# What's your longest absence from the board?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 26, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003 "2010-07-26T02:00:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/1 "2010-07-26T02:00:59Z")
I’m on an extended business trip that has kept me from spending any regular time on the board. I think I’ve checked in twice this entire week. But I know that pales in comparison to how long some others have gone missing.
So, simple poll: what’s the longest you’ve been away from the Dope (and actually returned to post at some point)?
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/2 "2010-07-26T02:29:56Z")
I was gone, although I would lurk from time to time) from when they started charging to when they stopped, however long that was. I am a born cheapskate.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/3 "2010-07-26T08:03:58Z")
Last summer. 3 weeks in southern France.
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### Author:  [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/4 "2010-07-26T14:30:11Z")
Well there was the period where the board went pay-to-post. I disappeared pretty soon after that and only came back when I found out they had reversed it.
I’ve no idea howe long it was. A couple of years? Anyone know?
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### Author:  [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/5 "2010-07-26T14:48:41Z")
About 5 months but that was before I said much of anything.
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### Author:  [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/6 "2010-07-26T15:14:39Z")
I went through some personal stuff and fell off the face of the earth for a while. I was, more or less, a hermit for about a month. I didn’t want anything to do with anyone, and I’ll admit, it was hard for my husband to be around me when I just wanted to disappear from everything.
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### Author:  [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/7 "2010-07-26T16:30:05Z")
When they went pay-to-post, I subscribed the first year but let it lapse because I really couldn’t justify paying for a board when there are so many free ones out there. So, a couple of years?
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/8 "2010-07-26T17:26:13Z")
1. I was hospitalized for several weeks with no online access.
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### Author:  [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/9 "2010-07-26T17:36:52Z")
About a year and a half from late 2003 to the end of 2004. I was deliberately without a computer at the time; it would have just been a distraction.
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### Author:  [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/10 "2010-07-26T22:12:08Z")
> [@panache45](#):
>
> Last summer. 3 weeks in southern France.
Where 'bouts? Spent two years in and out of Villefranche sur Mer a while back.
OP: One year off, just to take a rest from it.
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### Author:  [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/11 "2010-07-27T03:37:12Z")
I’m in the 4-6 days time frame. That was during a couple of moves when I was just too busy or didn’t have online access. I’ll go through periods of not posting too much, but I don’t think I’ve gone more than a week without stopping by the board since 2004.
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### Author:  [@evilbeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilbeth)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/12 "2010-07-27T03:44:36Z")
Almost four years. Pay-to-post wasn’t my thing. Just really came back in the past few weeks. Being unemployed gives me plenty of time to check out old stomping grounds.
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### Author:  [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/13 "2010-07-27T04:24:09Z")
I voted more than a year. I take extended breaks from the board because sometimes it just becomes a bit too much. In GD and the Pit, which are where I spend most of my time on the board, the number of threads that devolve into nonsense, name-calling, snark, and sarcasm is astonishingly high.
There are a small number of regular posters who I consider to be excellent debaters, and it’s a thrill to see them in action, parrying and jousting with facts, backed, when necessary, with appropriate cites. There are a huge number of posters who couldn’t debate their way out of a paper bag. I place myself in this group. These are people who have a contribution to make but just can’t get it all together and whose retorts are weak and easily deflected, even when the facts are on their side. And finally, there are posters, far too many in my opinion, who have no desire to have an honest debate at all, who enjoy upsetting the apple cart just to do it, or who are so bought-in to a certain ideology that they are unwilling to concede a point, even when, time after time, they are shown to be wrong, and others, who I won’t name, who go so far as to make every thread they enter their own personal show by derailing it with a never-ending barrage of irrelevancies, tu quoques, and out of context assertions.
It all becomes so, so tiresome.
I love a good debate, even though I am admittedly no expert at it, but I simply wish the “usual suspects” (heh) would realize that spamming a position, laden with personal insults and deflection, is not a valid substitution for making a case for one’s side.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 🙂
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### Author:  [@dogbutler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogbutler)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/14 "2010-07-27T04:24:55Z")
4-6 days, a couple of times when my internet tube was clogged.
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/15 "2010-07-27T05:10:55Z")
I voted for more than 6 months, but less than a year.
I posted to the SDMB back when it was on AOL, and had to say goodbye my junior year of college (back in the distant, distant past) because I was studying abroad. I got an email in March 1999 from a Doper friend letting me know that the board was moving to the web. I signed up immediately (hence my low registration number) but my internet access wasn’t great at the time and kind of gave up, and forgot about it.
I remembered again that fall. So it was probably about 7-8 months.
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### Author:  [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/16 "2010-07-27T05:14:30Z")
I took a hiatus once of somewhere around a year, maybe a little more. No real reason, I just sort of drifted into other parts of the Internet.
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### Author:  [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/17 "2010-07-27T06:39:22Z")
In my lengthy, distinguished history here, I’ve occasionally missed a few days.
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### Author:  [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/18 "2010-07-27T06:44:04Z")
After lurking for years, I finally signed up a few months ago, then had to take a few weeks off when I was traveling back and forth to Idaho trying to get my mother dead and buried. Now I’m back. Hello, my peeps!
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### Author:  [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/19 "2010-07-27T14:58:24Z")
Only about a week and that was years ago.
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### Author:  [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Devil_s_Grandmother)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2010, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-longest-absence-from-the-board/548003/20 "2010-07-27T21:51:04Z")
> [@Jet\_Jaguar](#):
>
> When they went pay-to-post, I subscribed the first year but let it lapse because I really couldn’t justify paying for a board …
Me too. I continued to read during that time, but wasn’t posting.
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