As a long time follower of this forum, I do appreciate the help that everyone gives me and other confused students who want to commission in the Armed Forces. Thank you all. I'd just like to know how this forum started answering the question of who, what, when, and how?
I'd just like to thank the person or people who created this forum because I learned a lot from here. A lot of students come here for answers about their careers, but I like to know the history of where it all started as well. Thanks.
This forum started in June of 2006. At that time there was very little organized information found online about the service academies. The best source at that time was the College Confidential section dedicated to the service academies, but that was full of misinformation. Since nearly everyone could post whatever they wanted with no vetting or moderation, the information was often contradictory and outdated.
This site's founder, Tacticalnuke, saw a need and started these forums. Many of the original members here were from the CC site and it was a gradual transition to people realizing that Tacticalnuke ran a tight ship and that the quality of this site was high.
In the beginning there was a large presence from both West Point and USNA. The original moderators like Jamzmom, Just_A_Mom and WAMom68 were West Point, and Zaphod, USNA1985, and USNA69 were USNA. KP2001 was the mod for USMMA. There was not much activity with the Air Force. In fact, in the beginning there was not even a moderator for the USAFA forum. Over time all of the forums grew. Moderators were pretty constant for the first several years and membership grew a lot. The ROTC and other sub forums were added as we expanded and word spread. We found that the audience for the service academies was most of the same people applying to ROTC and the Military Colleges.
There have been several upgrades and changes to the site over the past 11 years. Each one is designed to give candidates the best experience here in finding advice about applying to the Academies and ROTC. Tacticalnuke is still the site owner and administrator and is involved daily in running the site and keeping it on the right track.
Stealth_81
