I threw up in my mouth.
A little bit. 
You have to admire the way that Marley, upon realizing that he was wrecking all the fun for all the mods, undid it and went back to the old traditional mod method - ban everyone, but one at a time.
You can’t suck up worth shit, can you?
This thread cannot continue without a musical interlude -
Ok, so I had to go all the way to deep research and after googling forever I caught a lead (actually it took me one click, just so you know, **Hal). **The reputable internet meme repository TV Tropes does not (yet?) have The Great Banning, but it does have this.
Now, notice: six years and a day. And the first post on 9/7…? That **Hal’**s name and exploits would be linked forever. Close coincidence. Maybe too close.
I’m interested in why Twickster, of all people, locked that thread, when she herself said it should stand forever–a perpetual zombie?, nay a perennial.
So if this thread gets locked, I’ll get suspicious, particularly since I’ve pointed that unlikely coincidence.
Maybe Jerry is Hal’s colleague and had him commit this heinous act and be blamed
but Jerry got Marley as his patsy, or the other way around.
Eventually this all might be revealed to be part of one event, The Great Baanning.
Now, the old-timer event I’d like to hear more about is the Winter of Our Missed Content. Was that 2000 or 2001? The board software crashed and several months of posts were lost.
Winter of Our Missed Content: Someone (Tubadiva, I believe) set up an alternative board (I want to say it had “Bboard” in the web address?) for us to get our Dope fix during the repairs here. From thence came Og, who smashed-- an animated smiley so obnoxious and beloathed it is talked about yet today. Lucky for everyone, Og didn’t make the leap back to this place. If I remember correctly, he also took the name “Smashy” from time to time.
I think the bulk of the outage took place during the first few months of '02.
The smiley was Smashy. Og is a separate entity, though I suppose that Smashy might have been an Earthly avatar of Og, much like Krishna and Vishnu. Og originated from a short-term poster who was proselytizing but had a habit of mis-typing “Son of God” as “Son og God”.
And I’m still curious about what actually happened in the Great Banning. Even if we accept that Marley was responsible, how? I find it hard to imagine that the board really does have a “ban everyone” button. Who undid the banning, and did the undoing of it show any clue as to how it was done? After the mass banning was undone, were the Indian spammers who were the original target still banned?
You’re absolutely right. I completely misremembered that.
“The Winter of Our Missed Content.”
There’s a script that runs in the middle of the night that backs up the message board. The script got corrupted somehow and for a few months it backed up the day’s posts by overwriting previous postings.
By the time we found this problem, the board had lost approximately three months worth of posts that could not be recovered … lost forever.
And there you have it.
Exactly how did you notice you were banned? Did it prevent you from logging in or was there a “you’ve been banned” pop up? Or did it let you log in, then the word “Banned” was underneath your name?
Was there anyone who was in the process of posting, only to find him/herself banned? How did that go down?
It’s important to record these details for posterity.
[hijack]
Waitaminnit, didn’t Chronos have a cool new sig about Time from Shakespeare originally here?
I’m pretty sure he did, because I was going to PM him about it…
Hmm…
[/hijack]
ETA: Hmmm, similar prob with member agnomens that can be changed instantly back in time. Raises issue of SD historicity. Which actually is considered in OP (and above post).
Not to be persnickety but did he? On page 2 of that announcement thread I suggested that he probably did it while banning a single person and he said flat out said no.
To this day we don’t know the precise mechanism. We may never know exactly what happened. We’ve all been very careful since.
Leo Bloom, I’ve had my current sig for many years (dunno exactly how many; however long ago it was that Montana Shakespeare in the Park presented As You Like It), and it does in fact show up after the post you quoted:
Forgive me, the Bard did not write that? Someone added it?
I’m not up on the latest authorship disputes, but so far as I know, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote every word of As You Like It, including the line in my sig. I don’t understand the confusion.
{sigh} I guess I’ve used up my 15 minutes of fame.
Your reference to Montana Shakespeare in the Park made me think it may have been ad libbed.
I am glad to be mistaken.
Did you think it was perhaps a production in which Miley Cyrus played Rosalind?
Chronos lives in Montana. I imagine that Montana Shakespeare in the Park might be put on in an outdoor amphitheater in Glacier National Park.