Online Road Community History 2.0

[noelbotevera]

I took the liberty of trying to "revive" a thread that ended in flames. I also read many old posts from this forum and MTR alike, but I still never quite got all of the memes or the biography of how this community came to be. Since there hasn't been a comprehensive history of the community ever since the last thread in 2015, I decided to see if there would be more responses with starting anew.

One of the questions that have interested me about the community, how did the community communicate between the end of the MTR era (early 2000s) to this forum being started (early 2009).

I have a feeling a useless post will pop up after I start this thread.

[SignGeek101]

One of the questions that have interested me about the community, how did the community communicate between the end of the MTR era (early 2000s) to this forum being started (early 2009).

I've wanted to know this as well.

I have a feeling a useless post will pop up after I start this thread.

Does what I wrote above count?

[noelbotevera]

One of the questions that have interested me about the community, how did the community communicate between the end of the MTR era (early 2000s) to this forum being started (early 2009).

I've wanted to know this as well.

I have a feeling a useless post will pop up after I start this thread.

Does what I wrote above count?

I'm not sure how I would define a useless post though.

[Scott5114]

MTR was active, but in decline, until the forum was started. MTR went through a period where it was possible to use it for its intended purpose, but because it was unmoderated, there was a lot of junk/trolling/flaming in the way that made it annoying to sift through. Some people got a newsgroup feed from their ISP, and could filter the newsgroup through a program designed for the purpose (think the way email clients like Outlook work and you're not terribly far off from the idea). Many ISPs did not provide such feeds, meaning that those users had to access MTR through a Web interface, usually Google Groups, which did not have such advanced filtering.

In the mid-to-late 2000s a lot of the community was made up of various individual websites that people posted their photo galleries to (Eric Stuve's http://okhighways.com is typical of the type). Around 2008 there were also several group chat options, such as a regular AOL Instant Messenger Chat (I believe this was organized by Dan Garnell) and the #roadgeek and #echm IRC channels.

There has been a strong roadgeek contingent on Wikipedia, known as USRD, from 2005 onward, and it collaborated and shared road information through the usual Wikipedia infrastructure (talk pages, IRC channels). Some USRD members participated in the other roadgeek communities, others didn't.

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.

Also of note–this is actually the second AARoads forum. A previous incarnation was run, quite differently, by a guy named Cody. A disagreement between him and Alex resulted in Cody deleting the entire forum. Jake Bear became the second head admin and re-established the forum, in much the same form that it is in now.

[noelbotevera]

That clears up a lot. I had some maybe erroneous information from perusing old threads that people who were the regulars of MTR usually saw it collapse in 1998/1999.

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.

Some other memes that seem to be popular is "Do us all a favor", pooing is cool, and Alanland (which, well, I learned by myself). What was the origin of these memes? Did this forum also once have a rival forum to talk about roads, just like biproads was supposed to be?

[hotdogPi]

That clears up a lot. I had some maybe erroneous information from perusing old threads that people who were the regulars of MTR usually saw it collapse in 1998/1999.

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.

Some other memes that seem to be popular is "Do us all a favor", pooing is cool, and Alanland (which, well, I learned by myself). What was the origin of these memes? Did this forum also once have a rival forum to talk about roads, just like biproads was supposed to be?

Alanland was started by a 2012 thread in Fictional Highways about a 15-country North American highway system, and his list of 15 North American countries included some that weren't countries (like specific Canadian provinces) and the fictional Alanland. The user who created it, TheAlan360, has 7 posts. The thread got off topic by the 2nd page, and it was intentionally locked after the 2000th reply, which was in 2014. (Later, one person deleted a post, so it now ends at the 2000th post, not the 2000th reply.)

The "is and is not" joke is often associated with Alanland, but I believe it actually predates the Alanland thread.

[Dougtone]

There were (and still are) a number of email lists on Yahoo! Groups for roads discussion that were set up in the first half of the 2000s, kind of an alternative to MTR. As the Forum and Facebook have come around, the posts on the Yahoo groups have more or less slowed down to a trickle.

[jeffandnicole]

A few of those websites from the late 90's and 2000's survive out there, including an extensive library of highway and route pages by Steve Anderson; one of the few people that you can see on a somewhat regular basis in his real line of work on CNBC.  Some others still maintain websites, although they generally aren't updated on a regular basis.  And the links within the websites almost always lead you to dead ends, unless it happens to link to one of the few that still keep their webpages active.

I maintained a website or two myself, detailing some NJ highways.  It was fun to build and I did it all from html scratch; never using an editor.  Learned quite a bit from doing it.  But with a good forum here to post pics, and especially in the age of Facebook, paying to maintain a website wasn't cost effective.  Comcast doing away with private webpages put it away for good.

I defected away from mtr earlier than many, so I missed out on a lot of the flame wars.  And I was never very active in AOL Chats or anything like that.

[TravelingBethelite]

While on this topic, when was MTR incorporated? That would seem to be the earliest home of roadgeeks on the internet, unless there was anything older. But reading through this thread, it would seem that MTR was. 

[slorydn1]

I got my first internet capable computer, a Packard Bell 486 with Windows 95 and a 14.4k modem in the fall of 1997, and MTR was already going strong by then. It was one of the first newsgroups I subscribed to when I first set up my Outlook Express email client. I didn't post at all the first couple of years, I just read, alot.

[noelbotevera]

While on this topic, when was MTR incorporated? That would seem to be the earliest home of roadgeeks on the internet, unless there was anything older. But reading through this thread, it would seem that MTR was. 

It was started in 1995. I learned this by going through old threads in MTR.

[bandit957]

I took the liberty of trying to "revive" a thread that ended in flames. I also read many old posts from this forum and MTR alike, but I still never quite got all of the memes or the biography of how this community came to be. Since there hasn't been a comprehensive history of the community ever since the last thread in 2015, I decided to see if there would be more responses with starting anew.

