Charter and 99er.
Of course, that was before the War of '03 when the Nihilst/Anarchists broke off to form the Null Church of the Chaotic Pit, but that was all taken care of by the Peaceful Accords of Mayday '05.
She’s told the story a few times. The short version is that AOL used to pay for content and the Straight Dope column, which had already been running for years in print, was one bit of that content. AOL also set it up with a forum. When AOL changed their business plan and stopped paying for content, the Chicago Reader decided to run it on their own servers. The end.
IIRC, Charter Member status has nothing to do with having been one of the first members of the board, but rather being one of the fist to pay for a subscription when the board began charging, which was in 2004.
So anyone who paid before about the end of April 2004 got a reduced price, and their status changed to Charter Member. To keep the Charter Member Status, you can’t let the subscription lapse. If you do and then decide to re-subscribe, you must then pay full price from point on, and your status is Member.
As noted, the Charter Member thing came about after the board had been in operation for several years, so it didn’t take much in the way of intuition to know about it. And when this board started, there had been a Straight Dope message board on AOL for a few years, and many of the members there signed up here (for free at that time) in the first few days that this board was open in March 1999.
In this fairly recent thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=431484&highlight=august
Tuba gives a little timeline of the Dope on AOL and here on the web, but doesn’t say much about how the Straight Dope actually came to be on AOL.
It seems like I’ve seen Ed or Tuba (or maybe even Cecil) talk about it, but I can’t find it right now. My guess is this: In 1995, the web was just starting to take off, and the private online services like AOL and CompuServe were starting to lose customers to ISPs who had no content of their own, but just offered web and newsgroups access, email, etc. So AOL was actively searching for content that couldn’t be found on the web. In mid 1996, they offered the Chicago Reader some amount of money to host an area on AOL. After a few years they wanted the Reader to pay for the privilege instead, so the Reader set up this site and left AOL in early 1999.
Thanks RJKUgly! I read part of that thread when it was active, but didn’t get to the explanations.
GT
Which of those three has particular significance to the SDMB? I mean, literally hundreds of things happened in 1999.
Whoosh.
I’m just posting to see if I’m a Charter Member and also when I joined.
Blast! I suppose my resubscribing must have slipped, so I lost my ‘Charter’ bit.
I’ve been to a Dopefest and my signature is pleasing to me…
Oh, and I always do things in threes…
I suppose. If you consider a smart Aleck answer to a serious question the proper setup for a whoosh. At any rate, if I was whooshed, at least I answered the question without being condescending. Try it. You might find it agreeable.
…=zoom>
Checking in.
Hey … got your Charter Membership right here !!!
Another charter member checking in. This is the only forum that I belong to that I gladly pay for. I also spend way to much time here, not that you could tell from my post count. 
I’m a Charter. I’m trying to remember the exact details of how I became one. If I’m right, I think I became one twice.
First I joined way back 1999 or whenever it was. I was an active reader, rarely posted.
Then in 2003 they had that thing where it went to paid subscriptions, and if you paid for a year in advance or whatever you got lifetime Charter Member status (I think that’s what it was) and I did that.
Then a month later I gave birth to three humans simultaneously, and for the next few years I was unable to devote any time to posting or reading at length (completing the reading of one post, for example) because the 3 humans kept growing and becoming increasingly demanding.
Then a week or two ago I said Oh hey, I want to post something and found that Surprise! My membership had lapsed. I went back, re-registered, paid, and was happy to see that my account was still listed as Charter Member.
So, I’ve been around since (I think) the early days, have read obsessively for 2/3 of the years, barely for 1/3, posted only occasionally, and have posted more in the past two days than in the past 5 years.
I’m sure that story was just overwhelmingly fascinating, wasn’t it?? :rolleyes:
Now I have to go because two of the people that I referenced as arriving in 2003 (in a rather abrupt, alarming way) are running around with no clothes on at all and I think Sister is playing doctor with Brother #2, which is probably a sin of some sort and I don’t want my mother-in-law to start trying to “save” me again. Well, to increase her effort thereto.
EmmaJane
P.S. Is “thereto” a word?
Present and-
Wait a minute. Let me check my wallet. Here’s the ID, let’s see… Yep! “Jack TrueBlue” it says, so…
Present!
and unaccounted for!
True Blue Jack
Except that you don’t show as a Charter Member. 
She was . . . but she’s not now.
We have occasionally missed changing a user title when the subscription has expired. With Jerry’s script in place this happens rarely (if ever) now but earlier it was more of a problem.
We still occasionally find former Charter Members who still have that old user title. I change them when I find them.
Oh, no. Now I feel really really depressed. I have truly been here since early days, and when I subscribed when it went to pay I seem to recall that it was if you subscribed within a certain time period you got “lifetime” Charter Membership. Since when I un-lapsed my membership my post count and my account popped back into existence, why do I lose my lifetime charter status?
I wish I hadn’t responded in the first place, that seems like kind of a harsh thing to do, to a 7 or so year member, a first subscriber, a recipient of lifetime charter status, and a generally all-around nice person who doesn’t hurt kitties or anything like that?
EmmaJane