RFSHQ.com a blog site for battlebot games
Founding Company
At the turn of the millennium the two managers of the group went their separate ways with RFS taking the name (and ultimately the company) with him. During the end of 1999 and through to 2001, RFS Media Productions temporarily went under the name Twilight Foundry and managed a semi successful Pokemon Red/Blue glitch website before shutting down and re-emerging in 2004 as a media production and management group that currently monitors several websites maintained in their network along with creating the content for said websites. Today RFS Media Productions is a company managed by Justin "RFS" Bardin and Dan Gusak .
In July 2008, Bardin announced that he would no longer be an active writer for RFSHQ and stepped down from his position after providing frequent content to the site for over four years. Citing "real life" as the reason for his departure, he went on to point out that he wanted to shift gears and focus on his video series while perhaps other talented individuals could keep the original spirit of the website alive.
Website Slogans
- May 2007 - ???: "Making your ding ding go toot toot since 2004."
- July 2006 - April 2007: "Yes, you can touch it."
- January 2006 - June 2006: "Everything your parents warned you about."
- May 2004 - December 2005: "Dangerous comedy!"
Website History
Created originally as a hub for RFS to host sarcastic reviews of bad Nintendo NES games, RFSHQ was only known in the small community for the computer game Robot Arena 2. To this day, the website's staff is largely comprised of people from this era of the site. Until November 2004, RFSHQ was hosted on a free website server provided by GeoCities and used a free .tk domain. RFSHQ.com was purchased along with a hosting contract and the site began to expand with its newfound storage space, adding a plethora of new content sections including animations, videos, imagery, and more.
RFSHQ did not begin to gain popularity however, until the Robot Arena 2 community began to die out. Word of mouth advertising along with a few experimental local viral ads in RFS's hometown allowed RFSHQ's target audience to be greatly expanded. With the help of such websites as YTMND, MiniClip, Newgrounds, and YouTube, RFSHQ was able to attract a variety of viewers.
Acting as a centralized hub for RFS Media Productions' network of sites, RFSHQ contains links to other company ventures including:
- RFSHQ: The company's main website featuring an array of original content and discussion forums.
- AUnet: A website contributing to the popular "flash loop" website fad.
- FLoops: A second flash loop website containing loops made by visitors and fans. (Coming Soon)
- UpUrs!: A free image hosting service coded by RFSHQ's "goose".
- This Is A Real Site: A parked domain that acts as the sandbox for new RFSHQ features and ideas.
- Happy Feet Fansite: Another parked domain that displays a fullscreen flash loop.
- Tiny Me: A URL shortening service.
- You Got Tay Rolled!: A parody of the "Rick Roll" prank using a video by Tay Zonday.
- Trackmill: A social gaming site created by "goose".
Website Content
- Adventures Of Team Nigga, The: An independent comic series based on the trolling group of the same name.
- Awesome Video Games: Video series by FFSTV that parodies 1990's video game TV shows.
- BattleBots*: A complete archive of the Comedy Central television show.
- BattleBots Update: A weekly commentative follow-up to each BattleBots episode.
- Code: BS: Video series created by Shoe Films that came before Radio F Show.
- Comedy Sweatshop: A collection of image generators that allows users to place text on various stock photos.
- Comic Factory: Comic strips and other short series by RFSHQ users.
- Extras & Exclusives*: Non-comedy articles. Usually include a download of some sort.
- Flash Loops: Weekly Shockwave Flash videos that loop a GIF and MP3.
- Flash Of The Week: Weekly reviews of Flash cartoons and games.
- Forum Receptacle*: Articles based upon forum-based fads and open-submission threads.
- Free Rider: A "build your own track" motorcycle game. Heavily modified by RFSHQ.
- Game Graveyard*: Contains articles about video games and accessories.
- Game Show Show, The: A video game review show. Meant to be a video version of Game Graveyard.
- Gemini Show, The: Video series based on the Robot Arena 2 community.
- Juicy Tidbits*: Short articles or previews of upcoming content.
- Kids In The House, The*: A collection of television voiceovers and original skits.
- Let's Play!*: A video game commentary show ala Mystery Science Theater.
- Levon Toons: An animated cartoon series usually featuring RFSHQ personalities.
