Re^2: The early history of Perlmonks

in reply to Re: The early history of Perlmonks
in thread The early history of Perlmonks

These were created just after DiscoStu's extended campaign of stupidity, both in the chatterbox and in nodespace, in January 2001. While there had been trolls before, DiscoStu was the catalyst for the creation of many of the controls we have on the site now; I think users today would be surprised at how minimal the infrastructure was in 2000.

As far as when the site was opened to the public: I became a user Feb 17, 2000 in order to ask a question, but I had known about the site for some time before that because a "slashbox" for it appeared over on SlashDot (in fact, I was rather annoyed with myself later for having waited so long to join; I was no longer cool for being early!). pschoonveld was a real user, and not a part of BlockStackers, so far as I am aware; he answered a question from CmdrTaco on December 2nd, 1999.

I think that there was a certain ebullience about the site itself, and the community, early on that we no longer see; you were much more likely to see technical marvels like My 2 cents worth, for instance, and creative posts like Life at the Monastery. Chapter 1. Things have since settled into a routine, which I think was inevitable.

I also think tilly is overly generous with Alex the Serb, who was a complete ass.

Comment on Re^2: The early history of Perlmonks

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Re^3: The early history of Perlmonks by jdporter (Paladin) on May 07, 2019 at 21:07 UTC
I trust that Petruchio won't mind if I post this here... On 2007-11-15, Petruchio wrote (in the `#perlmonks` irc channel): 1999: Tim Vroom gets drunk, launches site based on Everykludge, gifs of text, and Scotch Tape. First troll arrives 2 hours later. 2000: Tim and CowboyNeal get drunk. CowboyNeal creates a Perlmonks Slashbox for Tim, sending scores of Slashdorks to the new site. Tim creates an XP system, then gives himself 1,000,000 XP when people start kicking his ass. 2001 is split between people getting pissed off at DiscoStu and people getting pissed off at merlyn. Anti-Troll gear is created, and Perlmonks more or less gets rid of DiscoStu. merlyn remains a more difficult problem. Late 2001 or early 2002, vroom gets drunk and makes random users into gods. The site begins a steady decline which continues today.	[reply]
Re^3: The early history of Perlmonks by tilly (Archbishop) on Apr 14, 2009 at 18:37 UTC
I'm not being particularly generous with Alex the Serb. I just am recognizing and empathizing with the obvious fact that he had post traumatic stress disorder. That is tremendously hard to deal with even under the best of conditions, such as is faced by returning soldiers going to a country with lots of resources and lots of trained therapists. It is far, far worse when you're living in a bombed out country where you're being forced to try to cope while basic survival is an issue. That said, sympathy notwithstanding, we did what we clearly had to given the needs of our community. About psychoonveld, I don't know what to make of that post. The gap between that isolated post and the sudden opening up on Dec 23 makes me wonder.	[reply]
Re^3: The early history of Perlmonks by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Dec 26, 2014 at 21:23 UTC
pschoonveld was a real user, and not a part of BlockStackers, so far as I am aware; he answered a question from CmdrTaco on December 2nd, 1999. As discussed in more detail at Re: The First Ten Perl Monks, it seems that the mysterious pschoonveld, though not officially employed by BlockStackers, was a PerlMonks "insider", a Hope College buddy of vroom, who hung out on the early PerlMonks web site before it opened to the public on 23 Dec 1999. CmdrTaco, another Hope College student and PerlMonks insider, is the famous Rob Malda, co-founder of Slashdot.	[reply]
Re^3: The early history of Perlmonks by Anonymous Monk on Apr 18, 2009 at 03:59 UTC
What did ever happen to paco?	[reply]
Re^4: The early history of Perlmonks by Gavin (Archbishop) on Apr 18, 2009 at 17:49 UTC
He went to Hollywood and became a fim star Paco (2006)	[reply]

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