How old is “old school”? I just checked and my earliest post that’s still available on the SDMB is dated August 1999. I think I posted earlier than that. I think some of the earlier posts are gone now.
The OP appears to be referring to folks who were active on the Dope’s message board on America Online, before the standalone StraightDope.com, and the SDMB, were created in 1999.
I think I was on the AOL version of the Straight Dope as early as July 1997, but I can’t remember for sure and there’s no way to look it up.
I think I joined the message board back in 2001…. a roomate was a member but never posted as far as I knew and the website was set to his homepage (shared computer back in the day).
I have had a handful of screen names over the years but I think this one has been around for at least 15 years.
I remember Opal (Hi, Opal) and Tuba Lady.
@TubaDiva in the post-AOL era. Although she may have been Tuba Lady or TubaLady way back before then.
Or are you all and I talking about two different people?
Sorry! I meant from the AOL boards. I remember when they went away and everything moved here. I don’t remember why I didn’t come with them though. Either way, hello! I am going to reply to the rest of the comments later. Slammed at work!
I was on the AOL board for a while and then didn’t transfer over due to a job change. The guy who installed our companies Unix based SDRC cad system introduced me to it and I was hooked. Didn’t have a PC at home for a while after that, so I missed being a charter member. 
For the life of me I can’t remember my username. Its lost to time, like tears in the rain.
Same person….it was me who was misremembering. She was TubaDiva back then as well!
I had a AOL account, but never bumped into the straight dope board.
That was always my problem. I couldn’t find the boards with cool content during my limited phone time. I used to get big phone bills because of connecting online.
I got frustrated and dropped AOL after a few months.
Still here, still the same name.
I’m pretty sure I stated posting on the AOL SD board in 1995. 30 years ago. Good grief.
Not for a while, now. He stepped down in 2020.
I was JThorn1934 on the AOL board. Remember me??? Anyone?? Anyone? Any… one? 
Cool… question — I remember a time before the push pins. All the “posting areas” changed when they brought in the push pins. For one thing, all the existing history of stuff people had posted just vanished. Start from scratch. Then, what was new, was threading. Instead of an undifferentiated string of posts, which you’d have to connect to conversations on the basis of the subject line, you’d get posts delivered to you with all the replies nested inside. But I wasn’t on AOL Straight Dope when they did that, I was mostly in something called “The Exchange”. Was it like that for AOL SDMB too?
I remember clicking on little folder icons in the various “rooms” to get to the threads that made up the message boards. That’s the only vibrant memory - everything else is a bit hazy. I think the individual threads were similar to how they are here; open a thread and the individual posts were chronological. I don’t think there was any reddit-style threading on the AOL board, it was always chronological without any tiers.
I remember they added/split the folders into GQ and either MPSIMS or IMHO, and maybe one more (I think it was three folders, but i don’t think that was what they called them).
Now I’m going to be pondering this all day….
I am trying to respond to everyone but failing miserably. But I am with you. I have very haze memories of that time but damn we had fun! All the stupid “flame wars” that went on. It felt so mean-spirited back then but looking at things now, we were mostly just messing around. I do remember a few people going “real life” on a couple of things but even that is super hazy. I think I asked this before but not sure if anyone said…..is RealWicked still around? I saw Ed Zotti is still here…..definitely remember him!
At least nowadays there’s no expectation anyone will do that. And in fact better to make one long post quoting tidbits of others’ posts than to click [reply] to each in turn and leave a dozen one-line responses.
Current evidence seems to indicate that the name “RealWicked” never existed in vBulletin or Discourse. So they never made it past the end of AOL, or you misremember the details. There’s no name even very close to “RealWicked”.
Ed Zotti is still the de facto “owner” and creator of SDMB. Simplifying a bit, the actual legal ownership is some big business, but he is our creator and emperor. We live on only at his (and their) pleasure. Other than occasional pronouncements on the Rules, or changes to the Moderator staff he is now a very hands-off god. All powerful, yet almost entirely aloof.
I freaking love that. Back then we were all just goofing off so the fact that he is still with it is awesome!
I joined in Nov ‘99, but the board was Vbulletin at that point. Posting on my little WebTV unit.
StG
I first found the Straight Dope on AOL in 1997, with Cecil’s brain, and I remember the message boards for it, but I don’t remember if I ever posted anything there. I just remember that was how I learned about the founding of this board and wound up here.
That’s how it was at least after the push pins arrived. (Remember the pastel push pins “wallpaper”?) I don’t think I had discovered SDMB before the push pins changeover, but I was on a different AOL message board or two within “The Exchange” and I think they were all formatted and behaved the same. Before the push pins, there WERE no threads, it was just chronological individual posts, but to reply you’d copy and paste anything you wanted to quote and you’d copy the subject line so people would know which conversation you were participating in.
One day all that had been replaced by a new system with the push pins background and now there were actual threads. What there WEREN’T any of were all the conversations as they had existed up until that point!