Types of BGG Users
Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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You've seen them before, but might not know them by name. Here they are, the types of BGG users that make this site such a special place.
Although I wish this disclaimer were unnecessary, the Flamer and the Puritan (see below) make it so: This list is intended to be humorous (i.e. not serious) and exaggerates on many points. In fact, the inspiration for this list is myself, I'm guilty of all of these, blah blah blah....
OK, now enjoy.
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1.
Board Game: Snob
[Average Rating:5.00 Unranked]
Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The veteran-snob: This user has been here so long, he's not impressed by any of your content. It's all been done before and he will leave a comment to that effect on your post or Geeklist. Their 17 patron badges forming a snug security blanket around them, the Veteran-snob will occasionally deign to respond to your queries, but will also often remain aloof.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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Helpful Hank: This user scours the new user and recommendations forums, waiting for somebody to ask a question about the site or about what game to get. Helpful Hank always provides the first response, chock full of helpful hints and super suggestions. In fact he is so helpful it makes you wonder what his true motivation is.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The lurker: This user may not have an account. He makes his presence known only by the heaving breathing in the forums. Here only to observe, the Lurker makes no contribution but rather gleans knowledge for his own twisted ends.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Specialist: This user has left his or her mark on BGG, but in only one or two areas. Some Specialists upload 1000 images and little else, some live and breathe microbadges, others believe that their Session Reporter awards make them real reporters. Unlike the so-called Jack of all Trades, Master of None (or the Cat with only 3 legs, as the Shanghainese would say) the Specialist has provided some of BGG's best content.
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5.
Board Game: Trader
[Average Rating:6.81 Overall Rank:2004]
Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Trader: With items added to every Math-trade, the Trader has one thing on his mind. He peppers the masses with trade requests (sometimes for games nowhere comparable in value) or even tries to arrange his own 5-way mini-math-trades. Rest assured though, his trade rating is off the charts for a reason: he always packages his games with obscene amounts of packing tape. Nothing's getting out of that box until it's supposed to. The Trader also has deluded himself into believing that buying a game on sale and then paying to ship it to somebody else in a trade is actually cheaper than just buying that other game in the first place.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Clever Geeklist Creator: This user sits at home, late at night, trying to think of the next clever little Geeklist that will earn him accolades. Even better if it's clever enough to spawn a whole slew of imitations. One success is not enough. Think of your favourite, clever Geeklist. Think of the user who made it. Yes, that user is right now scouring their brain, the internet, and any other generally empty thing for the next funny list idea.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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Thumbelina: This type of user, also known by another name, is obsessed with achieving thumbs; garnerning praise is their lifestyle. You'll see them hovering over the threads, just waiting to drop the witty response they've been working on all day. They have many other means to their end as well. Taking on one of the personae above could work. Taking a dip or two or 1729 into the love-bath thread is another of their habits. They often print a hard copy of their Golden Meeple to keep in their wallet. If they truly need thumbs to bring meaning to their lives, who are we to deny them?
P.S. Love-bath thread, I love you guys!
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Flamer: Don't even start with this user. Their favourite game is a billion times better than yours and they will rage at you in bullet point detail until you believe them. Like a ticking time-bomb, the Flamer skulks through the forums, almost impossible to defuse, just looking for something to explode over. Empowered by their online anonymity, they are accountable to no one. Beware.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Instigator: This user likes to hang around the Flamer. But instead of defusing the bomb, they love to pull out a wire. A carefully crafted comment left at the appropriate place and time is all that is needed. As the threads come crashing down in a rain of fire and shrapnel, the Instigator sits back and pulls out the marshmallows, content that his job is done on another day.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Wannabe Game Designer: Don't let that Game Designer badge fool you. All this user does is adds their lame attempt at a game to the database and spams the forums until people look at it. They may have even run a contest for 4.5 GG to get people interested. This user loves to go to conventions so they can tell everyone they're a designer. Their game will never get published.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The number cruncher: In case you ever wanted to know the ratio of blah to boring, the number cruncher is happy to oblige. Their actuarial day job not giving them enough data to crunch, they unleash their discontent on us in the form of numbers, lots of them. A hallmark of the number cruncher: seeing patterns where none exist.
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12.
Item is no longer in our database
Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Puritan: The red X is the favourite BGG feature for this user. When they're not complaining about the front page images, they're flagging inappropriate posts willy-nilly. Think about the children.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Lazy User: Don't even try to make a trade with this user. They have games listed for trade that they got rid of in 1994. Their sparse contributions may have earned them some thumbs, but their thumbs given/received ratio is asymptotically approaching zero. Why? They are too lazy to bother. Logging plays? Forget it.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Knowledge Base: At any given time, this user could easily list the top 10-20 games in order, and could probably name at least 90 of the top 100 without breaking a sweat. They may or may not have played all of them, but you can bet they know the rules. In fact, you'd have to go to page 52 of the games database to find a game the Knowledge Base has never heard of. What they do with this knowledge depends entirely on if they are also a Helpful Hank or a Veteran-snob.
