Happy 10 year forum anniversary!

[hotdogPi]

I've thought for most of the forum's existence that it started on the 17th, but it actually started on the 15th, as seen here. (topic=1 and topic=2, if they exist, are only visible to moderators/admins, and topic=0 redirects to the home page.)

Before I joined this forum, I had a minor interest in roads, editing local road-related articles on Wikipedia, but I knew almost nothing outside my area. I joined a forum at crosscountryroads.com (the owner has 84 posts here), and the forum closed soon after. It had the same idea as the forum here, but only had a few members. I found this forum through kurumi's website.

I created an account on August 8, 2013 and was accepted the next day. This puts my joining date after ethanman was banned and right in the middle of the Alanland thread. I was 14 years old at the time, which might have made me the youngest when I joined, but I'm not sure. My first post was a detailed post using the [table][/table] syntax. When I began, I revived a lot of threads from Who's Online, but pretty quickly, I made Recent Unread Topics my home page.

I attended my first trivia night on September 7, 2013. Despite only knowing the local area, I got 6 points (second place), which I believe was 6 correct, no points deducted. I clearly didn't know things outside my area, as one multipart question asked for the list of intrastate US routes, and I typed 301, when I was really thinking of 201 in Maine. (MA was a multipart question, which is how I was able to get second place.)

I was pretty active at the beginning, with an average of 5 posts per day. I have since gone down to 2.5 and back up to 3. I have a lot of active time on the forum (currently listed as 355 days), as I reload the "recent unread topics" page quite often, and it counts the entire time if I don't have any 15-minute gaps. This often includes during class at school. However, except for starting threads and creating lists, my posts are usually very short, with several paragraphs being very rare.

I started taking road photos in mid-June 2017. I first uploaded them to the AAroads gallery. After 9 photos, I created an Imgur account, and then I switched to Flickr the next day. I decided that I didn't want to take up AARoads server space with (eventually) hundreds of photos, as my Ben & Jerry's trip on July 6, 2017 was more than half my total road photos at the time.

I have met with SectorZ a few times starting in 2017, although I have never been to a road meet.

What are your stories about the forum?

[kevinb1994]

I have been aware of this roadgeek forum for some time now (I recall joining roadgeek groups on FB back around 2012 and had been browsing roadgeek websites since sometime before the Great Recession (definitely after Bush Jr. got re-elected in 2004, AFAIK)), but only joined at the height of my interest in roadgeekery a couple years ago (2016). That year I attended not one, but two road meets (Central PA aka Central Pennsylvania by jpi and Capital District by vdeane) for the first (and so far, only) time in one year, a feat I have yet to match again or break due to personal and family commitments. I had only attended two meets prior to 2016 and that was one each in 2011 (Central NJ aka Central New Jersey aka Turnpike hosted by Alps) and in 2012 (Doylestown, PA aka 202 Parkway hosted by Alps). Last year I went to the Aurora-Naperville Road Meet that was hosted by Brandon, and I have yet to officially determine which meets to attend this year other than my own, which is set for late next month here in Jacksonville.

[Roadgeekteen]

Anyone's account turning 10 want to say anything? I know of a couple people who have been here from the beginning. I've lurked since 2014-2015 but only joined in 2017, and I had a long hiatus between February and December.

[AsphaltPlanet]

Anyone's account turning 10 want to say anything? I know of a couple people who have been here from the beginning. I've lurked since 2014-2015 but only joined in 2017, and I had a long hiatus between February and December.

It's too bad Bugo wasn't still here.  He could regale all the teenagers out there how this forum was all his idea, and that he came up with it right after he finished curing cancer.

Pity.

[kphoger]

My first keen interest in the forum before joining was due to JNWinkler's vast knowledge.

[hbelkins]

I honestly don't remember how I first heard about this forum. I thought it had been here for awhile before I joined, and it was being kept a big secret from me, but my "registered" date is 1/18/09.

[AsphaltPlanet]

^ This post made me curious of when I first joined actually.

Back then, my username was "sonysnob".  The first post that I found with that old username was from April, 2009.  I guess I've been here longer than I thought.

[nexus73]

February 20, 2011 for me.  Out of all the forums I have been on, which have covered many subjects.  IMO this is the best one for quality of members and modding.  The topic of highways alone is enough to interest me but the goodness here keeps me coming back and has done so for almost 8 years.  Boy did that time fly by!

