As a courtesy to the rest of us who may have missed this gem from 2004: My patient's bizarre penis - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board. 3+ pages of fine vintage SDMB. Plus a short pointless revival in 2012.
I was around then but somehow I missed it. The good news is bagel penises age well. At least in Dope-space; IRL it might not have aged as well.
Yeah, I was a very low number user (after years on a.f.c-a) but was away during the charter member time, and… it’s always bugged me.
There’s no glory in it. I’m a Charter Member, like my father and his father before him. Charting and membing are in our blood.
This happened to me too. Exact.
So I became a mod.
I never let my charter membership expire. After I became a mod, eventually the charter membership timer expired. Even though I was a moderator at that point, the system said my charter membership had expired, and since I hadn’t renewed it, the system dutifully punted me back to being a guest, completely removing all of my mod powers in the process.
I got better.
(actually one of the admins fixed it)
Do mods get permanent Charter Member status even if they weren’t a Charter Member (they joined the Board too late) or do they just get permanent Member status? Doesn’t a Charter Membership have to have been started in a certain time period?
The first. They are Charter Members for life, no matter what they were before, no matter what the case was, no matter if they were Charter Members before and just let it lapse or if they were never ever Charter Members to begin with.
And no (to your second question). A person can be made Charter Member at any time, but the rub is, that doesn’t happen anymore. It was said to only be for those first early subscribers and it won’t be changed. Trust me, I asked really nicely when mine accidentally expired and was told no, just like every other person is that it happens to. It may seem harsh, but it’s just one of those things that “it was said this is how it’s gonna be and we’re gonna stick to our guns”…can’t really fault them for that.
The only exception (which I didn’t even know or expect–my post above in this topic was a joke) is when a person is a mod…their “bonus/payment”, of sorts, is lifetime Charter Membership. Well, that and a mug. In their words “it’s the least we can do for the people who volunteer to help mod this place”.
I just chart and memb for fun; I’m no professional.