Board History Question

[Mr7134]

A question prompted by nothing more than my own curiosity, when did this board come into existence, and to what date do the posts currently archived (if that is the right word) on it go back to?

 

[Double Down]

You're hired?

 

[Moderator1]

Oct. 2001 I believe.

 

[JR]

Well, if you want to go all Genesis, sportspages.com (now gone, I believe) begat sportsjournalism.com #1 which begat the present incarnation.

The original Sportspages.com, started by a guy named Rich Johnson, was a kind of a clearing house for what he considered the best articles/columns of the day. I think he ran into problems when he opened a message board without anyone having to register. Anonymous was a very popular id at the time.
Can't remember why it was shut down but I think Sandy had something to do with it.

Some of the originals (21, for one) might remember the details more clearly than me.

 

[Riptide]

Wasn't there a predecessor of SJ called MediaBeat or something? Guy ran it out of Florida, I think, and it was a good message board about newsrooms until pressure from his own job led him to take it down.

 

[Versatile]

A question prompted by nothing more than my own curiosity, when did this board come into existence, and to what date do the posts currently archived (if that is the right word) on it go back to?

I was here for none of this, but as I understand it:

There was a board called Sportspages.com or something like it that started in the late-1990s. Every post was entirely anonymous, no user names or anything. Then, in 2001 or so, this board started without registration. Then it went down for a bit before it was brought back with registration on Oct. 9, 2002.

As far as post archiving, I think it works something like this: Almost all posts predating 2006 are gone, but for some reason the Livestrong thread ... lives strong. But members' post counts weren't affected when the old posts were deleted.

 

[RickStain]

. Anonymous was a very popular id at the time.

I heard he moved on to bigger and better things.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Verse: Posts were definitely lost. I had to repass hockeybeat for No. 1 after the 21 crash

 

[Versatile]

Verse: Posts were definitely lost. I had to repass hockeybeat for No. 1 after the 21 crash

I meant that though the board archives go back only to 2006, you still get credit for posts that no longer exist. Maybe that two-week crash wiped out a bunch for you, but most people probably weren't posting 50 times a day for that entire span.

A quick check shows 32,816 dooley_womack1 posts still exist on this board.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Well, I probably have lost 1,000 to spam threads that were deleted. But no regrets. Even though it is long dead, the phonesexhoneys thread is still one of my favorites

 

[Versatile]

My favorite post, "Doodah Rhapsody," was deleted in a Doodah thread. Not sure I'll ever break it out again, but I did save it.

Pour a little out for the posts we lost along the way.

 

[Riptide]

I wonder where JDV is slumming these days.

 

[dooley_womack1]

All over YouTube, probably debating a jar of Ragu.

 

[Huggy]

All over YouTube, probably debating a jar of Ragu.

Scoreboard!

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Wasn't there a predecessor of SJ called MediaBeat or something? Guy ran it out of Florida, I think, and it was a good message board about newsrooms until pressure from his own job led him to take it down.

I think you're referring to NewsMait (the Mait stood for My Aim Is True), and it was a fun site to read in the late 90s.

Anonymous posters would write about what went on in their newsrooms, both good, and, more typically, the bad and ugly. Some of the stuff was really good to read. I still remember one poster calling his editor "Little Hitler", multiple times.

You're right in terms of the guy shutting it down because of pressure from his paper, although he claimed he didn't have time to keep moderating the site. There was a pretty big uproar at the site's peak, because the web was in its infancy and papers weren't used to getting anonymously ripped on by their employees.

 

[Riptide]

Thanks, Baron. And you're right, I was thinking of NewsMait.

 

[Lieslntx]

Post.

 

[Lieslntx]

Padding.

 

[Smasher_Sloan]

A classic old board moment was the "Ever pay for it on the road?" thread.

 

[Bubbler]

There were user names on sportspages.com. I was Lynn Dickey's Iron Peg Leg or some such thing. Only posted a few times, disappeared, forgot SJ existed, and the re-discovered it in 2004 when looking to move on to a new job.

I didn't realize sportspages still sort of exists as USSportspages. Same concept with far less anarchy.

It's hard to convey how anarchic the sportspages forums were. Makes the moderator spats we get here seem like child's play.