How many Charter members are right?
Duh, all of them.
How much could someone get for a charter membership on eBay? I would never sell mine but if someone was desperate…
Present.
I’m here.
Me, somehow.
If this turns into a “post if you’re still here” thread, then we might just be able to make this the longest thread ever! (Here.)
Charter Lurker here as well… And just mere weeks from qualifying as a 99’er
What is the significance of “99’er”?
I’m still here. You decide whether that’s cause for mourning or rejoicing. 
Just the other day, I found a charter member(since 2004) who has never posted. How would you count them?
As a charter member? WTF else? What is this bizarre surrealism going on in this thread?
We’ve been a pay site for how long now? 3 years, I think. Close to a third of the community’s existence? Charter Members should be a lot lower, percentage wise, if this were a properly growing community, IMHO. Especially when you consider how many of the non-“Charter Members” are still actually old hands.
How is someone who joined in 2004 a Charter Member? Or is that another one who lapsed earlier and returned?
And how did you folks become Charter Members? I mean, how did you know there was about to be a Straight Dope board? Was it like all those monks who spontaneously showed up to hear the Buddha preach that time? Just knew it?
I’m not either.
Yes, we all have precognition.
Actually, the Dope existed for several years before it went to paid subscriptions. We weren’t Charter Members until that time.
Siam Sam, keep an eye out for threads asking how people found the Dope. They come up once or twice a year. Typical answers are 1) they saw a link on AOL or bored.com or some other site, 2) they knew about the books and looked for a Web site and eventually saw the link to the boards, 3) they were looking for an answer to a question and one of their search results was a column or something with a link to a thread.
***However, *** I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about the original member base, or how there even came to be a board on AOL, for that matter.
So, Tuba (and anyone else who was around back then), how’d everything start up?
::Pulls up chair::
GT
Old farts who joined up in the first year. I think I held off for about three weeks, until the splinter groups settled down.
It signifies having joined before 2000.
Doesn’t it also signify joining the first year it was possible to join?
… as we continue to scuttle about, like horseshoe crabs, while other, flashier entities come and go like mayflies…
Yes indeed. It also signifies joining the year Ahmed H. Zewail won the Nobel prize for Chemistry.