Mkay, I'm not entirely sure if this is the right forum for it, you may shoot me if not and I appologise if that's the case.

Anyway, onto my topic!

I never really thought about it much before. But today on a board I'm co-admin on, that also happens to be a proboards one, we got a rather nasty guest. Not only did he put down our board as a whole, but called us 'noobs' for having a proboards and not an IF forum. after saying that we should switch to IF -- once again nastily -- he said 'nevermind, we don't want noobs like you.' I just thought that was funny, since no one on the board actually fit the description of a n00b...

ANYWAY. So ever since i've been noticing a lot of forums that offer advertising don't allow proboards, and as a whole proboards just seems to be disowned. I, myself, think proboards is a lot simpler to use than IF, though i love to use both.

so anyway again, i just wanted to know why it is that proboards is so disliked? opinions, thoughts.. facts.. anything? :]

One of my friends said the reason was because IF tends to attract a more literate Rping crowd than proboards, on the other hand Proboards to me seems like almost idiot proof.

Since I am an idiot, I use PB and love it.
PB also seems to have a more responsive staff system thing.

Though I have to admit, I wish registering was as easy as it is in IF. I'll join either but I only make Proboards. It's what I grew up on.

I like how much simpler it is to make proboards, because IF is just so much more complicated. But then again, complication can be a good thing. But still.

But I see what you mean the the literacy thing... that is true in some cases.

Forums are forums are forums. xD I've played on pretty much every forum system (and online RP system) I can think of, from forums to chatrooms to e-mail to message boards to MU*s. And a forum is a forum. I would join a game regardless of what forum they used provided the game appealed to me enough to join it. I don't get the forum prejudice, honestly; it's silly. And games that forbid proboards games from advertising are also silly because they're also limiting where they can advertise, too. Their loss. Pffft.

Literacy...eh, I've seen plenty of invision games that made me cringe. And I've seen proboards games that were very nicely done.

I can understand having a preference for forums when it comes to actually running a game yourself due to coding issues and features and whatnot (phpBB is my forum of choice for running my own games <3), but for playing on a game? It's just silly. :B I've never understood it.

I find that it is a lot easier to get a proboards site set up were as sometimes it takes days to code everything for an IF board.

However, fancy proboard sites with tables/sidebards/lots of graphics tend to lag up my computer more than pretty looking IF sites.

And then there is the gimme one, advertising and the lazy people who don't want to edit their code.

I don't know why I dislike them, but there is something about ProBoards that seems bland to me. Being that I enjoy making buttons and grapics I personally like the tedious process of InvisionFree.

However, you can't deny that InvisionFree lacks certain features and as of yet Zetaboards isn't widely used enough to allow the same customizability of InvisionFree.

As far as RPing sites go, I prefer more of the skins on IF sites (I'm shallow--sue me!) than PB, but if a site does look nice, I'll join proboards. For other things I use, I prefer proboards for the ease.

Personally, I've minimal experience with PB, and so when I AM on it, I find it trickier to use - the interface throws me entirely. Would I rather play on an IF forum than a PB forum? Probably. Would I ever make a PB forum? Probably not. Would I let the fact that a forum uses PB prevent me from joining? Hell no!

On an only slightly related note, it bothers me when people are all "NO IPBFREE!" It looks the same as IF. The ACPs are almost identical (though the IBPF one does have more features). The only huge difference is in the align tags. Silly, silly people.

One more digression that may or may not be on topic, but I was advertising the other day and saw a forum that had, on it's ad section, something along the lines of "No ProBoards or any other forum that doesn't use proper coding." People worry me.

The advertising thing is more likely down to the change in coding and the fact that they have to spend 3 seconds typing in a CAPTCHA code to post an advert. They fail to realise this stops proboards getting their ass spammed by bots, thus giving it one-up on IF.

The appearance AND interface of proboards is down to the design. I've just advertised on some gob-smacking PBs. Well made skins by people who made their skins. The drive to make your own skins on IF is basically non-existent because of the abundance of premades to choose from. PBers have a more limited choice and are forced, more often than not, to pull their finger out.

So essentially, IF boards that don't allow proboards think that IF uses a 'universal' code and that proboards is the only one that doesn't fit, or they believe the only forum platforms that RPGs use are IF and PB.

My board is phpBB, but I chose that because I didn't like the Zetaboards colours and have no experience of coding at all. It looks good, it's easy to switch between skins - though I have yet to try my hand at making my own tmeplate, I will probably try it in the future - and I had no idea of the existence of IF. I was also wary of going with Proboards, because there's a dead board of the same genre and I didn't want the admins of that board to think I was copying them in any way. I wanted something that was mine, that I'd done.

That's how new I am to RPing, that I hadn't heard of IF before coming here. i also needed to have my board up and running as soon as, because I knew there were interested people out there who'd been seriously burned when our board vanished.

If IF boards take so long to set up, I'm kind of glad I didn't know about them before making mine, or I would have lost a lot of my players.

