What year did you discover the online road community?

[amroad17]

When did this forum start, anyway?

January 15, 2009.

This is just over five years old?!?  I thought it had been around three or four years longer.

[hotdogPi]

I have always thought it was January 17, 2009.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I discovered AARoads in 2004 and started making submissions in 2006 I believe.

[SSOWorld]

late 1990s - browsing through all the now-obsolete exit list sites.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

1999.  Found the AARoads Sign Gallery (may it rest in peace) in a search, and found the IRC channel not long thereafter.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I found alpsroads.net around 2010, I believe, then I joined this forum a year or two later.

[Eth]

Sometime around 2002, I think. I can't quite remember exactly how I discovered it, but my first thought was something along the lines of "wait, there really are other people like me out there?" I found m.t.r shortly afterward and lurked there for probably 4-5 years. Ultimately found this site in early 2010.

[DandyDan]

It had to be about 2006, because that was the time I first seriously began doing Wikipedia and most of my earliest edits on Wikipedia were on highway articles which were woefully bad, or nonexistent, back then.  I must have done some searching for various highways and discovered something, though if I gave a story, it would probably be more myth than reality at this point.

[Alex]

I have always thought it was January 17, 2009.

That was basically the public debut date after working through the bugs.

[Scott5114]

How long was it after that until the head admin position passed from Cody to Jake? The forum was so different under Cody that I would consider the "true" start of the forum to be when Jake took over, as that is when it became recognizable to someone familiar with its current form.

[ET21]

About 1 year ago

[Takumi]

How long was it after that until the head admin position passed from Cody to Jake? The forum was so different under Cody that I would consider the "true" start of the forum to be when Jake took over, as that is when it became recognizable to someone familiar with its current form.

How long was Jake head admin? I've seen both him an bugo doing mod things in older posts, but when I joined in 2011 (during Ethanmania) the moderation staff was about 90% the same as it is now.

[Dougtone]

I initially found the online roads community back in late 1999, after wondering if there were websites about roads.  I was in my college dorm room one quiet Sunday evening and decided to do a search for roads around New York City.  I found Steve Anderson's website (I'm not sure if it was NYCRoads.com at the time or a predecessor URL) and from there, followed links to other roads related web sites.  Also, I had been a pretty avid map drawer and reader before I discovered the online side to the hobby.

[vdeane]

How long was it after that until the head admin position passed from Cody to Jake? The forum was so different under Cody that I would consider the "true" start of the forum to be when Jake took over, as that is when it became recognizable to someone familiar with its current form.

How long was Jake head admin? I've seen both him an bugo doing mod things in older posts, but when I joined in 2011 (during Ethanmania) the moderation staff was about 90% the same as it is now.

The V'Ger (Cody/He Who Must Not Be Named) days were long before that.  A long time ago, on a server far, far away...

I wanna say I was still in high school when the Great Admin War happened, but I don't completely remember (note that I was a high school senior when the forum started).

It's amazing how different this place was back then.  In fact, most people had their post count go way down when threads like "Guess The Highway" and the entire forum games forum got deleted.  The regional divisions were different, the Canada subforum didn't exist, and neither did Fictional Highways or a few others.

[bing101]

Mike Ballards Scenic Highways in Los Angeles county and So Cal Unsigned highways got me in the roadgeek craze.

[bandit957]

For me I guess it was about 1996 when I found eMpTyR. But there was a message board on a local BBS where we talked about this stuff back in 1987.

[Takumi]

The V'Ger (Cody/He Who Must Not Be Named) days were long before that.  A long time ago, on a server far, far away...

I wanna say I was still in high school when the Great Admin War happened, but I don't completely remember (note that I was a high school senior when the forum started).

It's amazing how different this place was back then.  In fact, most people had their post count go way down when threads like "Guess The Highway" and the entire forum games forum got deleted.  The regional divisions were different, the Canada subforum didn't exist, and neither did Fictional Highways or a few others.

Interesting. I've always been kind of interested in the history of the forum before I arrived. From what I can tell the forum was relatively uneventful between the Great Admin War and Ethanmania.

[getemngo]

What the heck is Ethanmania? I must have a really bad memory, because I joined here in summer 2009 and basically vanished for 2.5 years (spring 2011 to fall 2013, didn't make a single post in 2012). I don't remember anything being substantially different when I returned except that there's a lot fewer forum games now.

[Takumi]

There was a user called ethanman62187 that was active in mid-late 2011. He kept talking about the same 2-3 topics over and over: raising speed limits and turning VA 28 into I-366. I call his era "Ethanmania" because it's a pun on his username, and he was getting everyone angry at him.

