of traffic because it's still alive! And it's an angelfire site. That's amazing.

http://www.angelfire.com/80s/babygoldenautumn/index1.html (http://www.angelfire.com/80s/babygoldenautumn/index1.html)

I remember going on silverfall's site when G3's were relatively new. I think she had one going before she took a break and strawberry reef continued on with a great library of ponies.

I'm trying to think if there are others that haven't been mentioned already.

OH! BabyIceCrystal had (has?) a site for her ponies and customs. SO CUTE. I went there a lot.

I also used to check the awards every year. Can't remember the name. Golden pony awards? It was a community awards site for customs and such.

There was also an RP going on that was sort of a dark story built on what could have happened after G1. Something about the fall of ponyland? I just remember thinking it was super interesting. I feel like it was built around a character called Silver Heart? I want to say she's the daughter of Sundance. Last "light" mlp. I know, I know.

Edit: It was called "My Little Pony: End of the Dream" and the character was Silver Dream.

Aaaaand the mushrump? Any of this sound familiar. I swear I didn't make it up.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: SkyCakes on June 16, 2017, 07:59:17 PM: People can still go to Tabby's newsletter I stuck on one of the Issues and I love them. Also its nice to see how people felt about the G2 and G3s ect. I felt like I was stepping into the past. http://fakiespaceman.com/dv/monthly.htm
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 16, 2017, 08:07:46 PM: Oh, brilliant :) I didn't know the newsletters were still out there, amazing that they are, thank you for sharing!

Also, the Mushrump does sound vaguely familiar. I did see Tarpan's site on the Ring of Rainbows, too, but couldn't load it. That one sticks in my head as well.

It is way too hot here to sleep right now and I have to turn on the noisy aircon to cool the room for a bit, so I've added the links to LM's Moondancer's Dream to the main post. Thanks for giving permission, LM. The hunt for more history continues.

I wish I had more time to really go into this as it would be amazing to have an archive of bits and pieces to preserve what is left, but for the time being it's just really cool to be able to dig up some stuff and share it.

Both Moondancer's Dream and the image from my own site are so old they even have my old email address on them, and I've had my current email address for a really long time.

One of the other conversations I saw mentioned ICQ. That brought back memories of the funny noises it made and early morning chats. LM, I think you corrupted me to Forever Knight via ICQ. I remember talking to Uni snd Olivia using that, too. Also Wiggles (as he used to call himself, he made some great customs and I have a few that I still treasure. One was a Twinkle Eye sea pony who still lives with my Jem dolls. Oh, snd Melissa...Fridgepixi...I remember talking to her a ton there too.

I think it was ICQ or AOL instant messenger back then...where I know I used to chat with Sel and Steamer. Steamer was such a lovely guy. I know a lot of folk will remember him, surely. I know he went to the Palooza at least once. I talked to him a lot way back when.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Mermaid on June 16, 2017, 09:12:14 PM: Ring of rainbows was my favorite!!!
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Cobblestone on June 16, 2017, 10:02:30 PM: I found the Mushrump! I couldn't remember who made it but it's Colormist's site!
https://sites.google.com/site/colormist/
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 17, 2017, 05:13:46 AM: Quote from: Cobblestone on June 16, 2017, 10:02:30 PM
I found the Mushrump! I couldn't remember who made it but it's Colormist's site!
https://sites.google.com/site/colormist/

Ah, Colormist's site! I knew it sounded familiar!
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on June 17, 2017, 07:36:10 AM: *wipes tear from eyes* oh it smells like pony smell in this nostalgic place!
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Kisscurl on June 17, 2017, 08:22:09 AM: Taffeta - I have the G2 game, I'll have to see if I can get it to work on one of our computers :)

I must say I remember most of those sites, such a long time ago. I think if geocities was still around there would be so many more pony sites that used to be on there, I know mine was.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Leave a Whisper on June 17, 2017, 08:34:25 AM: It's so neat hearing about all these different sites
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 17, 2017, 10:26:04 AM: Quote from: lovesbabysquirmy on June 17, 2017, 07:36:10 AM
*wipes tear from eyes* oh it smells like pony smell in this nostalgic place!

Of course it does! Good old pony smell smells like nostalgia.

@ Kisscurl - if you can get it to work it would be fun to see screen captures of it. I remember it very clearly but I don't know where my copy is, if I still even have it. A lot of time has passed!

