PlayingCardForum.com - A Discourse For Playing Cards
Off Topic Chat => Feedback + Support => Topic started by: EndersGame on March 24, 2017, 11:19:07 PM
-
I hope I'm not touching on a sensitive topic here, but I'm a newbie with a genuine question about this.
I'm still new to the world of playing card forums, and I noticed that there are two forums in particular that seem to be the most widely known: PlayingCardForum.com and UnitedCardists.com.
How do these compare with each other? Are there ways in which they are different? Which has the greatest number of users and is the most active? Or are most people on both? And are there any other particularly popular forums about playing cards besides these, or are these the top two?
Once again, I don't mean to offend anyone, and it's not my intention to step on toes, but I'm asking out of genuine ignorance, having no idea about the history of how they both came about, and whether they overlap, or whether they serve different purposes and different audiences. I'm eager to learn, and to get some sense about this by hearing from people who have more experience with this territory than I do.
-
I hope I'm not touching on a sensitive topic here, but I'm a newbie with a genuine question about this.
I'm still new to the world of playing card forums, and I noticed that there are two forums in particular that seem to be the most widely known: PlayingCardForum.com and UnitedCardists.com.
How do these compare with each other? Are there ways in which they are different? Which has the greatest number of users and is the most active? Or are most people on both? And are there any other particularly popular forums about playing cards besides these, or are these the top two?
Once again, I don't mean to offend anyone, and it's not my intention to step on toes, but I'm asking out of genuine ignorance, having no idea about the history of how they both came about, and whether they overlap, or whether they serve different purposes and different audiences. I'm eager to learn, and to get some sense about this by hearing from people who have more experience with this territory than I do.
You aren't stepping on any toes with the topic. A lot of people here are members of both forums.
They're different in terms of conversational style more than anything else, really. Some people prefer one over the other, some are fine with both.
One big difference between PCF and UC is that UC was around longer...but we have a longer history at PCF. It's a long story, but the short version is that a previous owner of UC, in a fit of pique, started deleting accounts of some members who disagreed with his decisions about how to run the forum and started wiping out posts wholesale. There's also the time when they converted from being a ".net" to being a ".com" - I don't believe that the ".net" posts carried over in the transition. And before that, there was a long period of neglect - the original owners of the forum let things slide so that at one point in its history, it went from being a premiere source of card into to being a repository of ads for people selling off their decks and for porn-site spam. It's come a long way from that dark time and is a more vibrant site today. But it was during that period of neglect that this forum came into existence.
PCF was founded as a forum for a small playing card design company which produced one deck on Kickstarter, but was eventually spun off from that company, which is now defunct. It was sold to 52 Plus Joker, the premiere playing card collectors' society in North America, with a worldwide membership. 52+J now operates the site not only as a public forum, but as the club's official forum for its members, with a members-only section for club business.
For more information about 52 Plus Joker, you can check out our website at 52plusjoker.org. Please forgive the layout - 1993 called recently and asked for their website template back! But we're working on a major overhaul of it as we speak, though I can't give a release date for that just yet. The club's membership has been growing significantly with the purchase of the forum, and we also publish two club magazines as well as hosting an annual convention in October - this year, the convention is being held in Erlanger, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati and home to the United States Playing Card Company (a factory tour will be included in the opening day festivities)!
-
Thanks for that Don, I appreciate the information and response, that's helpful.