Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
A brief timeline of Ozformers...

1995 (mid) - I first got online and found the only TFs fan community at that time (ATT newsgroup), and my first fellow online Australian fans.
1996 (mid) - Knew at least a dozen Australian fans by now, and decided to track down as many as I could, to create an email mailing list. Had about 20 on the mailing list.
1996 (Sept) - I offered to start up a printed monthly newsletter as a fun novelty thing for us fans away from the main fandom "action". 16 people were willing to pay a couple dollars per issue.
1996 (Oct) - Issue 1 went out, as a fan newsletter.
1996 (Dec) - Issue 3 was when the newsletter started calling us a fanclub, with our original name of "Austrans".
Somewhere at this point, I got written/email permission from Hasbro Australia to be allowed to call ourselves a Transformers fanclub.
1997 (Mar) - Issue 6 had our first NZ member joining. Members in the next few years would come from nearby Asian countries as well, as they felt just as isolated from the main American fandom.
1997 (May) - Released the first of 14 "Junior" issues, for our younger members at that time.
1997 (Oct) - Issue 12 of the main newsletter was when I was able to email the newsletter out to those who couldn't afford it.
1998 (Oct) - Issue 24 was our second birthday, and we passed 50 members (had 55 at this time).
1998 (Dec) - Issue 26 was when the club's name changed to "Ozformers". (to prevent conflict with a transport company name, & trannies).
1999 (July) - Goktimus set up the first Australian Transfan Messageboard (Planet Sabertron).
2000 (Sep) - Issue 47 was the last issue to get printed. We had 65 members by this stage.
2000 (Oct) - Issue 48 was meant to be the last printed issue because I was getting too busy and too late with each issue. As such, this issue was never produced.
2000 (Nov) - Issue 49 was when each issue would just be a webpage and emailed out to members. (quicker for me now, not printing them out)
2000 (Dec) - Issue 51 would be the start of a fortnightly newsletter, as the amount of news each month was too much for a single issue.
2002 (Feb) - A second Australian Transfan messageboard starts up (Theyareamongus)
2002 (Apr 13) - Following the lead of the other two messageboards, I finally get to set up one for the Ozformers club. (at Xorbit)
2002 (Aug) - Issue 91 ended up being the last webpage issue, due to us having a Club messageboard now. Weekly or monthly news-summary emails would go out sporadically, if I had time.
2003 (Jan 17) - Ozformers V2 messageboard relaunched at Ezboard.
2004 - TFs fan convention in Sydney.
2005 (Jun 10) - Ozformers V3 messageboard relaunched at invisionzone
2006 - TFs fan convention in Sydney.
2007 (May 24) - Ozformers V4 messageboard (Vbulletin) created on my own (otca) server, finally opened for business Dec 27th. (the current location)
2013 (mid) - Ozformers V4 messageboard to be eventually relocated to the Ozformers.com domain.

Hope that sheds some light on the history of Ozformers.
Wow, a lot has happened waaay before I got in here.... I got in Ozformers on 2006 after dirge mentioned the site to me when I attended the TF fans convention at Wharf 8. Ozformers V3 (Invisonzone) - which we then moved after a year to this current board. I remember once logging in athe old board and it was creepy coz it has that twilight zone feeling that your in the forum, but no ones there..... at all it took a while before that old forum was totally "closed down" ,hehehe people here I remember kept logging in it and were saying "I logged in the other forum and it was creepy and eerie, heheheh" It took a while for me to change my bookmarks to this current forum as well so I don't accidentally log in the Twilight Ozformers forum.
We lost a couple of members as well during the move.... e.g. anyone remember Blackarachnia?

Anyways as per the added rank, nah. Don't need it IMO. we always have the Q & A thread anyways if you got a query - and everyone is there to pitch in their answers, new member or old. we could always just star a thread where people can put in their original join dates if that's the data Cat would like to know and then stickie that and just keep adding to it. Kinda like the collective collection thread