http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1#post1
This should be the first post ever, right? Ed’s announcment on a new forum to discuss Cecil’s stuff? Right?
Check it out. It’s not. In fact, it appears quite new.
–Tim
New? The OP is dated 3-13-99, which was ~the 2nd or so day this board was up and running.
03-12-1999 10:46 PM
Opps, beatle found it while I previewed.
Well, anyway, the post #1 is odd
751906 is the post number that seems new.
The first post has Post “id=1” when you skim past the Quote button, but it won’t work because the thread is locked.
I believe that during the recent infestation of trolls (or more properly, troll), one of the incarnations of the troll took to bumping up extremely old threads, which is how this one ended up seeing the light of day. I suspect, however, that this was one of the few times that the administrators actually used the “delete all posts by user” feature, and this is why the troll’s post no longer appears in that thread.
Also, the OP was not necessarily the first post on the board. Thread numbers and post numbers are sequential starting with the changeover to vBulletin, but when the old UBB threads were converted to vB, I understand that there wasn’t any strict pattern to the assignment of numbers.
By the way, welcome, John Poser. You seem to have a pretty good understanding of the board… Been lurking long?
What, the guy’s a genius now, because he went to the first thread on the list, found nothing worked (probably because he didn’t know what “locked” meant) and reported the two numbers he saw?
You guys must really get a lot of amateurs here.
And, God what’s the obsession here with “lurking”? I’ve seen it in ten threads today. Don’t people just ask one question, and then another, and then a third? You have to be pretty backward to lurk, don’t you? This isn’t the first board anyone’s been on, I’m sure.
I so wish that you would take up lurking. Please look into it.
It’s a front. She’s not evil, as much as cranky.
And you’re right about the amateurs here.
Look at Duck Duck Goose in this thread, where he says you can’t get colored text.
I guess all the old folks are afraid to push the buttons. They have grandkids clear the flashing 12:00 on their VCR’s.
And then they come here with insult for people who caught on before them. Go figurine.
Let’s not get testy here, people.
There’s enough ignorance for everyone to fight, if we all just share.
As to why the thread mentioned in the OP is closed:
You will notice that the first post is from 12 march 1999, so it is very probably the first post ever made to the SDMB. Poster zebbmx came along, found the first post ever, and added to the thread, on 12 july 2000. Then moderator Arnold Winkelried, in a flurry of activity, saw the thread, didn’t notice the date on the OP or the fact that it was post #1, and closed the thread. I kind of regret it now, but haven’t reopened yet. If anything it serves as a reminder to myself to be more careful when reading a thread.
No, lurking isn’t a problem… In fact, it’s rather encouraged. The reason I commented on John Poser’s posts is that it takes most folks a few hundred posts before they figure out things like the postid numbers. This could mean that John Poser is just very good with computers, and picks up on things quickly. It could mean that he’s been to other boards using the vBulletin software. It could also mean that he’s lurked for a while on this one. Any of these is fine.
Bilder, it’s not that the oldbies are afraid to push the buttons, it’s that those buttons no longer exist. Unless you mean the blue hyperlinks, it’s no longer possible to create colored text in posts. It was done using html coding, but html has since been disabled, for a variety of security reasons. If you know of any other way to do it, that doesn’t involve sneaking into the Chicago Reader offices in the middle of the night to change the board settings, please share. We’d love to know.