# When there was virtually no moderation here **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [February 17, 2010, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329 "2010-02-17T14:37:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/21 "2010-02-17T19:14:04Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I think you may be confusing the Winter of Our Missed Content with the fact that for a time several years ago a large number of posts were deliberately taken off-line due to (I think) server issues. When we got a new server, those stored posts were made accessible again. As far as I know, the posts lost in WOMC are gone permanently and cannot be restored. I thought the return from the Winter was made possible by excising the threads in question – that the two were related. I didn’t think off-board posts (where was that again?) came with us, but whether or not they’re archived somewhere else is an interesting question. If the two weren’t related, I can’t remember what happened. Did we log on one day to an announcement that posts from X to Y were going to be culled? Was there a trigger event? ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/22 "2010-02-17T19:18:34Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Actually, during the Winter, a lot of stuff was done on a temporary board (that IIRC Tuba paid for) as a temporary haven. > > I wonder if any of that stuff survives. (Didn’t they have some weird rules that made the then-wilder Pit seem really tame? I mean like “no bad words at all” type weird.) > [@Colibri](#): > > I think you may be confusing the Winter of Our Missed Content with the fact that for a time several years ago a large number of posts were deliberately taken off-line due to (I think) server issues. When we got a new server, those stored posts were made accessible again. As far as I know, the posts lost in WOMC are gone permanently and cannot be restored. Wow, four different events here. 1. Interim board at another site. We had some sort of technical problem – this would have been . . . 2000 or so? I think so, this was before vB, we were on another system. Had some server issues that made the current board at that time unavailable to us. We migrated temporarily to an interim board Lynn Bodoni and myself set up and paid for. (It was not expensive.) The owners also hosted porn sites on that server so anything we might have done was nothing in comparison but we maintained our regular rules there, pretty much. There were some smileys in their board software that we did not have and did not acquire afterwards – when you hear people talk about “Smashie,” that was one of the smileys from there. When Jerry got our server resurrected and the board back up, we returned home. This may have been when we went to vB, as we had outgrown the board software we were using at that time. It’s been so long ago I don’t remember exactly but I think that’s how it went. I always meant to go archive those posts – the owners assured me they were fine there “forever” – when I went to go archive the server they were on had been wiped and so this material was gone. 1. Winter of Our Missed Content: A period a few years later where the server backup failed. The system continued on for approximately six weeks after this point and then crashed. When the system was brought back up we were thrown back to the period of the last backup which was six weeks prior. Those posts could not be recovered and are in the ether. 1. A few years after that Jerry temporarily removed some of our earliest threads from the system – we were running out of space on the server and could not at that time upgrade to a larger one. Jerry saved all those threads and when we moved to a larger server and upgraded the system those threads were returned. 2. The Lost Weekend. The three day or so period between migrating to yet another new server and upgrading the system. For our last days on the old server great latitude was allowed in posting. The understanding was that those posts would not live past the weekend and as soon as the new server was brought up that would be the end of it. That’s what happened. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/23 "2010-02-17T19:29:55Z")
> [@TubaDiva](#): > > Wow, four different events here. > > 1. Interim board at another site. We had some sort of technical problem – this would have been . . . 2000 or so? I think so, this was before vB, we were on another system. Had some server issues that made the current board at that time unavailable to us. We migrated temporarily to an interim board Lynn Bodoni and myself set up and paid for. (It was not expensive.) > > The owners also hosted porn sites on that server so anything we might have done was nothing in comparison but we maintained our regular rules there, pretty much. There were some smileys in their board software that we did not have and did not acquire afterwards – when you hear people talk about “Smashie,” that was one of the smileys from there. Wow–it couldn’t have been 2000…could it? Geez. I would have bet it was like 2004 or so! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/24 "2010-02-17T19:32:29Z")
Also–it’s probably evaporated into the aether by now, but at one point, wasn’t there talk about restoring some of the really, _really_ old posts–the Phaedrus goodbye post, some of the Left Behind invasion stuff and earlier? Or am I misremembering and that stuff is gone for good. (I’d love to read Phaderus’s goodbye thread again. The _single_ weirdest post I’ve ever read on any message board. ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/25 "2010-02-17T19:35:48Z")
