“Winter of Our Missed Content – The boards forced to shut down in the early months of 2002. When life was restored in March 2002, several months’ worth of posts were lost and not archived. Sometimes this is called the diaspora.”
What “forced” the shutdown?
Doper A: You got your hacke in my hardware problem!
Doper B: No, you got your hardware problem in my hacker.
**Everyone else: ** Take it to the pit!
It was sad.
Sort of like we didn’t post at all.
You’re sad? I first registered for the Board during that period. All my 100+ posts were eliminated and when the Board returned I had to start over again at 0.
Twice a newb!
I had JUST started a written a HUGE question that took me about 30 minutes to write, all full of statistics and numbers and what not, and the board was shut before I even got a reply, to this day, I still want an answer but I don’t care to rewrite the post. 
As I remember, I had one kickass GD thread* about the practical problems of gaining legal recognition of an AI’s rights that ended up proceeding me into oblivion.
After that, I started saving copies of threads I liked, for later reference. I’m now up to 140 MB.
(I may have been a tad overzealous.)
*well, it weren’t too bad, at least.
There was a thread about experiences in phys-ed that I wish was still around.
I had just given one of my best answers ever when the boards when down. Someone was asking about the origins of the chess board and since I keep the Oxford Guide to Board Games on my office bookshelf I was able to answer in great detail. I don’t know if they ever saw my reply … sniff.
This is not so much a General Question as it is a question About This Message Board.
Off to ATMB.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
And I lost one of my most successful threads, and certainly one I thought niftiest, on the Music of the Ainur, to the Winter. I have a copy somewhere, that I pulled off of some archive site, but it’s not as alive that way.
I had some posts in GD that would have resolved all of humanity’s philosophical, religious, and political disputes and brought about an unprecedented era of universal peace and harmony; a post in GQ in which I solved the cold fusion problem, which would synergize nicely with the GD stuff in ushering in a bright new dawn for the whole human race; and also some stuff in MPSIMS so devastatingly witty and charming that beautiful women from around the globe would have begun stalking me and begging for the opportunity to provide me with sexual gratification, bear my children, etc.
Ah, well. It’s too much trouble to re-type it all now, though.
You, too?
The one thread that is gone from the diaspora that I really wish there were an archive of was one poster’s (sorry, I cannot remember who) experience with making the mistake of letting his girlfriend shave his pubic hair. It, to me, almost rivaled Scylla’s legendary inflatable blimp story.
Me, too! It was horrible. I thought I had suppressed the memories… Oh, the pain, the pain!
Heh. I spent a good hour or two on a very detailed post about some criminal law issues which seem to come up every six months in GQ that got lost. I’m never going to put that much effort into recreating it. Also, I believe that I passed the 1000-post mark during the interregnum, so I had to do that again as well.
–Cliffy
And of course I believe you.
All this happened before my time but whenever it’s mentioned it’s always how there were so many brilliant posts and threads lost. I’ll bet many posters were secretly relieved that some of their efforts were lost for all time.
Me, too! It was horrible. I thought I had suppressed the memories… Oh, the pain, the pain!
Well, that’s weird. I swear I only hit “submit” once.
I think that was the board’s way of stressing that you said “The pain” twice.
I’m certain that had I been here during that period, everything that was lost would have been far more witty and clever and knowlegeable than my usual drivel. 