I was reading some old threads and saw mention of the “People Pages”. Apparently this was a geocities site (originally run by the late and now-disgraced WallyM7? Not sure). Geocities went the way of the dodo, and I can’t seem to find a mirror with the images.
WallyM7 did a lot things but keeping any sort of anything for us, no, I don’t think so. But that was a long time ago and I could be mistaken, there’s been a lot of blood under the bridge since those times.
If memory serves there have been two sets of Straight Dope Message Board People Pages. The first was housed on Arnold Winkleried’s old website. And I forget what happened, maybe his server crashed or something. And he started another page. Which you can find here.
I don’t think Noodles is keeping track of this page anymore; when he retired as moderator he went on to do other things and has not kept up with us, sorry to say; I miss the hell out of him. So he’s not doing any updates.
The People Pages were actually created by SDMB member Shayna, not WallyM7. And, yes, Opal’s page did have that kind of functionality once upon a time.
And to tie some of this confusion together. . . Wally’s ‘death’ was announce by Arnold Winkelreid (who created the nouilles page listed above), after receiving a call or email from Shayna, who had received an email from Wally’s ‘daughter’ *Amy about his ‘industrial accident.’
The People Pages suffered a meltdown, so the rumors/accusations went by: Apparently, at least one other person had the password for the People Pages. And one SDMB member, with mayhem in mind, wheedled the password out of another tech-savvy member who had it. The particular tech-savvy member had a penchant for alcohol, and so the story went it was while this member was a little sauced that the password got away. The rumor/accusation was that now armed with the password, sabotage ensued, and the People Pages got corrupted.
*A lot of us suspect that Amy was really Wally, but we’ll never know.
I was waist-deep in the archives and read about the “Wally tries Cybersex!” thread, his sudden death, and the subsequent take-down for plagiarism. I never found the original story (or tried to after learning it was plagiarized), but I found the original author’s take on the incident at the Internet Archive. The geocities archive I linked in the original post dedicates the People Pages to WallyM7’s memory, so I thought he might have had a role in its original operation.
That’s the one I miss and still consult now and then. And it is one of the very few places online I have ever allowed my picture to appear. It felt that much like a community that it just seemed natural to me to join in.
At its best, that’s what we try to foster, that sense of being and belonging.
We don’t always make it so and like all groups of people that are close together, sometime we agree to disagree and squabble and fight. Because it is a community of humans.
Dopers have been and done some very wonderful things over the years. There’s been times I’ve been so proud and so happy, times I’ve laughed so hard … I’ve also been saddened, been angered. Been hurt. But also been enlightened and lifted up too.