- Music Box, The: Database full of free music albums by RFSHQ users.
- New Age Comedy: Stick figure animations and battles created in Pivot.
- Newfac Robotics: A collection of information on combat robots created by RFSHQ.
- Photophile*: Contains articles with images focusing on a central topic. Mostly bad-product reviews.
- Press Releases*: General website and production announcements presented in news format.
- Radio F Show, The: The official RFSHQ video series. Contains comedy sketches and parodies.
- Robot Arena 2 Database: A download center full of modifications for the PC game Robot Arena 2.
- Sonic Music Remixes: Remixed versions of Sonic the Hedgehog music from the Sega Genesis.
- This Week In Anime: A look at what's new in anime television, games, toys, and more.
- TXT Dumpster*: Full-text articles with no images.
- Vault, The*: Content by RFS Media Productions that was created before RFSHQ.
- Worst Of YouTube, The: Negative reviews of bad YouTube videos.
April 2006 Domain Suspension
For one week in April 2006, HostingPlex suspended the RFSHQ.com website, and all related sister sites hosted on the same server. The reason given by HostingPlex was that RFSHQ had been mass-emailing spam using services provided by HostingPlex. This was not the case, as it was soon discovered that a few users were abusing a hole in HostingPlex's security and were able to send thousands of emails using the pathfiledb Download Database for the Robot Arena 2 computer game that RFSHQ was hosting.
Because this suspension occurred the day before RFS' birthday, he made a commemorative banner for RFSHQ using the HostingPlex "Suspended Account" page that displayed the error message along with "Happy Birthday RFS! Love, HostingPlex". The banner was used for the rest of April and into May.
December 2006 - May 2007 Downtime
On December 15th, 2006, a group of website defacers were able to abuse a security hole in HostingPlex, RFSHQ's host, and edit the index.php file of the website, effectively ruining the layout and design but not the content. The front page was restored, and although RFSHQ's security was up-to-date, the problem was with their host, and the website was defaced several more times. Rather than re-launch in broken form, RFS Media Productions is busy remodeling the website and content for a fresh launch in 2007 with their new hosting provider, DreamHost.
The downtime, however, stretched into 2007, surpassing several projected launch dates. RFSHQ v4.0 as it was called, was scheduled for release on January 1st, 2007 but hit so many problems along the way that the website was scrapped entirely and was released as RFSHQ V on May 9th, 2004, the site's birthday.
RFSHQ Forum
RFSHQ is a very user-heavy website; the creators encourage visitors to register on the message boards to discuss the website and also to contribute their own content. The RFSHQ community, for the most part, comprises of a collection of veterans from the site's early days and a large group of new registers primarily from the MiniClip website. The community almost has an unwritten code of honor, and is managed similar to the website Something Awful. It is suggested that new users lurk the community to get an understanding of what's allowed, and what is considered "funny".
Perhaps the most confusing section of the forum are the General Discussion forums named "Serious Business", "Chuck E. Cheese's", and "The Drama Arena".
- Serious Business (also referred to as SB) is the general "off topic" section of the forums. The skin of the forums matches the rest of the website and there are no special changes made to it, and thus it follows all regular forum rules. Witty posts are encouraged, and newbies are frequently prodded with sarcastic trolling, especially when they are unaware how the community functions.
- Chuck E. Cheese's is the "chill out" forum where users can post whatever they feel like as long as it is not inappropriate or hateful towards others. CEC (as it is called on the forums) has a "pizza themed" red and yellow skin along with spinning pizzas and "CHUCK E. CHEESE'S" glitter text as the title of the page. CEC displays posts in size 20 Fixedsys font and everyone's post count displays as zero.
- The Drama Arena is the "mean" forum where tongue in cheek humor and insults are aimed at each other and other users. TDA (as it is called on the forums) is managed by forum administrator "ss_toast" who also designed the forum's bright purple skin. Instead of a banner, the forum displays random images of Pokemon characters smoking weed and the background is a lizard wearing a seat belt.
Contact
- RFS Media Productions
- Justin "RFS" Bardin
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Discussion
Featured Page Nomination
RFSHQ.com was selected to be a featured wiki page, after having been nominated by the article's creator or some other AboutUs community member. Below is the discussion that led to it's being featured.