**TubaDiva** : do you remember when the Lost Weekend was? I lurked before I joined, so it could be before then, but I think it was about when I subscribed, which would make it about four years ago? ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/26 "2010-02-17T19:37:27Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > …I’d love to read Phaderus’s goodbye thread again. The _single_ weirdest post I’ve ever read on any message board. Go on - tell us more… ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/27 "2010-02-17T19:40:55Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > **TubaDiva** : do you remember when the Lost Weekend was? I lurked before I joined, so it could be before then, but I think it was about when I subscribed, which would make it about four years ago? About 18 months ago. According to this [announcement](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=481092) by **jdavis** , it was Labor Day weekend of 2008. ETA: The Winter of Our Missed Content was in about February of 2002. ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/28 "2010-02-17T19:43:12Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > About 18 months ago. According to this [announcement](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=481092) by **jdavis** , it was Labor Day weekend of 2008. I thought it was much earlier than that! ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/29 "2010-02-17T19:46:39Z")
IIRC, to put it in context, it was right around the time McCain announced his choice of Veep. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/30 "2010-02-17T19:52:44Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > Go on - tell us more… Short version: Phaedrus was a weirdo who claimed to be a mycologist(? doctor of fungus), a linguist, a bible scholar, a millionaire and several other things. He was also notorious for promising to answer everyone’s questions on his crackpot theories…tomorrow. He never actually did. He also bet someone (Manhattan, I think) like $10,000 that either Gaudere was a poster’s sock (ClarkK?) or vice versa. Manny (or whoever) accepted the bet and promptly found two posts, one from each poster, that were posted within seconds of each other. Phaedrus conceded that that pretty much proved his theory was insane and that he’d pay Manny (no-one’s ever actually said if Manny _was_ paid, although I strongly doubt it). After that Phaedrus posted a long, weird goodbye thread, talking about how he would never darken our doorstep again, how he might be an old man with Alzheimers(?), a picture or link to a pic proporting to be him and about two thousand lines of alleged authentic Indian-speak (“Ho-che-wa-wah, non-fo-pa-la” type stuff. It _might_ have been real, but it didn’t sound it) It was all very bizarre. Hah–the “bet” thread survives: > **[Who Wants To Be A Phaedrusaire?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=7634)** > > On the third page of Can psychosis be diagnosed from BB posts? , I successfully answered Phaedrus’ challenge to find a certain two members simulposting, thus winning $10,000. Along with the solution to his challenge, I made the following instruction... Note, it’ll be useless following the links, they’re part of the old code system. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/31 "2010-02-17T20:05:57Z")
> [@TubaDiva](#): > > There were some smileys in their board software that we did not have and did not acquire afterwards – when you hear people talk about “Smashie,” that was one of the smileys from there. > > . what happened to the happy jewish guy smiley? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/32 "2010-02-17T20:08:08Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > what happened to the happy jewish guy smiley? He and the “putz” smiley were retired quite a few years ago. These were smilies that AFAIK were unique to this site. ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/33 "2010-02-17T21:14:54Z")
Regarding the Winter of Our Missed Content, I recall the dates clearly based on events in my own life. The board went down in early February (or late January) 2002. It turned out to be the work of an attack, as I recall, but I’m not on the inside on that one. It took a couple of days for a notice to go up on the site about the issue, and then (IIRC) a couple of weeks before the temp board went up. It was nearly a month at the temp board before the main SDMB went back up, and when it did, all content from early December 2001 (I think the 7th) until the time of the crash was lost. I was among the first to sign up for the temp board went it went live – I posted when some of the forums still didn’t have threads in them. I say that to give context for the date of the temp board’s startup, which can be inferred from the join date in my profile at the temp board’s site: [Best Boards :: BbBoard :: Feature-packed, FREE message board host](http://profiles.bbboy.net/wolfstu) The date given there is Feb 28 2002, which, as I say, would have been very soon after the temp board went live, and IIRC a few weeks after the SDMB went down. ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/34 "2010-02-17T21:26:45Z")