But from what I've seen, I can change skins or make my own, make my own buttons to put on the default skin I have, change background graphics and all sorts really easily. PLUS, there's no Google ads. What more could an admin want?

(I'm still impressed with the fct that I'm actually adminning my own board, and people like it!)

I just think it's a symptom of reputation. You see enough Proboards and you know why it has the reputation that it does. A great many of the users are new to board creation and it shows. Sure there are a couple of awesome-looking ones out there but people generally don't want to wade through hundreds to get to those. Thus, users are simply victims of Proboards' reputation. The same can be said of IF now. Users there are starting to gain a reputation for elitism. However, though people complain about this, they usually suck it up and use it anyway for whatever reason and do not avoid it like they avoid Proboards.

There's definitely such thing as the Invision Snob. Heck, I am an Invision Snob. I definitely feel more comfortable on a board built by IPS.

That makes me laugh though. Anyone who advertises on IPBFree will also know that the advertisement codes use the align tags of PB with the font sizings of IF. The original unchanged BBCode is closer to PB than IF. Signs like 'INVISIONFREE ONLY!' make me laugh, cause it's so shallow. Nine times out of ten, these people advertise on MY board first.

We're privately hosted IPB 2.3.5... not Invisionfree. Your codes will still be different, the font sizings are still different. I don't think we have guesty captcha, but goodness! Just because we look like an IF board, and don't have IPBFree in the url....?

Anyway.

I have actually seen the reverse. I've had people refuse to join my board because it's not proboards. There are die-hard loyalists for either group, it's more a matter of what camp you're sitting in as to how much you hear of each. From the Invisionfree camp, PB does have a certain tendency to be run by twelve year olds who can't spell and like to run the board out of their own selfish needs and screw everyone else...

From the PB camp, IF people are snobbish, highly strung, with ridiculously demanding requirements no sense of humour and a will to chew out any newbie for a simple mistake.

It's all a matter of perspective. :D

I think that a lot of these things go hand in hand. I think that because PB is easier to use, though not quite as powerful, I think it draws a lot of the younger crowd who don't necessarily know what they're doing or want to invest the time in making a more customized board, which would be why it gets its reputation as inferior. Just my two cents.

I didn't actually know people would quibble over whether they joined a site just because of the host until I joined this site. Surely the content is more of a motivator?

That's what I would think, myself.
'Cause no matter where you go, whatever host it may be, there are going to be sites that suck and are run by people who don't know what they're doing, and there are going to be amazing ones run by people who know exactly what they're doing.
I don't think it should matter horribly if you're just one of the people roleplaying, and not one of the mods/admins/creators/what-have-yous, as long as it is a site that interests you.

Neither did I. xD

But no, people will judge a board based on the forum provider. I've had people turn down my games before saying they'd join them if only they were IF/PB, as it's phpBB. *headdesk*

A FORUM IS A FORUM IS A FORUM, PEOPLE! xDD Like I said, I can understand preferences when it comes to running a game (again, phpBB is my homie there *clings to it*) but content, not service provider, should be the deciding factor for playing on a game.

Look past the URL. I'm a member of RPGC, and I've seen a lot of gorgeous PB games, custom skinned, the blow the tired same ol' same ol' IF skins right out of the water. I've played on a couple PB games that were hella fun and had members that wrote better than some of the IF games I've seen.

I've also seen some of the PB people making some of the same complaints about IF that IF-ers make about PB. "It looks blocky and clunky to me and the skins are ugly."

The irony amuses me greatly. x3

Me? I have no loyalty toward either since my games are run on phpBB and I'll play on any game if it meets my standards (and I have the time). Forum software has never been a deciding factor in my decision. A forum is a forum is a forum. You register, they have a "new thread" and "reply" button...and voila. Sometimes the profile control panel is different. Gasp. HOW COMPLICATED! xDDD

P:

< insert requisite SMF is better than all of them comment here >

I'm honestly not picky when it comes to joining a forum. However, since I started on ProBoards, I feel more comfortable being admin on PB mainly because I can skin. I admin one site on IF but had nothing to do with the codes or skinning -.- Nor did I make the boards; I'm more of a mod, I suppose.

As far as posting on the forums, I don't find the different coding all that difficult. Not only do most option present themselves above the post, but it's simple if you just Google for help, assuming you don't know any whatsoever.

PB v5 is due to come out and they have some good changes coming, so hopefully the general opinions on the forums will change. Although I do agree with some of the others on here- a forum is a forum, really.

I guess I am so used to IF that proboards confuses me xD Like it's too simple, I don't know. I don't usually look at them much.

The main experiences I have with PB is looking around at the advertised sites. They have a bad rep in my eyes because 99% of them have horrendous skins *shudders* I mean, I know I'm not a fabulous skinner, but just some of the colors.... that's the bias that's in my head. I can't help it! I don't like looking at sites that make my eyes burn. To be fair though, I have seen some IF skins that could rival them.