In this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=22393,
I can’t see any user names before post #96. Each post just says Guest. I can figure out who posted some of the things. Someone quotes Tomndebb, but the original post was just marked Guest. Was Tomndebb a guest back then?
Is there a reason 14 year old User names are dropped from posts?
(Sorry for bringing light to a 14 year old zombie of the least interesting debate topic in GD)
If I recall correctly, the board’s software got updated or changed or something, fairly early on, and any posts that were made before that point now show up with missing usernames and weird dates and other such oddities.
We switched from UBB to vBulletin back around 2000. The earlier post didn’t carry over.
samclem is correct; when the switch was made to the vBulletin software the files did not convert totally.
We were lucky we were able to save any of them, really.
So anything from that period will render in “archived” form, with missing names, etc.
Totally off-topic, but would the user name “Guest” be allowed? 
Also off topic, but I was reading an old thread (the one announcing Persephone’s death), and a poster had the title “registered user”. Everyone else were guests, charter members, member, banned etc.
Found it unusual.
That indicates a user that has somehow ended up in the security holding queue – this is what happens with new registrations, they have to receive, open, and trigger the confirmation email before they can get moved into the regular database.
This is what also happens when someone has changed their email address or their password, which moves the registration out of the regular database pending disposition of the confirmation email.
I would hope anyone in this situation would let us know so we could help them. There’s also thousands of bogus spambot registrations that got that far and no further so it’s hard to tell if it’s a legit registration or not.
This was the poster: Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks.
How come they have no “friends” tab? And why does it say “Registered User” instead of “Guest”?
See Tuba’s post above mine…
Oh yeah, oops…
Sorry about that. :o
Moved. Thanks.