• What was The Old Republic? I always thought it was the republic that we see on screen in The Phantom Menace, but I think that some people here are referring to something else when they talk about it.
• What is America’s Queen?
• Where's the archive?
• Where did this come from?
• Is this the board that was Scott’s Star Wars Board? Where's Scott?
• Why do people heckle me when I talk about countingdown.com?
• Where did the graphics come from?
• Where did the members come from?
• People talk about things here . . . they have a whole other language. What's up?

The Old Republic is a euphemism for the site that this messageboard originated on. Sometimes The Old Republic is also used to refer to the board itself, during that time.

We started as the messageboard on a once-popular (now infamous) prequel news site. As the opening of The Phantom Menace approached (Spring, 1999) the server that was running the messageboard was completely overwhelmed by the staggering volume of traffic it received. The owner of that server (who was donating his help gratis) needed help from "the powers that be" at the parent site. The messageboard had become monstrous-- it dragged down the entire system until (despite spending large amounts of his own money for upgrades) our beneficent host couldn't even check his email anymore.

After assistance had been requested several times and in several ways and no response was ever given, we realized that no help would ever be forthcoming. At that point, this messageboard was pulled from the Old Republic site and we started over on our own at a new URL.

Posting about this is taboo, but if you need more information, a few of the "old timers" here might be willing to give you more information about the Old Republic if you ask nicely via email. You might try emailing Callista or Sardonicus.

America's Queen was the largest Natalie Portman website on the 'net when TPM came out. It was run by Orac and had a pretty nice messageboard. Orac decided to merge his board with Scott’s Natalie Portman forum in July of ’99. There was a falling out later, and the original site no longer exists-- but the majority of the "old-timers" at the Nat forum are from that merger.

It's not here yet . . .

When we moved from the UBB software (November, 2001) we had to give up our old threads. We're still hoping to get them in an archive format so that we can use them for reference material (for many of us, they're like a diary of the three years following TPM).

Unfortunately, UBB was a static-paged bulletin board. We upgraded to this (databased) software because it is more efficient and less bloated. However . . . changing a UBB board into a board we can display this way isn't a simple conversion. We're still hoping that Scott can figure out how to convert all of the old files for us.

Patience, my young apprentice.

Originally from the Old Republic. Since then we've resided at several different URLs . . . but always as a stand-alone message board. (We haven't been appended to any other fan sites.)

Yes, the board used to be called Scott's Star Wars Board. We changed our name to The Emperor’s Star Wars Board because Scott/Phydiux felt a little silly having his name at the top of every page, especially as he began to have less time and fewer resources to spend on it. Scott is still around, but he has taken on a lot of new projects and doesn’t have much to do with the daily running of the board these days. The board is run by a team of administrators now.

There is some bad blood between this site and that one, and no love lost between us. It is best not to tout C2SW as your favorite site if you want to make friends here.

The original concepts of the forum banners came from various members, but the final (matching) designs for all our current banners were created by maven.

If you are interested in designing logos for the site, feel free to submit your best efforts to the Emperor. If we like your graphic, we might use it.

Better still, if you have any interest in designing additional Star Wars emoticons for us, we're always looking for more (and better) Star Wars icons.

There's a wide variety to our membership-- and our means of arrival.

• Some of us have been here since the Dark times of the Old Republic.
• Many transferred in with America's Queen.
• Some are dragged in by friends who are members. (Go ahead-- drag your friends in to join us.)
• Many have joined through the NYLine and other NYC contacts.
• Some have joined through an introduction at a convention or other fan event.
• Some find us by search engine and the guidance of the Force.

Regardless of how you got here, we're glad to have you with us. Nice of you guys to drop by!

Truly, some of us have been here awhile-- and we've developed a lot of shared history and inside jokes-- and sometimes it's hard to figure out what the t*** we're talking aboot.

In most cases, there's some kind of explanation in the Lingo/In-Jokes section of this FAQ. Try looking there for an explanation. If you can't find one, email and ask-- perhaps your question needs to be added to the FAQ.