I found this place when it came up in a search. I've been lurking but I thought I'd say hello.

Run now, while you still can...

/bonk

Hi!
/bonk
Now that the ceremony's out of the way.. out of curiousity, what were you searching for?

Oh this could be a game...

What collection of words would best describe the nature of this board to place it at the top of a search engine, without using words contained in the site title or description (ie taste it again).

It was just a Google political search, pretty generic. I found what I wanted but this was a link that came up on the list. I was curious, was all. I'm guessing there's a special meaning to /bonk?

Neat!

The /bonk is a reference to the origins of this community, which was originally "The Ranger's Glade", a fansite for a subset of players of a massively multiplayer online game called Everquest. It was a different URL, and was a forum devoted to discussing the game and helping each other improve at playing it. It had a subsection for "Real Life", which is where most of us got to know each other. Eventually, the forum was sold to a company that bought up several such sites as one of its many angles on making money off the game, and we went off and created a new forum where we didn't have to be associated with that company, which had a stigma for a lot of players. We've gone through a few free-hosting forum sites that have all folded or proven unreliable, and now are self-hosted by a member of the community.

The /bonk was an emote in the game that came with a (for many of us) delightful clanging sound, and developed as a quirky, traditional greeting for new members.

/bonk Kirra