One of the questions that have interested me about the community, how did the community communicate between the end of the MTR era (early 2000s) to this forum being started (early 2009).

The eMpTyR era outlived the early 2000s easily. Meanwhile, there were chat rooms.

[bandit957]

That clears up a lot. I had some maybe erroneous information from perusing old threads that people who were the regulars of MTR usually saw it collapse in 1998/1999.

Usenet in general collapsed then because of all the harassment by the likes of Mr. Sing 'n' Snore Scissors, Streetlight, and the Usenet Cabal (TISAC).

[hbelkins]

I never used any of the chatrooms, as I always preferred to read and respond to messages at my own pace and was not really into the interaction that the chatrooms provided. MTR may have been in decline, but it was still reasonably active up and until this forum came about. I guess the Yahoo groups were a bit more active, but they're in decline as well. I've also noticed a lot of Facebook groups popping up from time to time.

Somehow, we all managed to communicate and word about meets and accounts of road trips continued to be posted in the 2000s.

[rschen7754]

I think when AOL Hometown and Geocities died, that took a lot of road websites with it.

[sdmichael]

My site has been around since December 1995. It has changed URL's but is still around. I've also recently reposted some content that I removed back in 2008.

[kphoger]

That clears up a lot. I had some maybe erroneous information from perusing old threads that people who were the regulars of MTR usually saw it collapse in 1998/1999.

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.

Some other memes that seem to be popular is "Do us all a favor", pooing is cool, and Alanland (which, well, I learned by myself). What was the origin of these memes? Did this forum also once have a rival forum to talk about roads, just like biproads was supposed to be?

Alanland was started by a 2012 thread in Fictional Highways about a 15-country North American highway system, and his list of 15 North American countries included some that weren't countries (like specific Canadian provinces) and the fictional Alanland. The user who created it, TheAlan360, has 7 posts. The thread got off topic by the 2nd page, and it was intentionally locked after the 2000th reply, which was in 2014. (Later, one person deleted a post, so it now ends at the 2000th post, not the 2000th reply.)

The "is and is not" joke is often associated with Alanland, but I believe it actually predates the Alanland thread.

May I just say:  I really, really miss Alanland.  I wish it had never died.

[Desert Man]

May AAroads.com stay online for a long, long time...and road enthusiasts can come to a place where they can discuss their love of roads together. I been on message boards or sites since like 2000-01, most of them I been on went offline and a few I belong to still online has became empty of new posts and less visits. When it comes to temporary things, like TV shows and cartoons no longer in production or were recently revived (i.e. Sailor Moon), there are still forums dedicated to them long after they been cancelled. I never been a member of MTR, then this thread is a testimony of how old the road-geek community was around, in fact as long there was the internet or world wide web.

[Alex]

There were (and still are) a number of email lists on Yahoo! Groups for roads discussion that were set up in the first half of the 2000s, kind of an alternative to MTR. As the Forum and Facebook have come around, the posts on the Yahoo groups have more or less slowed down to a trickle.

The Yahoo! Groups definitely picked up some of the traffic that MTR lost and gave us all a place to post with some decorum. There were quite a few groups created and active through the mid to late 2000s. There was also a confab of us that regularly chatted on #roadgeek on the IRC network too from 1999 to 2006 or so. MTR was still strong with content through at least 2006 as well, though the noise to info ratio markedly changed.

The odd deletion of the Southeast Roads group on Yahoo! was the beginning of the end for that platform (there are still some remaining groups however) as it helped shift people away from there and onto Facebook groups for road discussion. That transpired while the forum here was early in its run.

[bandit957]

Does ANYONE still use Yahoo for ANYTHING?

[kphoger]

I miss using mIRC, but I can't imagine this site without its being divided up into threads.

[kurumi]

"Do us all a favor" dates back to 2001 (http://mtrlog2.pitas.com/year2001.html)

June 29, 2001

"His love is real, but he is not": Albert I-679 breaks the record for fastest MTR flameout! We are still in the 238 theard at this point:

Even I am at the point of not caring anymore. Besides which, it's kind of nice having oddities in the system. I am starting to get annoyed with AlbertC79's continuous comments in areas he doesn't know about. I am one step from kill-filing him. (Allan Seth Dunn)

And then I-679 says:

Do us all a favor and FUCK OFF! (AlbertC79)

Those were strange times: Tom from Ohio, B*llis being a Pokemon lure for really bad trolls, and then eventually the Grapes of Wrath caravan/diaspora over to AARoads. I'm surprised mtrlog2 is still online.

[noelbotevera]

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 should note that this was before the kids who had no idea what they were doing (so basically the late 90s/early 2000s).

I'll be honest I'm surprised at the large amount of tolerance for minors here on the forum. Some other forums I go to whenever I get bored have a no kiddies policy (basically anyone under 18 can't create an account) or have restrictions. Added bonus is that I actually stopped being annoying unlike whenever I was a newbie on the forum.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Don't forget I-366 with an 85 mph speed limit, another running gag of this forum.

Then there is the European community, which apparently only got organized from 2007 onwards around the then newly-created Highways & Autobahns forum on SkyscraperCity, although some enthusiats associations have been running longer, like British SABRE or French SARA.

[kphoger]

Don't forget I-366 with an 85 mph speed limit, another running gag of this forum.

Then there is the European community, which apparently only got organized from 2007 onwards around the then newly-created Highways & Autobahns forum on SkyscraperCity, although some enthusiats associations have been running longer, like British SABRE or French SARA.

[skyscrapercityrant]At least, here on AARoads, we're allowed to call a road a highway without it being a completely controlled-access dual carriageway.[/skyscrapercityrant]