But the main purpose of this thread is to collect as much personal detail as you are willing to share about your own “Join Date” and the people who share that same date and who are still active here.
Here’s a procedure you can use to supply what I’m asking for:
Zeldar
Guest
Last Activity: Today 10:28 AM
Total Posts: 14,569
Posts Per Day: 4.73
Join Date: 06-18-2003
Adjust the URL “u=” (in my case 36386) number up and down until you find the range of User Numbers for the Join Date when you joined. My own range is from
Mister Rik
Charter Member
Last Activity: Today 12:51 AM
Total Posts: 7,983
Posts Per Day: 2.59
Join Date: 06-18-2003
to
slurik
Guest
Last Activity: 06-19-2003 03:01 PM
Total Posts: 0
Posts Per Day: 0
Join Date: 06-18-2003
+++ (Be aware that you may run across some numbers that will return a message like
I assume those User Numbers have been deleted or disappeared for whatever reason.) +++
Along the way to the extremes of User Numbers that define your “Join Date” make note of the other Active Users in your range. My only other one is
Not Mitch
Guest
Last Activity: 08-31-2011 10:42 PM
Total Posts: 3
Posts Per Day: 0.00
Join Date: 06-18-2003
and I assume from that “Last Activity: 08-31-2011 10:42 PM” that Not Mitch qualifies as “active.”
How you go about sharing your data is of course up to you, but at least share how many numbers are in your Join Date range and who are the Active Users who joined when you did.
Perhaps with enough sets of numbers from you folks we can zoom in on the “active user” count after a few samples. For example, of the 42 User Numbers on my Join Date only three of us can be counted as “active.” A reasonable number of similar statistics ought to let us see what percentage of our
Only other currently active member from that day is 8137 Gregor Samsa, last activity 11/24/2011.
There was another member who hasn’t been back since 2008. Everyone else left years before that…those who stuck it out past 2000 tended to leave in 2003 (is that when we went to pay-to-post? I think so.)
I DO know that feeling! Thanks for posting anyway. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, I guess. Meanwhile, at least Nametag and Tamex see some value in it. Perhaps the joys and pleasures of Thanksgiving have kept other potentially interested members from poking into these arcana. I guess we’ll see.
As for 2003 being a jinx year, that’s when I joined. And I think the P2P thing came later, although I don’t have a good sense of when it did exactly.
It would be a cute piece of trivia if we could locate the DAY when most people joined up. I even tried again to locate the first day of SDMB, and have come up empty. One version would be early 1999, but there’s evidence the real start (on AOL) may be impossible to get precisely. If we ever do get that specific date, we can do a Julian Day calculation as a base number of days to use in the quotient of percentages calculations.
What other trivia could we be trying to determine?
Just to share the contents of my work file for some of the trivia I have already tried to narrow down, and without further elaboration of what it all means, I submit:
=============================================
Straight Dope Message Board > Main > About This Message Board > Welcome
PDAView Full Version : Welcome
03-10-1999, 11:38 PM
Hi, and welcome to the “About This Message Board” forum. Post here if you have comments or questions about how this message board works. But please, read the FAQ (http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/faq.html) first, this will answer (we hope) the most commonly asked questions.
Straight Dope Message Board > Main > About This Message Board #1 03-10-1999, 11:38 PM
Guest
Hi, and welcome to the “About This Message Board” forum. Post here if you have comments or questions about how this message board works. But please, read the FAQ first, this will answer (we hope) the most commonly asked questions.
Straight Dope Message Board > Main > Comments on Cecil’s Columns/Staff Reports > Welcome!
PDAView Full Version : Welcome!
03-10-1999, 11:25 PM
Hi, folks, and welcome to the “Comment on Cecil’s Columns” folder. Though the Boss is still far from comfortable with this computer thing, we’ve persuaded him to check in periodically to read your comments about his columns, and respond if the spirit moves him. He has this idea that your comments will mostly consist of remarks such as “Nice job, O awesome one.” We are sure no one will disillusion him. Happy posting.
Straight Dope Message Board > Main > General Questions > Semi-What?
PDAView Full Version : Semi-What?
03-16-1999, 02:57 PM
My lovely wife and I were driving across the country, and happened to pass a semi. You know what a semi is. I know what a semi is. But what occurred to us at 3 in the morning is that semi is actually a prefix.
So the question became semi-what? I’ve driven a truck (when I was in college), but somehow the fact that you could read was considered enough for your class A license. The finer points of linguistics just didn’t come up.
Any ideas?
Through the modem, past the router, over the firewall… nothing but 'Net -
Straight Dope Message Board > Main > Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS) > Bye Bye Man of Steel
PDAView Full Version : Bye Bye Man of Steel
03-15-1999, 08:17 PM
Well, just received an AP report saying that Kirk Alyn - the first actor to play Superman in ANY format, be it stage, screen or radio - passed away today. It saddens me greatly.
Mind you, I didn’t even know he was still alive. He dropped out of sight completely after Superman II, and even that was only an uncredited cameo that only the most die-hard cult followers of the films even recognize. But still, it’s been a hard couple years for fans of the Man.
