Online Road Community History 2.0

[1995hoo]

The I-366 thing was due to a kid from Manassas who posted here for a time, ethanman62187. He was 13 at the time and asked a lot of stupid questions easily answered via Google; he also posted some very strange comments, such as something like, "I can let you drive 65 mph on sr 28" (referring to the freeway segment of VA-28, which he wanted to become I-366 and which has a 55-mph speed limit that is universally ignored). I recall the moderators banned him when he started using purple text and threatening to ban people, which of course he couldn't do but I guess it understandably constituted the final straw.

[noelbotevera]

The I-366 thing was due to a kid from Manassas who posted here for a time, ethanman62187. He was 13 at the time and asked a lot of stupid questions easily answered via Google; he also posted some very strange comments, such as something like, "I can let you drive 65 mph on sr 28" (referring to the freeway segment of VA-28, which he wanted to become I-366 and which has a 55-mph speed limit that is universally ignored). I recall the moderators banned him when he started using purple text and threatening to ban people, which of course he couldn't do but I guess it understandably constituted the final straw.

All of ethanman's posts were funny. I actually dug through them, and well, time to relive the memories! Here's the remnants of his posts..https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=5625;area=showposts;start=0

Funny that I'm a year younger than him at the time and actually know what I'm doing.

[triplemultiplex]

Those were strange times: Tom from Ohio...

Now that guy was an amusing troll.  I got "Tom from Ohio'd" and I laughed my ass off.  I even printed it out and pinned it up by my desk at work at the time.

[bandit957]

Was the demographic generally older in MTR too? It seems that a lot of the posters at the time were in their late 20s or 30s, and I never saw any posts that was from a person my age. Maybe there was a no kiddies policy or something.

It was on Usenet, which is completely public in every sense of the word. So there was no age limit. The only way a Usenet newsgroup might have an age limit is if it was moderated.

[74/171FAN]

The I-366 thing was due to a kid from Manassas who posted here for a time, ethanman62187. He was 13 at the time and asked a lot of stupid questions easily answered via Google; he also posted some very strange comments, such as something like, "I can let you drive 65 mph on sr 28" (referring to the freeway segment of VA-28, which he wanted to become I-366 and which has a 55-mph speed limit that is universally ignored). I recall the moderators banned him when he started using purple text and threatening to ban people, which of course he couldn't do but I guess it understandably constituted the final straw.

All of ethanman's posts were funny. I actually dug through them, and well, time to relive the memories! Here's the remnants of his posts..https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=5625;area=showposts;start=0

Funny that I'm a year younger than him at the time and actually know what I'm doing.

I will admit to you that looking at my older posts from 2009, 2010, etc., I was not exactly happy with how they were constructed and I was about to graduate high school.

I am kinda surprised I even let myself sign up for an account way back in the V'ger days considering how the forum was then.

[briantroutman]

My understanding is that after the collapse and subsequent decline of MTR, the whole community got fragmented and people just started a website, and until USRD, IRC, and the starting of the first AARoads, this is how they'd show their pictures, and they could've had a comment section in rare occasions.

I think there was some fragmentation in the post-MTR world because it was kind of like the town hall or front page for most roadgeeks on the Internet. Almost every roadgeek website I visited in those days would have some wildly speculative story–such as "I-83 might be extended up the US 15 corridor"  or some such thing, and the source was always some guy "...on misc.transport.road" .

This forum has largely filled the MTR void, in my opinion.

But I don't think that the decline of MTR led to creation of more independent roadgeek sites. In fact, I think they have both declined together, in part because of larger changes in the way the Internet fits into people's lives. Fifteen years ago, if you took photos of a highway and wanted to share them, you'd create your own roadgeek website and host the JPG files on your server. Today, you'd likely just share them via Flickr or some other social/photo sharing platform.

And perhaps I'm biased based on my own personal experiences, but I think there's a demographic shift that played into the decline of people engaging in the heavy work required to create and maintain roadgeek websites that touches upon another question you asked:

Was the demographic generally older in MTR too? It seems that a lot of the posters at the time were in their late 20s or 30s, and I never saw any posts that was from a person my age. Maybe there was a no kiddies policy or something.

