Yes, I came from the AOL group originally.
Modern is platinum, so that why it’s so shiny around here.
It’s only a model.
There is also alt-fan-Cecil-Adams, the USENET group that was started back when USENET was the only way to go, baby!
Some AOLers migrated there after the Straight Dope left AOL … I especially recall the late Dick Macy, who I think went over there and made a new home for himself. The alt-fan people were always kind of rude to the AOLers but Dick persisted, I guess.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.fan.cecil-adams
Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
Yes, it was there and I can remember when it was announced that it was moving to the world wide web.
Yes, that’s where a lot of us came from. MPSIMS, was just one thread instead a forum in and of itself.
Cecil’s columns were posted on the welcome page you’d see when you signed on. I still recall the first one I saw “can you die from picking your nose”, then I started reading them and eventually found the forum.
I started with the AOL group in 1997. I don’t remember how long the Dope had been running on AOL before I got there.
I read the column in the Chicago Reader in the late 70’s, got the first book when it came out. Noticed this place in 1999 but sadly didn’t join until early 2000. I bet this place outlasts me.
My oldest was 2 weeks in the future when I registered in early 2000.
Now she’s in her first year in college and will have a publication in a journal at the end of the year. Man, what a ride.
I can’t put a date on when I first started reading the column in the Baltimore City Paper and the Washington City Paper, but it was probably sometime in the late 1970s, early '80s. I wasn’t on AOL or Usenet, so I didn’t find out about the boards until sometime in late 2002.
Cecil had answered one of my questions back in 1990, and over the years I submitted several others that he didn’t answer in the column. (I’m not counting the question that someone else asked, but that a friend on mine who worked at the Baltimore City Paper put my name on in their edition.)
At some point, C. K. Dexter Haven sent me an e-mail in response to one of those questions, suggesting I ask it on the SDMB, which I knew nothing about at the time. I might not have paid as much attention to the suggestion if his handle hadn’t been the name of one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies.
So I joined the SDMB in 2003 and started my first thread in March 2003. My 16th anniversary will be in 10 days, and this is my 6,746th post. Average of 1.06 posts per day.
My own 2oth anninversary here will be in December. It seems like so long. I wish I had kept links to some of my favorite threads.
I love reading these different stories about how people got here and What Happened After That. Please share some more!
FTR I saw “The Straight Dope on AOL!” banner as I was signing on to AOL to cancel my account; I just wasn’t all that impressed with the service. This was … May of 1996. Having read the first Straight Dope book I excitedly clicked on the banner and found myself at a portal in process, it was about half built. It did have a working chat room, which I entered; other people were already in there. And we sat there and talked amongst ourselves until Ed Zotti came and got us. Those people were the first chat hosts and later on the first message board moderators.
So I’ve been here before there was a here, pretty much. It’s been quite a ride. I hope “the road goes on forever and the party never ends.” 
Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
I remember some SD stuff on AOL. I cancelled AOL, and forgot about it. Found it again on the web, lurked for about half a year, and registered when I had a burning question on exploding thingies in a scrap yard. Uncharacteristically, it was never answered correctly. Hung around anyway.
I am 11 days from my own 20th anniversary of SDMB sign up. I have no clue how I got here - didn’t you hear me say that was 20 years ago? - but I have stayed. A hiatus or 2 over the years due to something called “life”, but fortunately I don’t seem to have one of those anymore so here I be.
April 23rd will be my 20th anniversary on this message board. I got the book, looked it up online, and came across the AOL site(but I can’t remember if I ever posted there). When this site started up I waited to see if it was like the AOL site, and it turned out to be even better, so I joined up and the rest is [del]a fever-fueled fantasy[/del]history.
My first exposure to the Straight Dope was in the books; one of my high school friends had a copy of whichever one it was that had the Rectal Foreign Bodies question.
A few years later in college, I was websurfing, an activity which might need some explanation for the youngsters out there: Instead of using the Web by Googling something and going straight there, you would start at some random webpage, which would have a bunch of links to various other sites, and if one of those looked interesting, you’d click on that, and get a bunch more links at the new site, and so on. It was sort of like TV Tropes, except across the entire Web (which was, admittedly, much smaller at the time). And we wore onions on our belts.
Anyway, the point is, I was websurfing, and stumbled across the Straight Dope, and thought “Say, wasn’t that the guy who wrote that book Rick had?”. I first ventured on to the message board to add some dubious information to one of the Staff Reports (then called “Mailbag Answers”), and realized that I had found a true home when I read the thread on Galileo, the Hammer, and the Feather, wherein much pedantic nitpickery was found.
Happy 20th, SDMB! And I notice that I’m just past the 5th anniversary myself, so yay me! But I see lots of 1999 join dates in this thread and only two so far more recent than me, so I guess I’m still a newbie and junior apprentice.
I might be in a small minority who ended up here as a result of a deliberate search for a quality message board with a good level of discourse. Unfortunately I don’t remember precisely what it was that pointed me here as a result of that search, but the management can take heart in knowing that the SDMB apparently has a decent reputation out there on the Interwebs. 
As I think I’ve shared before, I owe my career to the Straight Dope.
In middle school my teacher gave me a copy of the first Straight Dope book. I fell in love with Cecil’s style and tried to emulate it in my own essay writing—which led more writing, something I quickly fell madly in love with. After many career twists today I am a writing instructor at a local community college, and my degrees are writing-intensive—history and poli-sci.
I remember stumbling onto the Straight Dope website sometime before spring of 2001 (I didn’t have a computer for a couple of years after I first moved out on my own, so it was before that) but I didn’t register until 2007. Unfortunately I didn’t keep my paid membership current from then, so I lack the coveted “charter member” title ::sob, cry::.
I think it’s interesting that Ed Zotti was the 6th person to register here, and up until last summer was a more-or-less active poster. The earliest registrant still posting is Monty, who was the 14th person registered and last clocked in… today.
I absolutely love this place. As I find myself lately with a bit more time on my hands I’ve been lurking more, visiting the site at least daily. Over the years I’ve learned a lot, made some online friends—including a couple who helped me through some very dark times and to whom I owe more than they will ever know—,and found a place that doesn’t totally screw up my blood pressure. I’ll certainly stick around as long as you all will have me.
I read the columns and books first. I wasn’t an AOL user, but found the board while checking for the column online when my local weekly stopped carrying it.
I first saw the SD in the books and read the column on AOL but did not participate in the message boards. I moved to reading the columns online and then found the message boards from there.