Pleasant surprise: The teenage members here are incredible.  A combination of intelligent and interested is hard to beat!  I'll be dead in a few years most likely so knowing that the generational passing of the torch regarding roads will take place cheers me up.  There are other generational differences in interests that will not survive the passage of time but this one will. 

Rick

[adventurernumber1]

I have been interested in roads as long as I can remember. I spent the first decade of my life completely isolated from any indication that there was an entire roadgeek community out there. It wasn't until 2009 or so when I actually truly knew about stuff like Google Maps and YouTube on the internet - on the latter site (YT), in the next few years, I would often watch road videos that were made my roadgeeks, and through that, I was introduced to the word roadgeek - but I still didn't truly know what it meant for some reason, so I didn't actually 100% catch on to the fact that there was a roadgeek community until a few years later (at this time I would have been 13 years old). In Summer of 2013 (one year after I was introduced to online gaming), I had come into face-to-face (not literally, as in real life) contact with another roadgeek for the very first time - through our mutual enjoyment of driving games within online gaming that had realistic and mesmerizing roads. Especially starting later in 2013, I started meeting more and more roadgeeks (by the way of the driving games within online gaming). By the time Summer 2014 came around, I already knew dozens of roadgeeks (meeting some of them on YouTube - I set up my own YouTube account for the first time in approximately December 2013 - and many of them via online gaming), none of which I had truly known or talked to just one year before. During that summer, one of the roadgeeks I knew recommended this forum to me, of which I had never heard of (it's possible I may have stumbled upon the regular AARoads site when I was reading about roads online in the past, but I don't vividly remember if I did).

I joined this forum on July 9, 2014. I vividly remember one of the first days I browsed the forum - I was outside on my patio drinking coffee, looking at it on my phone, and it was a breezy summer morning. I was truly fascinated, and I couldn't believe there was an entire forum just for roadgeeks. It was incredibly amazing to me. For the first week I was registered, I was a lurker, but then I started posting.

I did not post at all from around April 2015 to December 2016. My mental health issues started around June 2014, but they really started going downhill in early 2015, so I decided to take a break from the forum - also because I needed to make sure I would pass the two classes I was failing (9th Grade was the last year I would take all advanced classes, as a result - especially with my new impairment and lack of motivation from the psychological disorders). Even though I was put on medications around the start of 2016, I remained completely inactive on the forum until Christmas 2016. Unfortunately, around the time I started posting again, my mental illnesses were still trying to rear around their ugly heads - exacerbated by the monumental stress I faced then during Junior Year. This led to some severe impairment in me making my posts on here (which got to the point where some of my posts temporarily said (-input coming-) for days at a time, and more) - an extremely peculiar and complex situation that would take an entire essay to coherently explain for full understanding - but it involved the negative interconnectedness of mental illnesses - stress and jam-packed workloads of Junior Year, and more. To all who saw, it was a very bizarre sight (it did little actual harm, but it may have been annoying at times, and definitely weird as hell). But the point of all that is that when I had came back to the forum around the beginning of 2017, I came back acting very strange. After a few months, I decided I had to let my impairment be reduced before I could continue posting on the forum - so I posted hardly at all until Summer 2017 had came, and the hell of Junior Year was over. Thankfully, I came back as a poster who was increasingly closer to normal (though I am never too awfully close  ) as time went on, and it has been like that ever since. I am always trying to improve myself, my contributions, and my interactions, so hopefully as time goes on I will only become a better and better poster.

I am happy and proud to call the roadgeek community home. As a young kid, engulfed in the immense love of roads, I always hoped and wondered if there were any other people on this earth who loved roads like that as well, but I didn't think it was possible - I am now glad to know I was wrong. Since I am unable to drive (due to mental and physical complications, and medications), the chances of me ever being able to go to a road meet may be slim, but perhaps one day the chance may arise. But for now, it has been a true pleasure to interact with the roadgeek community online.

But that's enough of my story - I wish a great 10 year anniversary to the forum, and I hope it will prevail for many years to come. Massive credit must be given to the people who have started this forum, all the roadgeek sites, and everything else. This is a great place for roadgeeks from anywhere in the world to all come together and share our interest for road-related galore.