Geocities does seem to be the black hole. I have found traces of angelfire sites and tripod sites but geocities not so much. Plus the wayback requires actual URLs which makes it more challenging.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Carrehz on June 17, 2017, 11:19:04 AM: oooh yesss I miss Geocities :( I wish they'd left the sites up when they shut it down. Reocities.com, Oocities.org and Geocities.ws are some Geocities archives if anyone's looking for old Geocities sites btw, if you have the url you can just replace the 'geocities.com' with one of those (so reocities.com/example instead of geocities.com/example) and see if they have it. I've found a few sites on there that Wayback Machine either didn't have, or had incomplete copies of, etc.

And yes knowing the url is tricky :( There's so many sites that I'd love to see again, but have no idea what the exact url was..
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 17, 2017, 11:26:37 AM: That was how I found Moondancer's Dream, but for some there is an active block on the site. That's why I couldn't get Dream Castle. :/
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Carrehz on June 17, 2017, 11:38:40 AM: ah, did Dream Castle get hit by a robots.txt that blocks Wayback Machine? That's the worst >_< Especially when the robots.txt wasn't put in place by the original site owner, but someone who later bought the domain (if that makes sense?), that's happened to a few sites I liked.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 17, 2017, 11:51:21 AM: Quote from: Carrehz on June 17, 2017, 11:38:40 AM
ah, did Dream Castle get hit by a robots.txt that blocks Wayback Machine? That's the worst >_< Especially when the robots.txt wasn't put in place by the original site owner, but someone who later bought the domain (if that makes sense?), that's happened to a few sites I liked.

Yeah. Unless anyone knows another way in, that one is gone ><
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Wardah on June 17, 2017, 04:35:31 PM: Quote from: Taffeta on June 17, 2017, 11:51:21 AM
Quote from: Carrehz on June 17, 2017, 11:38:40 AM
ah, did Dream Castle get hit by a robots.txt that blocks Wayback Machine? That's the worst >_< Especially when the robots.txt wasn't put in place by the original site owner, but someone who later bought the domain (if that makes sense?), that's happened to a few sites I liked.

Yeah. Unless anyone knows another way in, that one is gone ><

The thing is the sites are still there in the archive we just can't access them. I've heard they are considering ignoring robots.txt for sites that weren't blocked in the past.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Carrehz on June 17, 2017, 05:36:42 PM: Quote from: Wardah on June 17, 2017, 04:35:31 PM
Quote from: Taffeta on June 17, 2017, 11:51:21 AM
Quote from: Carrehz on June 17, 2017, 11:38:40 AM
ah, did Dream Castle get hit by a robots.txt that blocks Wayback Machine? That's the worst >_< Especially when the robots.txt wasn't put in place by the original site owner, but someone who later bought the domain (if that makes sense?), that's happened to a few sites I liked.

Yeah. Unless anyone knows another way in, that one is gone ><

The thing is the sites are still there in the archive we just can't access them. I've heard they are considering ignoring robots.txt for sites that weren't blocked in the past.

Ohhh, that would be awesome if they did that. I mean, it's alright for people who genuinely don't want their sites archived for whatever reason (it sucks for us, but I understand everyone has their own reasons for stuff like that), but like I say, sometimes stuff gets blocked unfairly :/

edit: Also just a tip to everyone, in general, if you find something you love on the Wayback Machine - SAVE IT. It's a great site but it's unpredictable, and sometimes stuff gets taken down. Just found out another site I wanted to save stuff off but didn't have the time to before has been "excluded" and I'm crushed >____<
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: lostpony on June 23, 2017, 04:29:51 AM: Thanks so much for this Taffeta. I was just panicking over the loss of all the old stuff that I never got to see and it means a lot to me that you and others are so vigilant.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 23, 2017, 09:43:12 AM: I am sure there is way more stuff out there and if I was more patient or didn't have to translate odd sections of Japanese literature so I could begin my thesis chapter I might have been able to dig them out too. Suffice it to say if you are creative and start with a well known site, you can find a fair bit, even if you only can see how main pages looked.

I think there are about five different versions of my site alone on the wayback. It's a bit galling for me as a historian that most of the time the saved pages are relocation pages that say "the scrapbook has moved", but it's also nice to know that in some cases bits of my contribution to the community years ago are still preserved.

