Anyone who was around forums.starwars.com back in May of 2002 knows what the term "message board crazy" means. I'd joined the forums back during the launch in October 2001, and was a regular poster at the time. I found my niche among the Books and Comics crowd, and occasionally posted in the Cantina in NM & PM's Place. Along the way I made good friends, and occasionally angered a few people by "being helpful" and redirecting them to an appropriate thread already around. Even before I was a mod I tried to be helpful.

I'm not what you'd call a spoiler hound; I rarely visited the Episode II boards between January and April 2002, and when I did it was to cull a "Canon" discussion or just see what was going on. Then in mid-May, I got an e-mail from one Pablo Hidalgo, better known to many as the enigmatic PABAWAN! I was shocked, stunned, amazed... I could think of a dozen adjectives to describe how I felt when he asked little ol' me to become a "Forum Jedi", Guardian of the Message Boards and Defender of Peace and Justice in Cyberspace. Crazy, I tell ya, just crazy. Now, this was all fine and dandy. I figured I would stick to the BAC, help clean it up a bit, maybe hit the Cantina and the Electronic Games forums every once in a while. Can't just be the BAC loner.

AH! But then it hit. Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

Or, more accurately, Attack of the Cloned Posters. Yeah, Episode II brought everyone to the forums, and to this day I still can't remember days more hectic than those first weeks after Episode II came out. Here I'd planned to just patrol my usual stomping grounds; next I know I'm "yelling" at four trolls a day in the Episode II forum and locking dozens of threads in multiple forums and redirecting them to that forum that I'd visited less than a dozen times before being modded.

And now we're just weeks, nay, days away from the release of the final Star Wars film in George Lucas's saga, and I'm gearing up for more of the same. I expect troll attacks, newbies by the dozens (though I know most have very good intentions, I still find it a hassle to deal with many... I'm trying to be honest, I'm not gonna lie on my own blog!), and lots and lots of locks and moved threads and redirects.

But unlike last time, I've got an idea of what's to come. Hopefully I'll be a bit better prepared than back then. Plus, I know there are many, many great individuals out there who are also very concerned with the welfare of these forums. I'm so thankful for the wonderful community that has built up here at StarWars.com and forums.starwars.com over the past four years. Here's to May 19!

Live Long and May the Force be with you!
~James T. Skywalker