QED, Colibri and Zenster. For newer folks, Zenster was a huge contributor to Cafe Society, and a cook to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, he was also a bit high strung and had a meltdown resulting in a banning. Engineer Comp Geek for his detailed technical explanations. Qadgop for allowing his medical degree to be abused. Wordman, squeegee and Le Ministre de (mumblemumble) and others for their musical expertise and willingness to help amateurs. There are a lot more, but these come to mind pre-coffee.
The late lamented OpalCat (Hi Opal, wherever you are…) if only for her Rule of Three
Really Not All That Bright has 52,000+ posts, so he’s at the very least filler for the board, keeping all the others’ posts apart
Sam Stone, Bricker, John Mace, adaher, Shodan and other members of the boards’ small conservative minority have made a lot of discussion more interesting by making the participants work harder for the conclusions
Skald, Shodan, Quasimodem , WhyNot, Hal Briston , Tokyo Player & a bunch of others.
Quasimodem is my favorite poster and someone I’ve used to try to explain the appeal of the SD to my wife.
Often enough I don’t notice who the author of any given post is. Posters whose names turn up when I think, “Wait, I wonder who wrote this?” include:
monstro, Sampiro, Exapno Mapcase, Skald the Rhymer, Shodan, Shagnasty, Der Trihs, Annie Xmas, Anaamika, DMark, even sven, Qin Shi Huangdi
Undoubtedly there are many more I’m blanking on.
Special mention should be given to whoever the person currently is whose job it is to turns Great Debates threads into 10 page long debates on race and intelligence. There’s always someone around doing that, usually for a few months before they get banned and some other newbie takes up the mantle. It’s wearisome, yes, but it’s certainly an institution of the SDMB.
Absolutely agree. ETA: Agree about the banning of Diogenes, that is; nothing against the other posters mentioned.
Did you ever actually debate him on things? He pulled the most outrageous cites from some questionable and highly biased atheist blogs he was apparently connected with. But he sounded so good and was so damn sure of himself, he convinced many others of his absolute made up bullshit. He just pretended to be a polymath, since when I google-checked him on some of those interesting 'translations" he used to “prove” Jesus never existed, etc, I found he had pulled his 'translation" directly from one of those questionable and highly biased atheist blogs he was apparently connected with.
Once you got him so he couldn’t quote from one of his questionable and highly biased atheist blogs, he floundered and was unable to make any points or come back with arguments.
In other words, he was a fraud who used the arguments and talking points of others as his own.
I nominate Dr Qadgop, Bricker esq. **Rick **the car expert, **Colibri **PhD, and of course **Lynn Bodoni **.
I did enjoy Zenster, and I hope we can give him a amnesty.
Also, the other answers are interesting in that while I know most of the names mentioned, there are a few that I don’t recognize at all. Anyone else find that? Funny how what stands out to one person goes completely over another person’s head.
Johnny L.A., silenus, Rick, WhyNot, Quasi, Baker, norinew and Rebo to name a few more.
I think these two are the closest I’ll get to being mentioned in one of these sorts of threads. I’ll take it!
Names are okay. Discussing the (banned) posters, at length, is not. If any sort of debate or argument or even heavy “kicking them while down” type of posts is made towards any previously banned members, then this thread may be shut down.
Me as well. I always feel like I’m looking for candids of myself in the high school yearbook again. Nope, same old people as always.
There are several posters that others have listed that I should have included as well, and probably still more to come.
Thanks for playing folks! This is a lot of fun.
I too thought of Dio, as he was around as I was joining the community.
Antinor01, the problem with you (and probably what would ever keep me from being on such a list as well) is that panache has us beat easily as far as the institutional gay doper. Sad, I know.
BobLibDem, I like you and look forward to your posts a lot. I should have listed you.
I got mentioned in a thread like this once. ONCE! Kids these days, I tell you {wanders off grumbling}.
In addition to the posters already mentioned, I’d add XT (despite the fact we’re currently arguing about Ayn Rand).
I hope you’re not a baseball writer when a player with 2999 hits, 499 homeruns and 299 pitching wins tries to get into the Hall of Fame.
Gee, thanks! My first mention in any of these types of threads!
Ditto. 
It’s been like that since junior high school; I’ve moved on. ::sob ::
RNATB, I think we found your next title.
Pay2Post* caused some of our early “institutions” to leave or at least change habits. A huge number of prolific posters from early sci-fi tv/movie/book threads are no longer active. Others have come and gone as well. Threads like this are always going to flawed by the somewhat transient nature of message boards.
*wow, 10 years ago! Let it go already. 