A Few Problems with the site

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

[Robert Saint John]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

[Gfan54]

[nebka]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

[kidnicky]

[klen7]

Been getting a lot of 500 errors this week, not easily reproduced. Seen on some Posts and Logins but not every time

[lhb412]

^ Me too

[O.Supreme]

My browser has been crashing on threads that have a lot of media/videos embedded in the threads. But because I login mostly at work, I don't know if that is because of my work browser restrictions, or if it's a site issue. I'll try to login at home this evening and see if I have similar issues.

[Joseph Goodman]

I've been getting the 500 errors, too, with no rhyme or reason as to when it happens.

[Benjamin Haines]

I've been seeing these too.

[DannyBeane]

Me too. I started seeing it a few days ago.

[The Gene Lantern]

I am gonna be honest with you guys; EVERY other admin except myself has abandoned the board. At this point, it's a one man show, and I have neither the time or technical expertise to resolve this.

I am trying to see if Jim Ballard can come back to look at this issue, but if I can't I am going to make an announcement and close the boards permanently. The activity has been slowly dying over the last few years and it's possible we're just at the end.

Opinions welcome, but it's been a long time since Aaron passed and I was really keeping it open in his memory.

[lhb412]

^It's not making the site unworkable. It's just an occasional annoyance. If you do choose to close the boards give us a good period of heads up.

[Benjamin Haines]

It will be a sad day indeed when this board goes away. It's one of the last surviving staples of the early 2000's era online Godzilla communities.

[klen7]

I would be sad to see these boards go away. I have a lot of fond memories of this place

[jellydonut25]

It'd suck in a way, as I actually have made a few friends I talk to on social media DAILY from this site....but then again, those days are long gone (everyone who's still around that I'm not already in touch with on the book of face-ness is a social media avoider) and it's been a long time since we've had an influx of people at all.

[DannyBeane]

I'm going to be 33 in August, I first started posted on Monster zero back in 1998 when they weren't even forums. so I've experienced more time with these forums than without. It'll be a sad day when I can't log in.

[Benjamin Haines]

I was 15 when I joined this message board and I’ll be 30 next year. I’ve been reading and posting here on MZ for the previous half of my life so far.

I stopped using Facebook back in 2016. It was useful for keeping in touch with friends when I was in college but it really is where meaningful discussion goes to die. It’s not even structured for lasting discussion, with comments spawning comment threads that go down their own rabbit holes of collapsible comments until the conversation stops and the comment tree just falls down the timeline void. It’s a discussion structure conducive to shouting matches and it outright discourages people from reading or remembering what everyone else is saying.

I did join a few kaiju-related groups on Facebook but I never wanted them to replace MZ for me. I guess it shouldn’t have been but it was surprising to me when so many longtime MZ users gradually abandoned this board in favor of Facebook or other social media sites like Reddit or Tumblr. I think it’s sad but I don’t think it’s a reason to close the book on MZ altogether. It doesn’t matter if the activity around here isn’t as bustling as it was in the past. I’m still here, if you’re reading this then you’re still here too, and this online community is still chugging along as the giant monster genre enjoys its current resurgence. This incarnation of the forums goes back 15 years! It’s an expansive archive of insightful discussion and genuine community built around a shared interest in Godzilla and all things kaiju, a surviving oasis from the days when online communities were specialized and separate from the rest of the goings-on in life. I want to help keep MZ going into the 2020s and beyond any way I can.

[lhb412]

^What he said.

And I got you beat Ben: I just turned 30 and I've posted here since I was 12!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ I'll buy you a walker when you hit 14,000 posts.

[Joseph Goodman]

You people are literal children... I was 17 when the very first version of Aaron's site went up... y'all can do the math.

If Gene wants to finally close up shop, that's understandable. That'd leave TK as the last remaining real Godzilla message board? I guess dedicated message boards are simply an anachronism on the internet, like webrings or Geocities.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Getting away from Geocities and over to Stomp Tokyo's server was the best thing that could have happened for Barry's Temple of Godzilla!


The board is still going too. It's what replaced the old Kaijuphile / Rodan's Roost message board ().


Dedicated message boards are definitely still a thing for a lot of obscure hobbies. It seems like the Godzilla/kaiju boards that made it out of the 2000s and into the 2010s were hit particularly hard by the rise of all-purpose social media sites. It's great that the Internet Archive has so many defunct web pages saved (for now) but they don't tend to archive message board threads.

[Psycho Soldier]

If I had to guess, I'd say the 500 error is an issue with the web host and not the board software. It seems pretty intermittent: I had no problems with the site yesterday but have seen the error a couple times today. However, if the main site and/or ClubTokyo are with the same host and don't have an issue, we'll have to keep digging for the root of the issue.

I like this board because the discussions are mature and reasonable to a degree I haven't seen elsewhere in the fandom, so I'd struggle if it were closed. I deleted my Facebook a while ago, and while I could go back to KFN/KP, it's even deader than this board. I can't revive it simply by returning to my admin duties there. And I'm not much for Toho Kingdom or /r/GODZILLA, though I could head for one or both of them if pressed.

Like Ben said, some message boards still go strong depending on the fandom/hobby/product. DOOM message boards might last till the end of the Internet, for example. But the golden age of kaiju boards ended after GFW. That said, I hope MZ sticks around and stays at least as active as it is now.