How long has SDMB been around?

And how long has it been a relatively big board?

Lessee…

The board started in March 1999. We hit 10,000 in December 2001.

33 months (3/99-11/01) - 10,000.
17 months (12/01-4/03) - 23,000.

It’s growing at a greater rate all the time.

The was a Straight Dope Message Board well before this place, on AOL, that dates back to the mid-90s, I beleive, but I’ll let one of the survivors to tell you about that.

Oh, and you put this in GQ, not ATMB. I’ll ask for it to be moved.

      • A survivor checking in. I can’t remember how long I was on when it was an AOL board. Opal is another left over, though she’s doing her own thing much of the time these days. There’s at least a couple other survivors in now and then (sorry I can’t recall you guys, I really should). … And I found the AOL board from the info on it in one of the books, if you were wondering.
        ~

I was around for the old AOL board, and went by the same “screen name.” Of course I was about as well-recognized there as I am here, so that’s not saying a whole lot.

The AOL system kind of sucked in retrospect. The vBulletin system in use now is so much simpler to navigate and keep track of everything. Of course one could argue that AOL kind of sucks now in retrospect, but hey, that was before a public person could get a SLIP account with an ISP. :slight_smile: I kept my “bring your own access” account with AOL ($9.95/mo) on my super-fast dual-channel ISDN (128kbps plus compression!!) just to read the Straight Dope. When the Straight Dope left, AOL got cancelled. And of course, @Home eventually become cheaper than ISDN+ISP. And now @Home doesn’t exist. But at least SDMB is still around.

I was around for the old board on AOL. I remember when MPSIMS got it’s start as a single, albeit LONG, but a single thread! I still rememeber how I got hooked on it. It was on the page that popped up when you signed onto AOL. There was a little advertisement of sorts for it. “Can you really die from picking your nose?” I went and read the article, and kept going back to read the other articles and eventually made my way to the message board. AOL Keyword “Cecil”

Off to ATMB.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

I was around near the end of the AOL board’s lifetime. I checked it out using the ubiquitous “free month of AOL” and hung around using the BYOA option after I got a real ISP until they dropped the board, and then I dropped them. (I took the easy way of cancelling AOL, by mail, in order to avoid the endless cancellation/attempted retention phone call.)