As we enter 2024, it should be noticed that the Straight Dope Message Board is celebrating its 25th anniversary! I’m proud to have been there from the beginning (and earlier on AOL)! What are we doing to celebrate?
I’ve only been here, what, 7 years?
Maybe we can make a thread stating our favorite moment on the Dope?
Y’all are welcome for my 23 (?) years of quality contributions.
Nah, I’m just kidding. Don’t look at it. 
That’s funny, I celebrated 17 years here today. and I was going to make a thread to find out how long The Straight Dope message board has been a thing.
Favorite moments? Like personally favorite? I think it predates my time, but I recall a gut-bustingly funny thread recounting awkward sex moments. I think one of them involved a prosthetic limb.
Last night as I fell asleep, I thought to myself, “You can never, ever run for office.”
It looks like I’ve been here since August 2000, but I took a lengthy sabbatical in there. I had no idea it was so new when i joined!
Hmmm. Wonder if it’s a silver or ivory gift giving occasion?
Let me consult Miss Manners.
(I suppose fake silver or ivory would do)
I started in April of 2001. I felt like a noob for the longest time.
Just don’t try to use the 1920s style death ray; it’s likely to blow up in your face, maybe even be burning your dog.
Same here, but for me it was December 2001.
One minute you’re a 26-year-old noob with all these 99ers big-timing the place, the next you’re a middle-aged yahoo whose spent damn-near half his life here.
I found it. Vintage 2000.
Happy anniversary to the dope and to all the inaugural members! (Hmm is that the correct use of the word?)
I fooled around a bit on the AOL account, then became a member on April 23rd, 1999.
I still feel like a noob. I joined nearly ten years ago.
20 years and a few months now for me. so ~1/3rd of my life. The fact I was already 40 when it was founded kinda limits its ability to be too large a fraction of my lifetime.
Although sometimes it feels like it occupies well over half my waking hours since then.
It’s song time:
Happy Doperversary to Dope!
Happy Doperversary to Dope!
Happy Doperversary deeear Boo-aaaard!
Happy Doperversary to Dope!
2002 for me, I think. The LOTR alternative authors thread is a favorite.
ETA: Here you go–If LotR Had Been Written By Someone Else!?
Says in my profile that I joined up 23 years ago this coming Friday. Jan 5, 2001.
Shamefully, I’ll admit that I dimly (very dimly!) recall having an account based on a work email that went away in December of 2000, so I have no real way of knowing when I actually joined.
Back in those days, I knew people here from my time starting in '91 on alt.fan.cecil-adams and alt.folklore.urban.
I think, I hope, that the statute of limitations on duplicate accounts has expired.
There’s no one using Fried_ Pork_Skin so that wasn’t it.
Perhaps it was my hispanic alter ego, Chicharrón.
2005 for me, so a little late to the party.
I was at that point in life of answering questions for a inquisitive young daughter and that kept leading me to the Straight Dope.
Then I started reading the old columns. I then got sucked in responding to a column and ended up becoming a member.
I’ve enjoyed my stay here a lot.
My dear People, My dear Beckdawreks and BeepKillBeeps, and my dear TokyoBayers and Dung_Beetles, and Great_Antibobs, and Chingons, and Bullitts, and HoneyBadgerDC , and Bookkeepers, Broomsticks, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good Sam_Stone-Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is our twenty-fifth birthday: We are twenty-five today, ¡más o memos!
I hope you are all enjoying yourselves as much as I am. I shall not keep you long. I have called you all together for a Purpose. Indeed, for Three Purposes!
First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that twenty five years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hoboes.
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Secondly, to celebrate our birthday. I should say: MY birthday. For it is, of course, also the birthday of my heir and nephew, Frodo, who is concerned about recent developments in Argentina and makes a mean choripan.
It is also, if I may be allowed to refer to ancient history, the anniversary of my arrival by barrel at Esgaroth on the Long Lake Michigan; though the fact that it was my birthday slipped my memory on that occasion… The banquet was very splendid, however, though I had a bad cold at the time, I remember, and could only say ‘thag you very buch’. I now repeat it more correctly: Thank you very much for coming to my little party…