[hbelkins]

There was a user called ethanman62187 that was active in mid-late 2011. He kept talking about the same 2-3 topics over and over: raising speed limits and turning VA 28 into I-366. I call his era "Ethanmania" because it's a pun on his username, and he was getting everyone angry at him.

If things had turned out different, we'd have Ethanland instead of you-know-where.

[bing101]

Also I became a roadgeek based on examining why AFB Parkway in Fairfield, CA is a city owned expressway. Also the County Route Shields are interesting to me. Also the San Jose/ Santa Clara Area Expressways were interesting to me.

I've been on Caltrans Owned Expressways such as CA-12 in Suisun City and CA-29 Expressway in American Canyon, CA. they were Interesting to me.

[1995hoo]

What the heck is Ethanmania? I must have a really bad memory, because I joined here in summer 2009 and basically vanished for 2.5 years (spring 2011 to fall 2013, didn't make a single post in 2012). I don't remember anything being substantially different when I returned except that there's a lot fewer forum games now.

Do a search for posts by user ethanman62187 for a better understanding. Many of his questions were utterly inane matters that he could have answered with a simple Google search.

After he was banned from this forum, he showed up on a basketball-related site. Looks like it didn't take long for people to figure him out.....

http://forums.hoopshype.com/forums/index.php?topic=81023.0

[Laura]

I discovered the online road community in 1998. The sites I frequented the most were Scott Kozel's Roads to the Future; my husband's site, MD Roads; Jeff Kitsko's PAHighways;  Steve Anderson's sites, especially dcroads.net once it went live; Adam Paul's Bmore Ghosts-Unsung Monuments of the Monumental City; Mapmikey and Froggie's VA Highways Project; AARoads; kurumi's site. There were plenty of others that I found from one links page to another to another, but these are the ones that stick out.

I lurked on the mtr archives but couldn't figure out how to post to it because I had America Online. Similarly, I couldn't figure out how to use IRC because of AOL.

I lurked this forum when it opened. After Mike and I attended the Baltimore meet, I joined the site. Now I am much more active on here than he is!!

[Alex]

How long was it after that until the head admin position passed from Cody to Jake? The forum was so different under Cody that I would consider the "true" start of the forum to be when Jake took over, as that is when it became recognizable to someone familiar with its current form.

Jake took over after the forum restart by early June 2009. I think he lasted until August or September of that year?

The V'Ger (He Who Must Not Be Named) days were long before that.  A long time ago, on a server far, far away...

I wanna say I was still in high school when the Great Admin War happened, but I don't completely remember (note that I was a high school senior when the forum started).

It's amazing how different this place was back then.  In fact, most people had their post count go way down when threads like "Guess The Highway" and the entire forum games forum got deleted.  The regional divisions were different, the Canada subforum didn't exist, and neither did Fictional Highways or a few others.

Interesting. I've always been kind of interested in the history of the forum before I arrived. From what I can tell the forum was relatively uneventful between the Great Admin War and Ethanmania.

FWIW, he-who-not-be-named proposed forum concepts for AARoads going back to 2005 and briefly had a beta forum on the site during one of those years.

In a nutshell, he had some good ideas and he had bad ideas. The butting of heads started after a few weeks in winter 2009:

He wanted very little moderation, invited some of his contacts (some good, some bad) to join to boost the membership, and wanted a very broad scope of forum division with few subsections and lots of games. The first division I proposed involved pulling a lot of teeth, and that was to get a fictional highways section (he felt those posts went hand in hand with the main discussion). Then later, and even after support from many members of the mainstream online road community, he balked at my request to set up a Road Meets section where meets could be set up, discussed, etc.

He also insisted on changing the theme of the forum frequently and without warning (and much to many members' shagrin) and had things come and go like the shoutbox before anyone could decide if they hated it or liked it. Another thing he added was voyager's bbar, which I am not sure what was supposed to be, and an arcade section. One of his good ideas was the first chat room, which I later replicated with our own licensed copy.

Finally he got hostile toward me and a few of the moderation staff about control of the forum, continuing to insist on everything being approved by him, even when the majority of us agreed on a change. His last salvo was to delete my account, Jake's and Brent's and pull the plug on the forum via a backdoor he left. He followed that by trashing us on eMpTyR.

At that time we were ready to keep it offline and move on, but after receiving emails from 20 plus former members, and with help from the Scott's and others, we were able to resurrect the forum and get it back online.

[DTComposer]

I remember stumbling upon the California highways sites (Dan Faigin's, and a couple of others that have since faded away) in 1996. I can find posts of mine on MTR dating back to 2000, but I know I lurked there for a while before that - I did the same thing here, lurking for almost a year before signing up.

Still have a lot of bookmarks for sites that haven't updated in years, but are still fun to look at - the Interstate Strip Charts, some of Kurumi's pages, etc.