A [perusal](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=3&pp=150&sort=dateline&order=asc&daysprune=-1&page=237) through GQ confirms my memory. It appears that no threads were started in that forum between 7 December 2001 and late in the evening (North America EST) on 10 March 2002. Here is what might be the first thread in the forum after the board’s return to service: [The Straight Dope Hacker…](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=103141) > [@The Straight Dope Hacker...](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-hacker/97497/1): > > Has the SDMB administrators and/or moderators found out who > hacked us, and if so, what legal steps are being taken?:mad: As I recall, Cafe Society was a relatively new forum at the time of the crash, and one of the posts lost was one in that forum I’d written speculating on the in-world political implications of events in the soon-to-be-released Star Trek Nemesis film. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/35 "2010-02-17T21:44:56Z")
A few threads from the Winter of Missed Content have survived, either via ill-behaved Internet archive sites that didn’t respect the “bots keep out” sign on the door, or by individuals who happened to have saved threads they liked to their own hard drives, so if you made the wittiest statement of all time somewhere in there, then there’s still some chance that it might be recoverable somehow, somewhere. Just like there’s some chance you might get a 1943 copper penny in change. But there’s no systematic archive. ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/36 "2010-02-17T22:32:21Z")
[Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5735486&postcount=21)’s a previous discussion on the Winter of Our Missed Content, which gives more accurate dates and a discussion of some features of the temp board, as well as links to discussion from that era. It was just about eight years ago – a long time in internet terms. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/37 "2010-02-17T23:10:05Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > I thought it was much earlier than that! “Board time” is much faster than real time. A real week is about the same as a month of Board time. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/38 "2010-02-17T23:18:57Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Short version: Phaedrus was a weirdo who claimed to be a mycologist(? doctor of fungus), a linguist, a bible scholar, a millionaire and several other things. > > He was also notorious for promising to answer everyone’s questions on his crackpot theories…tomorrow. He never actually did. He also bet someone (Manhattan, I think) like $10,000 that either Gaudere was a poster’s sock (ClarkK?) or vice versa. > > Manny (or whoever) accepted the bet and promptly found two posts, one from each poster, that were posted within seconds of each other. > > Phaedrus conceded that that pretty much proved his theory was insane and that he’d pay Manny (no-one’s ever actually said if Manny _was_ paid, although I strongly doubt it). After that Phaedrus posted a long, weird goodbye thread, talking about how he would never darken our doorstep again, how he might be an old man with Alzheimers(?), a picture or link to a pic proporting to be him and about two thousand lines of alleged authentic Indian-speak (“Ho-che-wa-wah, non-fo-pa-la” type stuff. It _might_ have been real, but it didn’t sound it) > > It was all very bizarre. > > Hah–the “bet” thread survives: > > [Who Wants To Be A Phaedrusaire? - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=7634) > > Note, it’ll be useless following the links, they’re part of the old code system. He was a member from September 1999 to January 15, 2000. This was way before vB. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/39 "2010-02-17T23:23:00Z")
> [@wolfstu](#): > > Regarding the Winter of Our Missed Content, I recall the dates clearly based on events in my own life. > > The board went down in early February (or late January) 2002. It turned out to be the work of an attack, as I recall, but I’m not on the inside on that one. It took a couple of days for a notice to go up on the site about the issue, and then (IIRC) a couple of weeks before the temp board went up. It was nearly a month at the temp board before the main SDMB went back up, and when it did, all content from early December 2001 (I think the 7th) until the time of the crash was lost. > > I was among the first to sign up for the temp board went it went live – I posted when some of the forums still didn’t have threads in them. I say that to give context for the date of the temp board’s startup, which can be inferred from the join date in my profile at the temp board’s site: [http://profiles.bbboy.net/wolfstu](http://profiles.bbboy.net/wolfstu) > > The date given there is Feb 28 2002, which, as I say, would have been very soon after the temp board went live, and IIRC a few weeks after the SDMB went down. Thanks for your help. Memory’s a funny old thing sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329/40 "2010-02-17T23:30:41Z")
> [@TubaDiva](#): > > Thanks for your help. > > Memory’s a funny old thing sometimes. No problem – I happen to have an interest in the evolution and history of the community. Thank _you_ for your work during the outage of 2002, and in providing the temp board during that period. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-there-was-virtually-no-moderation-here/529329.md?page=3)