Something over two years ago, I posted a diary about the approach of UID #200,000 here on Daily Kos. It was a trip down memory lane. Anyhow, the odometer's about to flip again - we're closing in on 300K, only a thousand or so new users to go.
Daily Kos screen capture, day 1:
I signed up here September 1, 2005. I'm part of the Katrina cohort. Even having been around here for nearly five and a half years, there was plenty went on here before my time and I sometimes still think of myself as a relative newbie. But, the truth is that most of our users are newer and know even less of our history.
Near as I can tell, we'll hit 300K about the same time as the launch of DK4 next week. This diary's meant as a retrospective in honor of the upcoming milestone. For the 200k diary, lots of very early users (as in 3- and 4-digit UID#s turned up to kibbitz and reminisce. If that doesn't happen this time, one could still go back and read that last one...
Like I said, despite having been here longer than most of the current users, I tend to think of myself as a johnny-come. I suppose it's time to get over that notion. Anyhow, here's some meta site memories that pop to mind, and there's plenty more I've forgotten so add some in the comments:
- I can't help it: I still crack up thinking of the goofy phenomenon known as ErrinF - complete with Scout Finch in Chicago with that on her name tag. The mother of all GBCW diaries, Delete my fucking account, Kos was especially silly since it was posted when Kos was on vacation. And it inspired a slew of copycat diaries. To this day, whenever you see something in the format of Verb my f***ing noun, Kos, it harkens back to that ground zero.
From ErrinF's spectacular flameout:
I want out of this farce of a website. I thought this was on open forum for progressives to discuss their views. Instead, it is little more than the internet wing of the Democratic propoganda machine. Now that I want out, a fair minded and liberal website would let me delete my account and go. Instead, DailyKos will give me no such option. Like some sort of cult, I was welcomed in freely but am now being barred from leaving. I do not want to simply leave and let my info remain here at a website I am disgusted by and want no further part in. Since Kos won't allow me the decent option of deleting my account (just about every blog DOES let you delete your account when you want to), then somebody here needs to delete my account for me. To deny me deletion of my own account is unacceptable.
- The Great Pie Fight was before my time, although I have read some descriptions of it. It involved an ad (for something related to Gilligan's Island) which raised some objections over sexism. To this day, when "pie" appears as a poll option, it refers back to that time.
- There are what I call the Ancient Ones, once prominent users who moved on (with or without the benefit of spectacular flameouts). Former FPer Armando had a really hard time letting anybody else get the last word. He often commented by saying "Heh", and it still appears today as an artifact of him. For quite some time, "Armando" was often included as a poll option - a kind of complement to or substitute for "pie"
- Another of the Ancient Ones: MSOC (aka MaryScott O'Connor) was the queen of rants, weaving about the highest proportion of swear words into her posts of anyone ever. And it was artful to boot. She had a rather unpleasant demise which I shall not delve into now.
- Hunter doesn't post much anymore, so he's almost like an Ancient One. When Tags were first introduced, kos specified that we should have informative tags. He gave an example of an uninformative tag, too: Hunterrific At NN in Vegas this year, I mentioned how I missed his rants, and had even been going back to read old ones. He chuckled and said that they are somewhat recyclable and interchangeable.
- Speaking of tags, edscan was the all-time master of zen tagging. (Until recently, both ErrinF and edscan had diaries on the Rec List of the DK4 beta site, despite having been banned for years. The rules are gonna change! Next week!! Ready or not!!!
- The unfortunate Buffy Orphington episode
- High Impact Diaries, posted every day by jotter (twice on Sundays) is a little noticed corner of Daily Kos. He invented a unit of "impact" and named it after Bill in Portland Maine, creator of the wildly popular Cheers & Jeers series. One of the best ways for anything to get wide attention is if BiPM features it in C&J. But BiPM didn't exactly arrive full blown, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. The first C&J only had two comments. Yeah, two! That first one was posted 12/10/03, which means the series is just about old enough for kindergarten now. It took most of a year of 5-day-a-week postings for one from the series to garner 100 comments - that was on 10/5/04. So, new diarists, keep that in mind - even some of the best of the best here have taken awhile to catch on.
- Thanks are in order for those who have launched various features and series here. Frankenoid and claude still host their own salons, on gardening and home repair, respectively. Top Comments was invented by Carnacki and Diary Rescue by SusanG, both now carried on by teams of others others.
- Pooties. Those originated with PhillyGal, who had a cat by that name. At one point someone posted a diary complaining about too many pooties (this was long before the days of the cheezburger site), and there was a vigorous reaction, I think in C&J. Many of the animated gifs of kittens with automatic weapons date from that time. h/t to Dreaming of Better Days for a link with a description and picture of the original Pootie.
- We've had dogs who posted diaries over the years, too - from pastordan, Bob Johnson (who posted one of the comments in that first C&J). Though I haven't noticed too many lately: Did they fall out of fashion when the daily diary allotment dropped from two to one? With that rule about to change, it'll be interesting to see what new trends will be coming along. Shorter, less substantial diaries perhaps? (Especially in the Age of Twitter.)
- Ponies got taken up as a term of mean-spirited mockery for a long time. But at first, buhdy's ponies were fun: a warm thought for someone having trouble, or a way of expressing praise when someone said something you liked. I miss those old-time ponies.
- In the old days, there were ratings from 1 to 4 for comments, plus zero for trusted users. These were 4=excellent, 3=good, 2=marginal and 1=I forget; 0=troll rating, more recently changed to "hide rating". Ya know how people get bent out of shape over HRs sometimes? Back in those days, there were people who'd get upset at getting a "3" rating. I once asked someone outraged by a "3": What's so bad about "good"? User Carl Nyberg, long gone (over I/P problems?) was known for his 3 ratings. Getting a 4 from him was a big frickin' deal.
- Ajax. Once upon a time, you had to type all your own HTML. Only later did we get these fancy editing windows with buttons for various common bits of HTML code. A lot of other blogs still require typing that HTML out, so those days are easy to revisit. Maybe that's part of why people cross-post - format here, then cut and paste elsewhere.
- In the previous Countdown diary, Chris Bowers claimed credit for inventing the Tip Jar.
- There's any number of valued users who've left us by leaving this world. Some have been quite visible, most recently exmearden. Other valued community members now deceased include JohnnyRook, dr chelo and station wagon (forgive me for any I've missed, and add in the comments.) Others, we may never get notification - Welshman, who used to be quite active, hasn't posted anywhere anyone knows about for a long time, after having let it be known he had health issues.
- The FP has mostly gone over to their real-life names. For them, the username was edited for them. Others who have decided to make that switch have had to do it by opening new accounts, such as Jill Richardson (formerly orangeclouds115) and Patric Juillet (formerly Asinus Asinum Fricat)
Here's a few of my all-time favorite diaries from long ago:
There's lots more, of course. But I've prattled on long enough. Just a bit of retrospective nostalgia on the occasion of the the imminent odometer flip in the user numbers.