StarDestroyer.Net is a sci-fi technology information site. Its focus is Star Wars or more specifically Star Wars vs Star Trek. The site is owned by one Michael Wong, of Toronto.
History and Purpose
It began as the Usenet group ASVS(alt.startrek.vs.starwars, a group dedicated to said debate. Wong was among the group of people who, not just watched Star Wars and Star Trek, but did calculations on the amount of energy being thrown about by the various 'laser beams' etc. The site began as a placeholder for a lot of the information that went into arguments there. ASVS was at one point invaded by flamewarriors from SpaceBattles.com. The site is home to the Turbolaser Commentaries and a variety of essays on topics in Scifi debating, as well as a few calculators for finding the amount of energy released in a kinetic impact, the amount required to vaporize a planet, etc.
Stemming from this was the StarDestroyer.net BBS, which most of the ASVS crowd set up shop in as of early July 2002.
Evolution Debating
The site has a cousin, also run by Wong, called creationtheory.org, which contains a number of essays on the typical debate tactics and politics of the christian right and other conservatives with positions Wong persuasively argues are illogical, biased, bigoted, or immoral.
Because of this the BBS is a community comprised mainly of social liberals of all stripes, mainly atheists and agnostics at that, though many of whom came at first for the Star Wars vs Star Trek aspects of the board. Social Conservatives and Conservative Christians often join and as long as they don't become disruptive to board life, they just end up being normal board members. The conversations range from standards of geeks everywhere: Star Wars vs Star Trek, Star Wars, Trek, Fanfics written by board members, General Scifi and Fantasy to the smart and mostly well posted to Fora of Science, Logic, and Morality (SLAM), News and Politics, Gaming and Computers, and About Relationships and Sex Education (ARSE) to the general interest fora of Off Topic and Artwork, Music and Photos.
The Board is one of the best administered on the internet, boasting a total board post count of 1643000 with a population of 2448 members, as of 8-2-2005. According to www.bigboards.com it has the second highest post count to member ratio on the internet, at 671 p/m. The admins and moderators actively stop board members who are disruptive and unjustifiably offensive and every few months unused accounts are purged for board cleanliness. As a result debates can become heated, even nasty, without becoming out and out flamewars.
It is also a renowned pit of scum and villiany, or rather mostly just humorous perversion.
Troll Droppings
Since SDN has a tendency to quickly ban seriously offensive users it has been attacked by some who have been banned in numerous ways. For one DarkStar, a user who was banned due to his tendency to be a flaming wall of ignorance, who was banned even before I became a member has devoted a section on his website on how evil we are. Another way SDNet has come under attack is in the numerous Wikipedia deletion attempts that occur, usually fomented by banned member revprez.("Well then, science is bullshit"- one of his more brilliant rebuttals).