So cheers to ten years!!     

[kphoger]

February 20, 2011 for me.  Out of all the forums I have been on, which have covered many subjects.  IMO this is the best one for quality of members and modding.  The topic of highways alone is enough to interest me but the goodness here keeps me coming back and has done so for almost 8 years.  Boy did that time fly by!

Pleasant surprise: The teenage members here are incredible.  A combination of intelligent and interested is hard to beat!  I'll be dead in a few years most likely so knowing that the generational passing of the torch regarding roads will take place cheers me up.  There are other generational differences in interests that will not survive the passage of time but this one will. 

Rick

There have been a couple of times that the ungentlemanly atmosphere on this forum led me to take months off from the forum at a time, instead either frequenting other forums or just not doing the whole forum thing at all.  Since the last time I was away, I've noticed that the atmosphere on here has become a lot more gentlemanly.  I think it has some to do with certain members leaving and also an increased willingness by the mods to lock a thread that has gone off the rails.

[oscar]

I honestly don't remember how I first heard about this forum. I thought it had been here for awhile before I joined, and it was being kept a big secret from me, but my "registered" date is 1/18/09.

Like H.B., I moved over here from MTR. But it took me a little longer to register here on 7/29/09 (after awhile lurking), though I was also quicker to give up on MTR.

[US71]

I show I registered on January 19, 2009

I don't miss MTR AT ALL!

[Alps]

I was here in the vger days and important enough to change my start date.

[webny99]

There have been a couple of times that the ungentlemanly atmosphere on this forum led me to take months off from the forum at a time, instead either frequenting other forums or just not doing the whole forum thing at all.  Since the last time I was away, I've noticed that the atmosphere on here has become a lot more gentlemanly.  I think it has some to do with certain members leaving and also an increased willingness by the mods to lock a thread that has gone off the rails.

Hofty shpoof!

It's kind of a known thing that you tend to disappear for months at a time, but I had no idea your absences were actually caused by the ungentlemanly conduct of fellow AAroadsters! I apologize for whatever my involvement in this may have been --- I have certainly done my best to improve in this regard.

Out of curiosity, I reviewed the members list, and I can't think of anyone who was a forum regular that has dropped off the map recently (except for Roadgeekteen, but he's back, and you're still here). 

[Hurricane Rex]

December 5th 2017: Me going the forum.
July 15th 2015: First finding out about the forum (and started to secretly browse through).
I have been a roadgeek since I was 3 (or so), yet I'm not majoring in that field while I'm in college (sorry, I like meteorology more), but at the beginning, I only cared about posting so my average was 16 to begin with, and now its down to 3, which I'm comfortable with so I can give more quality content when I can.

Happy anniversary!

[webny99]

I was ... important enough to change my start date.

Wonder what will happen when 2020-02-02 actually hits. 

[Roadgeekteen]

There have been a couple of times that the ungentlemanly atmosphere on this forum led me to take months off from the forum at a time, instead either frequenting other forums or just not doing the whole forum thing at all.  Since the last time I was away, I've noticed that the atmosphere on here has become a lot more gentlemanly.  I think it has some to do with certain members leaving and also an increased willingness by the mods to lock a thread that has gone off the rails.

Hofty shpoof!

It's kind of a known thing that you tend to disappear for months at a time, but I had no idea your absences were actually caused by the ungentlemanly conduct of fellow AAroadsters! I apologize for whatever my involvement in this may have been --- I have certainly done my best to improve in this regard.

Out of curiosity, I reviewed the members list, and I can't think of anyone who was a forum regular that has dropped off the map recently (except for Roadgeekteen, but he's back, and you're still here). 

Zeffy back in 2017 disappeared. Strangely, Alex, who literally runs the whole site, hasn't logged on since November.

[webny99]

I would be wise not to say too much about my early days on the forum, other than that I didn't know much about forums, and I made kind of a big splash, but I think everyone has mostly gotten over it.

Except for me. I may never get over it, because of Reasons Which Shall Not Be Named (I will edit later to link that phrase).



I think the 10-year anniversary is a great time to bump up the post count required for the "Likes the Forum Way, Way Too Much" badge. Maybe to 15,000 posts. Otherwise, eventually, hundreds of users will have the badge and it won't be special anymore.