I wish that the mailing list archives all still existed. The Jem community list, before the mods closed it, had everything transferred to an external archive site to preserve it even though the list itself was gone. I wish someone had done that with ponypeople and Dreamvalley lists. I know I have most of the emails from those on ancient archives from very long since lost computer backups, but no idea how I'd even run the disk, let alone open the files now :/ And that is sad, as it would be like looking at a place like this, only eighteen years or so into the past.

I can't believe I forgot about International Pony Day. It was discussed so much at the time.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on June 23, 2017, 10:10:48 AM: Taffeta, you are inspiring me to go through my computer records and see if there is ANYTHING that I may still have tucked away.

I know that I have printouts of the site that used to be MyLittlePonyCollector - they had great checklists. They were also mirrored on Allelenet or something like like that...
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 23, 2017, 10:41:12 AM: I swear that if I had time, I would actually try and create an archive of stuff from our history as a community, a sort of ancient hall of fame for websites, ideas, people...but I really don't have time. I have enough work to do on the Scrapbook as well as my other commitments, but if at the very least some stuff gets posted in this thread, it is proof that we haven't forgotten our roots and can still share them with new friends :)
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: invaderhorizongreen on June 23, 2017, 12:43:07 PM: Kinda makes me wonder if some sites are going to be future lost civilizations of the 21st century someday.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Archer on June 23, 2017, 03:35:03 PM: God i remember the Ring Of Rainbows :D I used to go through that looking for pony sites :D I remember back when i first got into MLP back in the early 2000's and i think i went through Moondancers Dream website and saved every bit of pony art i could find because i loved finding artwork of the ponies :D I especially used to hunt through sites for pictures of the ponies i had in my collection :D

In fact i still have a CD somewhere where i backed it all up to :)

I also remember the UK mailing list that i think was set up by Tic Tac Toe :) I remember the old TP and all the discussions about when G3 were first teased as the first few pictures (if i remember right) of the original 8 were quite small and i remember a degree of excitement about them because they looked more like the G1 ponies than the G2's did :)
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 24, 2017, 05:20:03 PM: TTT's mailing list still technically exists. Every so often it sends out a notification and verrry occasionally people post to it, but not so often now. That means it's probably all there in archive form, from way back when. I haven't tried to look though.

I absolutely remember that discussion about the first G3. The four 'rainbow' ponies and the four...I don't know what they were, but others...sparkle ponies? Four with tinsel (Kimono, Sparkleworks, Pinkie Pie and..?) and four with multicoloured hair (Dash, Sunny Daze, Wisteria and ?) There was a huge amount of hype over them when the images first surfaced.
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: lostpony on June 27, 2017, 10:37:56 AM: Quote from: invaderhorizongreen on June 23, 2017, 12:43:07 PM
Kinda makes me wonder if some sites are going to be future lost civilizations of the 21st century someday.

"65 million years after the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the first signs of civilization emerged with the ancient city of Pony, as seen here in these early and incomplete fossils...."
Title: Re: The history of our ponyland.
Post by: Taffeta on June 27, 2017, 03:34:43 PM: Quote from: lostpony on June 27, 2017, 10:37:56 AM
Quote from: invaderhorizongreen on June 23, 2017, 12:43:07 PM
Kinda makes me wonder if some sites are going to be future lost civilizations of the 21st century someday.

"65 million years after the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the first signs of civilization emerged with the ancient city of Pony, as seen here in these early and incomplete fossils...."

"And while the information is not entirely complete, we believe that these equine images and likenesses that appear with startling frequency on some websites represent a cultural following, perhaps even some kind of folk religion. We believe that people in the twentieth and twenty first century may have made monetary offerings to these horse-like deities through a special ritual known as "PAY PAL". Particularly exciting is the archaological evidence thrown up by digital excavation of a site known as "E-BAY", which appears to have been an elaborate pony shrine where many statues and figures of these pony deities were displayed.

Some of these horses represent elements of nature, possibly in connection with a growing concern with the environment and climate change during this period. Others represent daily objects, such as food (including an apparent ritual feast dish called a "Pinkie Pie", or animals and birds. Historians are still trying to determine the meaning of other patterns and mosaics, but believe that designs such as the 'squiggle' probably held some deep cultural meaning."