The Famous Five
From WikiFAQs
The Famous Five is a board claimed by SuperSonic2002 under the alias TheDedicated500 for the purpose of hosting the "best planned 500+ topic ever!" The idea was inspired by red13n's 500 post topic on Board 8 following L-Block's Victory in Character Battle VI. If 500 dedicated individuals could gather in one place at one time for the sole purpose of posting in a single topic, then the record at the time could very easily have been broken.
The Famous Five Hundred 2008
After a short planning topic in November 2007, a sign-up topic was made, asking users to come to The Famous Five on February 1st, 2008 (at 10PM, US Eastern Time). A total of 163 users signed up before the list was abandoned on January 15th, but it is estimated that less than half of that number actually arrived at the scene. Even so, a noble attempt was made to set the record - 491 posts in 1 minute 33 seconds. The topic was only closed by a moderator once the attempt had already failed to beat Current Events' record of 500 posts in 1 minute 23 seconds.
There are many theories as to why the topic failed. Although reminder emails were sent, many people still forgot to come. Others came, but they were too scared to participate in the event out of fear of moderation. One user posted a phony topic which caught many users off-guard when it was stickied by a moderator. Even though it was specifically stated that the real topic would be the one created by TheDedicated500, a fair number of users still wasted their time in the phony topic. Whatever the reasons, it was still a noble attempt and it brought much activity to the board.
The Famous Five Hundred 2009
On June 15th, 2008, TheDedicated500 created a planning topic for 2009, and after a month of discussion, he set the date to be January 3rd this time. The time was also changed in hopes more people would be able to help (5PM, US Eastern Time). Since January 3rd was a weekend, the early American time shouldn't have been much of a problem. A sign-up topic was created on July 22nd, and it had 307 signatures by the day of the event.
The members of The Famous Five hoped to shatter the previous 500 topic record of 1 minute 23 seconds by breaking the 1 minute barrier, and they did just that. The 2009 topic reached 500 after only 34 seconds, less than half the previous record meaning that it averaged about 14.7 posts per second. Unlike the previous year, two phony topics were locked by moderators when they had only 4 and 6 posts respectively, so they did not detract from the real topic as much as they had in 2008. A moderator, Alucard188, posted in the completed 500 topic 8 minutes later, commenting on the feat.
Although the topic was unstickied shortly after the event, it was re-stickied several days later to be saved from the purge. On February 8, 2009, kirpikong made the 504th and final post in the topic. On June 1st, a sticky request topic on Hellhole alerted another moderator to the topic, and the Famous Five Hundred was unstickied. It archived the following morning.