[formulanone]

I found myself searching for road information on the web and by the fifth or sixth visit to something called AARoads, I stopped lurking and jumped into forum about 8 years ago.

[Roadgeekteen]

I would be wise not to say too much about my early days on the forum, other than that I didn't know much about forums, and I made kind of a big splash, but I think everyone has mostly gotten over it.

Except for me. I may never get over it, because of Reasons Which Shall Not Be Named (I will edit later to link that phrase).



I think the 10-year anniversary is a great time to bump up the post count required for the "Likes the Forum Way, Way Too Much" badge. Maybe to 15,000 posts. Otherwise, eventually, hundreds of users will have the badge and it won't be special anymore.

There should be a new "roadgeek gold" rank at 20,000 posts. Someone will reach that within the next 5 or so years.

[cjk374]

April 8, 2009 was when I originally registered here. I didn't realize the forum was so new then.

I never heard of MTR or any of the stories about it until hanging around in here. I kinda wish I had so I could have experienced it first hand.

Thank you to all who were involved in the creation of AARoads. Happy 10th anniversary!

[kphoger]

There have been a couple of times that the ungentlemanly atmosphere on this forum led me to take months off from the forum at a time, instead either frequenting other forums or just not doing the whole forum thing at all.  Since the last time I was away, I've noticed that the atmosphere on here has become a lot more gentlemanly.  I think it has some to do with certain members leaving and also an increased willingness by the mods to lock a thread that has gone off the rails.

Hofty shpoof!

It's kind of a known thing that you tend to disappear for months at a time, but I had no idea your absences were actually caused by the ungentlemanly conduct of fellow AAroadsters! I apologize for whatever my involvement in this may have been --- I have certainly done my best to improve in this regard.

Out of curiosity, I reviewed the members list, and I can't think of anyone who was a forum regular that has dropped off the map recently (except for Roadgeekteen, but he's back, and you're still here). 

Sometimes more important things in life take the place of this forum, and it takes me a long time to work my way back around to it.  Other times, I just get turned off by the flames and drop out for a while.

In answer to your curiosity...  One example is that DZ's absence is a welcome relief.  Not sure if that was before your time or not.  And the whole post-count puffing having died down is a good thing too–same with the gruesome debate about moderation.  I think there was a glut of newcomers poking the bear for a while, and that got old really fast.  Some of them have fallen away, while others have settled into the routine around here and become valuable contributors to the conversation.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

21 years for me, on Friday. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/misc.transport.road/leopard%7Csort:date/misc.transport.road/E2CjHRUwIC4/7QvtDnut1FgJ

[adventurernumber1]

There have been a couple of times that the ungentlemanly atmosphere on this forum led me to take months off from the forum at a time, instead either frequenting other forums or just not doing the whole forum thing at all.  Since the last time I was away, I've noticed that the atmosphere on here has become a lot more gentlemanly.  I think it has some to do with certain members leaving and also an increased willingness by the mods to lock a thread that has gone off the rails.

Hofty shpoof!

It's kind of a known thing that you tend to disappear for months at a time, but I had no idea your absences were actually caused by the ungentlemanly conduct of fellow AAroadsters! I apologize for whatever my involvement in this may have been --- I have certainly done my best to improve in this regard.

Out of curiosity, I reviewed the members list, and I can't think of anyone who was a forum regular that has dropped off the map recently (except for Roadgeekteen, but he's back, and you're still here). 

Sometimes more important things in life take the place of this forum, and it takes me a long time to work my way back around to it.  Other times, I just get turned off by the flames and drop out for a while.

In answer to your curiosity...  One example is that DZ's absence is a welcome relief.  Not sure if that was before your time or not.  And the whole post-count puffing having died down is a good thing too–same with the gruesome debate about moderation.  I think there was a glut of newcomers poking the bear for a while, and that got old really fast.  Some of them have fallen away, while others have settled into the routine around here and become valuable contributors to the conversation.

Also, Marf (or "Linda"  ) went away quite a while ago, although he did put up a fight at the end for a while with the fake accounts and all that.

So thankfully many of those conflicts have been eased (or removed, as in the case of Marf) recently, so that is good.

[Takumi]

I joined during Ethanmania in 2011. My interest in roads has waned over the past five years as I've gotten into other hobbies, but I still come here daily. I usually stick to OT or Mid-Atlantic.