I’d guess that they aren’t in the order of the numbering scheme, since there have been various restructurings over the years.
Comments on Cecil’s Columns would have to be first.
And I guess About This Message Board would have been second, as something the software makes standard, like the boilerplate for Register, FAQ, Members List, Calendar (most dormant)
But what was next? GQ or Staff Reports?
And why was MPSIMS added? Because GQ was getting too busy?
And GD because MPSIMS was getting too busy?
And the Pit because GD was getting too acrimonious?
I’ve been here long enough to remember the creation of IMHO, created because MPSIMS was getting too busy, and Cafe Society, created for the same reason. Hmm.
In the Beginning there were two forums: Comments on Cecil’s Columns and General Questions.
MPSIMS had its origins in a thread in GQ — actually perhaps not a “thread” as we know them today, but way back the very dim very dark days before thumbtacks (and a few old-timers will know what that means), to continue a line of thought you would reply to a post and keep the subject line and that’s what made it a “thread” — anyway, it was originally titled “Titanic Wallpaper” and somehow became a catch-all for a type of non-question blathering that someone finally wryly said should be retitled “Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share”. And did so, replying to a “Titanic Wallpaper” post with a subject line something like “Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (was: Titanic Wallpaper)” and it caught on.
When AOL evicted us, the new board featured the three forums mentioned above (MPSIMS now existing as a true forum) plus these:
BBQ Pit
About this Msg Board
Great Debates
Mailbag Answers (or some such phrase)
The lattermost forum was at some point retitled SDStaff Answers as samclem describes.
Great Debates was not one of the original SDMB fora. I once saw the old ATMB thread where David B suggested its existance. I believe that Mailbag Answers (and hence Comments on them, as well) were not an original part of the site, either. In fact, I’m not sure that the Pit was original, either.
Our AOL days were our age of training wheels. Once we were on our own, the new fora sprouted pretty quickly.
My recollection is that we did have the Pit pretty much from Day One. GD is the relative newcomer, plus the “about the columns” ones once we were re-tooled into something more closely tied to the books and columns.
Looks like we went public with the UBBI board on May 10, 2000. (or so) **TubaDiva ** was one of, if not the, architect of our first message and chat board, so she’d be the one to ask.
GD was not original. I believe that the Pit was original on the web MB, or if not there at the start, then we put it in very early on. The original Straight Dope Message Board was on AOL for a while, as others have said, and the only two forums were Comments on Cecil’s Columns and General Questions. We didn’t do staff reports back then, instead we just had Classic Columns.
In English law, time immemorial means “a time before legal history, and beyond legal memory.” In 1276, this time was fixed by statute as the year 1189, the beginning of the reign of King Richard I. Proof of unbroken possession or use of any right since that date made it unnecessary to establish the original grant. In 1832, the plan of dating legal memory from a fixed time was abandoned; instead, it was held that rights which had been enjoyed for twenty years (or as against the crown thirty years) should not be impeached merely by proving that they had not been enjoyed before.
This whole discussion offends me! You’re going on about the so called “evolution” of the SDMB without giving one single mention to the alternative theory of “Intelligent Programming.”
Clearly the SDMB could not spring up completely at random out of electrons whizzing around the internet. Obviously it had to be programmed, and even “designed” by an intelligent entity, which, for the sake of argument I shall call “Cecil.” I feel that if we look at all the evidence (as well as all the missing evidence, such as a continuous fossil record of previous message boards demonstrating development of the SDMB over time) this argument is clearly proven.
I demand that “Intelligent Programming” be taught alongside Board Evolution in all Computer classes from now on, and am asking the Bush administration for funding for my digital faith based endeavors.
The Supreme Court of Guam has decreed that “Intelligent Programming” is a thinly disguised form of religious instruction. That means if you want to pursue this line of inquiry, you’ll have to call it a “faith-based initiative”, which somehow makes it legal again.