When I first used MTR around 1996, I was your age, actually (12). I primarily lurked and posted only a few times, mostly because I didn't have a digital camera, DOT contacts, or insider info, so I couldn't offer any pictures or news. I knew there were other roadgeeks out there my age, but it seemed like most of the ones with their own websites were a little older than me–roughly 20-30, many of them college students with their sites hosted on university servers.

When I finally attended my first roadgeek meet in 2003, I was one of the younger people there at 19, and most of the others in attendance were mid 20s to mid 30s. Now, most of my fellow roadgeeks from that era would generally be in their late 30s to late 40s, and I'm now in my early 30s. I know as my life has evolved–married, a child, busy with work–I have less time for any roadgeek pursuits and almost none to devote to my own website. As I look around some the sites I used to frequent back in the late '90s (Jeff Kitsko's, Scott Oglesby's, Richard Moeur's), most have slowed nearly to hibernation.

Again, my perception is biased based on my own personal experiences and development, but I think in some ways there's less need for roadgeek sites today because there's less that's unknown. Now, you can quickly and easily pull up recent, high-res satellite imagery (in full color) of nearly any point in the country as well as street view for many locations. In the late '90s, we had TerraServer...which was slow, clunky, and gave you out-of-date, low-res images in black and white. Today, DOTs post detailed maps, illustrations, and even drive-through simulations of new construction projects, whereas in the old days, you'd often have to rely on a guy who lived near the project to attend a public meeting and post scans of Polaroids he took of the project maps. Then too, as some of us have gone from broke kids who rarely got out of town to adults with some ability to travel, we've been able to visit and drive the roads that were previously beyond our reach.

And in a way, I think that availability of information has made roadgeeking a little less wondrous–for me at least. On any given day twenty years ago, I might discover an abandoned highway or realistically (naïvely) entertain wild notions of a new highway that might be built. Now, there's less discovery and fantasy–more familiarity and reality.

[GaryV]

"Also, State 22 - I 67?"

And don't forget the V word.

[Brandon]

Was the demographic generally older in MTR too? It seems that a lot of the posters at the time were in their late 20s or 30s, and I never saw any posts that was from a person my age. Maybe there was a no kiddies policy or something.

It was on Usenet, which is completely public in every sense of the word. So there was no age limit. The only way a Usenet newsgroup might have an age limit is if it was moderated.

As t was Usenet, it was something most folks saw when they got to college, not in high school.

[bandit957]

"Also, State 22 - I 67?"

And don't forget the V word.

Vivvlyvoovler?

[US71]

"Also, State 22 - I 67?"

And don't forget the V word.

Vivvlyvoovler?

Vivisection?

[noelbotevera]

"Also, State 22 - I 67?"

And don't forget the V word.

Vivvlyvoovler?

Voyager's Cosmic B-Bar? (dunno what's up with that one, but it popped to my head)

Vivisection?

[US71]

The founding of this forum was probably what killed MTR off for good, and most of the MTR regulars migrated here over time. There's a few that I haven't ever seen here–Gene VanDusseldorp of Missouri for instance–but look at MTR in its heyday, and you'll see a lot of names that you see here posting regularly ten years later.

Gene is sort of "on the fence" about the forum, as is "Alternate 71". Both are fairly active with the Facebook road groups, though, and I'll occasionally poke them about AA Roads.

[hbelkins]

Usenet was, and remains, an open forum. My first experience to Usenet was a couple of years before MTR was born, as AOL offered a portal (and at the time, I later learned, the Usenet purists screamed bloody murder about how the influx of the unwashed masses from the general public would ruin their little playground.)

Usenet is still active in certain areas. After a year's absence, I just re-subscribed to Newsguy and the MP3 binary groups are still thriving. In fact, last week I downloaded the Van Halen live at Tokyo Dome album.