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Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
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The Thrifter: You can recognize this user by the 12 copies of Trivial Pursuit in their collection. Their drive to make the next big find sends them to the rat-infested back shelves of thrift stores week after week. Finding nothing of value, their compulsion forces them to buy something anyway and boast about it on the thrift threads to the applause granted by their charity store chums.
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Albert Hernandez
United States
Greenville
South Carolina
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By popular request!
The Running Joker - This guy knows every running joke on the Geek and is always happy to repeat them. No joke is too old and no GAGnads is beneath him no matter how obscure.
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No Cat - No Cradle
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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Hey what a great list,I have been watching it a while,though I seem to recall it has been done before, anyway...here's a thumb..., but to be helpful I thought I would add the Admin type...Its like these users run the place or something!?
They are typically silent types on most posts, but make themselves known when the heat turns up to shut down the conversation just as it is getting excitings and turning into a [X]ing blood sport ...or, there is some ~grand~ announcement to be made and then the aren't silent...ohh no..all the power and the glory unto them old boy!
To them, it seems, go the bulk of the accolades for anything that turns up in the columns or headers of the site like a new "button" or "feature"...I mean REALLY.
Don't get me wrong...it is a lot of hard work and I should know, because I was one last April...briefly.
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Bern Harkins
United States
Cuba
New York
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200 yahoo boots *&#@ yahoo messenger how's want boots
How's want Bots?
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Bern Harkins
United States
Cuba
New York
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They call them Grognards ("grumblers"), after Napoleon's veterans.
They are Veteran-Snobs, and Helpful Hanks. Some are Specialists, most are Knowledge Bases.
But they are a breed unto themselves, who have cut a curmudgeonly swath though the brief history of gaming culture.
They have photos from the playtest sessions for Tactics II, the original Lensman still in its tube, and their minis collection is of poisonous lead, as the Good Lord intended.
They are the Keepers of the Flame, the Council of Elders, the Initiates of the Inner Circle, the...
All right, fine. We're old. And it makes us cranky.
You kids get your card driven games off my lawn!
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Axel Baumgartner
Austria
Salzburg
Salzburg
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I was reading this list and waiting for this:
The thumber: This user mostly interacts with BGG by giving thumbs to everything he likes, makes him laugh/smile or he thinks expresses his own opinion. He will give many thumbs a day, but rarely post a real comment, add a list item or start his own thread/list/etc. .
I am a thumber and I only had to add this because there was no list item with this user type I could thumb.
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T A
Hungary
Budapest
Stare into my eyes and feel the irresistible urge to check out my profile overpowering you...
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The Chit Chatter. This type of user spends the bulk of his BGG time almost exclusively in the Chit Chat subforum. He may or may not play boardgames anymore and has a twisted sense of humour.
He likes to start up a conversation about literally anything from her cat wearing a hat to running naked in his workplace, because he was out of toilet paper and wanted to borrow some from his boss' office.
This type is also known as the Coffee Klutch.
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T A
Hungary
Budapest
Stare into my eyes and feel the irresistible urge to check out my profile overpowering you...
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The GeekQuestion Addict. Unrivalled in his dominion, this Geek has mastered the art of turning simple questions like "What was your gateway game?" into sublime and down-to-earth philosophical enquiries, enabling answers to form an unique type of online haiku. Some of them burn out after a few months, others fall in the bottomless abyss of question marks.
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T A
Hungary
Budapest
Stare into my eyes and feel the irresistible urge to check out my profile overpowering you...
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The Subscriber. As evidenced by Blott's geeklist, this type of user is subsrcibed to several items on the forums and emerges from the dark to give his insight whenever he is called, much like a noble elf upon hearing the Horn of Gondor. This group includes but is not limited to designers and die-hard fans subscribed to their games and making their prompt 'cameo' appearance.
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Markus Rathgeb
Germany
Erbach
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... that I had time to play a game?
A mixture of some of the above mentioned types, hanging around at BGG, waiting for new posts. He nearly never hast time for a game, because he spends his spare time to talk about games instead of playing.
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T A
Hungary
Budapest
Stare into my eyes and feel the irresistible urge to check out my profile overpowering you...
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The Sockpuppet.
Multiple accounts are the natural result of a non-anonymous website. BGG is no exception. With too much time on his hands and looking for cheap thrills on the site, a sockpuppet conceals his true identity to generate emotional response by those who take him seriously or to voice his opinion because he is afraid that a SWAT team will storm his house in the midnight and steal his beloved collection of boardgames.
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THERE ARE FOR ROBORALLY editions 