- First nominated on 00:46, 31 May 2007 (PDT)
- Wow, there's a lot of great information on this WikiPage. We should consider this strongly to be a featured WikiPage in the near future. What do other community members think? --
TakKendrick | Talk - I feel kind of silly supporting the nomination for my own site, but users from the place put a lot of effort into the article and keeping it as accurate as possible :) . Radio F Software 22:50, 9 June 2007 (PDT)
- right on this is a well done page - 7lager
- I visit RFSHQ daily and I think this article is very well done.
- This page is very well done, deserves a feature Derverger 22:19, 11 June 2007 (PDT)
- This certainly is a great WikiPage. The only real concern expressed among the AboutUs Staff is a question of how featuring this WikiPage may or may not interfere with our AdultContentPolicy. Generally, the website is an edge-case and wouldn't fall into the "adult" content too much, but as the site clearly warns, there are "articles and images that may contain offensive language and suggestive themes." I'd love to come up with a creative way in which this WikiPage and website could be promoted within the bounds of our AdultContentPolicy, and open the discussion of how to do this to both the AboutUs community and the avid readers of RFSHQ.com who've been doing the great work on this WikiPage. -- TakKendrick
- As owner, webmaster, and content supervisor I can safely say that aside from a handful of raunchy jokes and references there is nothing that goes beyond anything that you'd see on cable TV these days. Anything that is deemed "Not Safe For Work" (on the forums and site) are tagged accordingly and hyperlinked so that readers at work or in public will not see it without being able to choose to do so. As far as I know, there are only two images in all of the total articles to date that have the NWS link, and both wre drawn in MS Paint. There is some language usage on the website, but while the old articles were being re-archived I personally cleaned up a lot of the trashy and inapropriate humor from them and replaced it with equally funny and more acceptable. Things like gay-bashing, overuse of the "F Word", and otherwise unacceptable behavior has been removed or replaced. Occurences of profanities exist but after reading the AboutUs adult content policy I do not see anything that mentions occasional usage. If you have any other questions or concerns about the actual content then please do not hesitate to ask. Radio F Software 18:55, 14 June 2007 (PDT)
- Ah, I didn't see where you had pointed out the disclaimer on the homepage. We put that there mainly for legal reasons because like it says, there is some profanity and toilet humor featured in the site. I actually work for Miniclip.com which is a website aimed towards younger players, and even moreso I am the supervisor/owner of the ClubPenguin.com forums that belong to Miniclip. There are a lot of young viewers who may view the site just because I am the Administrator of the MC/CP forums, so I added that mainly for them since they are about 12 - 15 years old on average. I can reword it a bit so it's not as "harsh" if it will help. Radio F Software 22:50, 14 June 2007 (PDT)
- You guys make some strong arguments for this (both here and on my talk page) and I think we're okay with these in mind (and the change to the disclaimer on the website). I'm going to put this up as a feature today, but will leave this discussion on the page as both a great example of working towards a consensus in Wiki and also just to let people know the process this had to go through. -- TakKendrick 20-June-2007
- That sounds awesome Tak, thanks a million. :) High fives all around! Radio F Software 21:02, 20 June 2007 (PDT)
Related Domains
External Links
AboutUs Featured Wiki Page
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Featured Text -- The secret to building a community edited wiki is the ability to deal with potential conflicts using the philosophies of SelfOrganization and AssumeGoodFaith. Recently these resolution tools came into play over the featured nomination of RFSHQ.com. While the WikiPage offered an excellent example of a quality DomainPage and the website itself is quite fun and highly energetic, the nomination garnered some concern as the website -- a sarcastic and humorous place full of jokes, parodies, comic strips and the like -- does occasionally use some language and lewd humor. While it certainly wasn't overboard, the concern was brought up about this and whether we should feature a website that by their own acknowledgment "that may contain content unsuitable for young readers." The members of the RFSHQ.com community were adamant in their belief that the website was fairly innocuous and made strong arguments in the WikiPage's Featured Discussion and via the wiki's internal talk pages, allowing us to come to some resolution and see that the website was valuable as a featured WikiPage. That said, there are occasional instances of "potty humor" and "F Words" to be found on the RFSHQ.com website, so visitors and AboutUs faithful who would prefer not to see those kinds of things should be warned.