Joe Shuster (co-creator, original artist) passed away some time ago, but Jerry Siegel (co-creator, original writer) died just a year or two ago. Arguably his definitive artist, Curt Swan, my personal hero, shuffled off the mortal coil not long ago, following Sheldon Mayer who’d been responsible for bringing Superman to the publisher’s attention in the first place. And then of course, Chris Reeve’s accident a few years back.
It tears me apart that an icon I so adore, which brings me such great joy, seems punctuated by these moments of loss and sadness … and worse that a hero who flies so high and alludes to such great possibilities in the human spirit should be so often touched by this fragile, mortal sadness.
So I’m sad again today. When I go back to my drawing table and put pen to paper, I’m going to find myself staring at the faces of my creations, my renderings, wondering if they will outlive me, and what forms they would take in the hands of others. Hoping I can be proud to have been the integral part of them …
And this weekend, as is tradition when we lose “one of our own,” a bunch of us will gather at my house and talk about all the heroes we’ve lost, and dread the day we lose even more … and toasting in their honor, we’ll remember that one day we too will die, and so we mourn the chinks in our armor of perceived immortality.
There should be a word for the longing created when a representation of your ideals is gone …
Sad, sad, sad Jonny today.
-An epistle most prosaic, courtesy of Calamity Jon.
Straight Dope Message Board > Main > The BBQ Pit > The Rules of Engagement
PDAView Full Version : The Rules of Engagement
03-11-1999, 12:20 AM
Remember all those times we said, “hey, why don’t you take that outside?” Well, here’s where you go. <g>
No, really. This is where you go for all those verbal fistfights. When a thread veers from debate and/or discussion into personal attack, sneering insults, and “Yo Mommas,” y’all should step outside to this thread.
Remember, although AOL’s Terms of Service do not usually apply and we will give you SOME latitude, this is no back alley and you will be expected to be if not civil at least semi-reasonable. Pure evil and/or rants won’t fly – unless they’re really entertaining.
Oh, and give me five minutes to sell some tickets, okay?
your humble TubaDiva
Oldest available thread?
04-18-2002, 09:25 PM
Buck The Diver
Guest
Thread Superlatives
08-01-2005, 11:29 AM
Zeldar
Old threads worth another look?
08-07-2010, 01:32 PM
Zeldar
1st threads in each forum
11-22-2010, 01:31 AM
etv78
Lynn Bodoni
Creature of the Night
Total Posts: 15,849
Posts Per Day: 3.41
Join Date: 03-09-1999
Dan Kaplan
Guest
Last Activity: 04-28-2000 06:05 PM
Total Posts: 62
Posts Per Day: 0.01
Join Date: 02-18-1999
Ed Zotti
Gormless Wienie
Last Activity: 11-04-2011 03:51 PM
Total Posts: 1,596
Posts Per Day: 0.34
Join Date: 02-18-1999
=============================================
Please do feel free to add any other such background material of your own to this thread. Z
If I’m understanding things correctly, my user ID is 2845.
Looking back and forth, I find just four others in my cohort (not including IDs with 0 posts):
[ul]
[li]Ikilledkenny (4 posts)[/li][li]leafrog (44 posts–but last activity was 11/2/11)[/li][li]CATwoman (4 posts)[/li][li]horowitz (185 posts, ruining the run of 4s)[/li][/ul]
Thanks for playing, Rhythmdvl, and all that I would add to your findings is that on your Join Date, the total number of members (counting the 0 posts crowd) was 7:
noelb
Join Date: 10-13-1999
**leafrog ** — only “active” member other than yourself
Guest
Last Activity: 11-02-2011 10:51 PM
Total Posts: 371
Posts Per Day: 0.08
Join Date: 10-13-1999
Ikilledkenny
Join Date: 10-13-1999
Rhythmdvl
Join Date: 10-13-1999
CATwoman
Join Date: 10-13-1999
horowitz
Join Date: 10-13-1999
Flangdang
Join Date: 10-13-1999
=======================
Otherwise, your interpretation matches what I am after. Thanks!
It was 28th in my time zone when I joined, but it must have been in the wee small hours judging by the Last Activity times of some of the people who joined after me. Therefore it would still have been the 27th in much of the world.
I should add that, while that was fun to do, the admins can get all this information from simple queries, sliced and diced however you want it, After all it is nothing but data on tables. Probably 5 lines of code, if you are tidy, would do it.
Ooooookay. I figured out how to do all of that! zuma joined the same day I did and last posted 10-02-2011.
Other than that, everyone else that has the same join date as mine seems to have posted either a very few times or none at all.
Is that what you were looking for?
What I was hoping to find (among as much other useless info as y’all care to share on this issue and others) is what portion of a given day’s “Joiners” are still “active” in the sense of “recent” activity. You’re in step with that goal by posting:
Your Join Date (member number is optional since it will appear with a mouseover on your post!)
The Usernames of other who Joined that same date AND who are still “active” in your judgment (those with a Last Activity: that you deem “recent.”)
A count (as a minimum detail) of ALL who Joined that same date.
In deference to the wishes of those who may be sensitive to the mention of Dopers who may no longer share our breathing space, listing the names of “inactive” Dopers may be in bad taste. Tuba Diva pointed that out in the thread I linked to in the OP that was the source for my interest.