There were a number of youngsters who came to MTR and became regular participants. Sherman Cahal was 14 or 15 when he started taking part. Bobby Peacock and Chris Sampang are two others who began on MTR when they were in their teens. I'm sure there were others.

The founding of this forum was probably what killed MTR off for good, and most of the MTR regulars migrated here over time. There's a few that I haven't ever seen here–Gene VanDusseldorp of Missouri for instance–but look at MTR in its heyday, and you'll see a lot of names that you see here posting regularly ten years later.

Gene is sort of "on the fence" about the forum, as is "Alternate 71". Both are fairly active with the Facebook road groups, though, and I'll occasionally poke them about AA Roads.

Is "Alternate 71" someone who shares your name in real life as well? 

I've often said that what I felt killed Usenet in general was the crackdown on child porn, and in particular the New York attorney general (Spitzer?) going after ISPs who offered Usenet feeds that allowed access to binary groups. Rather than face any criminal liability, ISPs began dropping Usenet. I know AOL abandoned its portal (which was ironic because AOL was the first to offer Usenet to the masses) and Bell South/AT&T dropped its feed back when I was a customer.

The old-timers had a tendency to look down their noses at anyone who didn't use a dedicated newsreader program to access Usenet. They had disdain for AOL, Web-based readers (I started using Newsguy's Direct Read News Web-based interface to read MTR rather than an app like Free Agent for PC or Thoth for Mac) and especially Outlook Express. The entrance of Outlook Express into the Usenet world, and its default for top-posting, was a big source of ire and was what prompted me to make my comment about top-posting in the "Quoting" thread.

[US71]

Is "Alternate 71" someone who shares your name in real life as well? 

Yeah, that's been a running joke between us for years

[bandit957]

What we need is a glossary of Roads Scholar terms like "pooing is cool" and "burpoo" (which is a burp that tastes of poo) or even "bubbunk" (which is when someone blows a bubble with bubble gum that sounds like a fart).

[Duke87]

Was the demographic generally older in MTR too? It seems that a lot of the posters at the time were in their late 20s or 30s, and I never saw any posts that was from a person my age. Maybe there was a no kiddies policy or something.

I don't think it was older compared to AA Roads - the forum here consists mostly of adults as well.

Let's also bear in mind that while the forum here has ages display for anyone who has put their specific birthday on their profile, MTR never had that feature so the age if a particular poster would not be readily apparent.

There are certainly members of the community who are adults now that first got involved as minors, on MTR or otherwise (this forum has been around for 7 years and 7 months).

[LM117]

Does ANYONE still use Yahoo for ANYTHING?

Wtf is "Yahoo"?

[hbelkins]

Does ANYONE still use Yahoo for ANYTHING?

Wtf is "Yahoo"?

Yahoo is, for all intents and purposes, killing Yahoo Messenger. I'm not a fan of messaging services that allow a measure of anonymity being phone-only, such as Kik. I actually prefer to use a computer for most things, as I like the big screen and full keyboard. And there are no really good Android emulators for the Mac, and absolutely none for iOS, that allow you to use Kik on a non-mobile platform. I'm not sure that anyone still uses AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) anymore. Between Yahoo Messenger and AIM, Yahoo always seemed to be the most popular to me.

I had a variation of this discussion elsewhere (on Facebook) and a friend mentioned iMessage (texting for iDevice users) and another mentioned Facebook Messenger. If you want anonymity, iMessage reveals your name or Apple ID, and Facebook frowns on creating profiles that aren't really you.

The Yahoo groups still exist, although they aren't as active as they have been in the past.

And I have a couple of Yahoo email addresses that I use mostly as throwaways or alternates.

[bandit957]

There used to be something called Yahoo Clubs, which was neat. The clubs even had chat rooms. Then Yahoo ruined it. This was maybe 15 or 16 years ago.

I have some fond memories of sitting here using Yahoo Clubs on the evening of the Fourth of July one year, as the sound of fireworks enhanced the neighborhood as I had my home office window open.