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Take the Old Forum Challenge! ‌‌💻‌

Michal_Gebacki
Community Team
Community Team

The "Pet Lover 2.0" badgeThe "Pet Lover 2.0" badgeNostalgia is the driving force behind many of our Community challenges. That's why we couldn't skip another exciting theme filled with some old internet-era memories. Tell us what your first forums or online communities you've joined are! 

It can be about anything close to your professional or after-hours lives, global or local, still existing or not available anymore. If it's possible, attach some screenshots below!

Every participant will get 100 bonus points and an "Old Forum" badge.

 

 

Let me start with my choice that dates back to 2007-2008. I've always liked to be up-to-date with automotive news and discussions, for which circa 15 years ago SamochodySwiata.pl (eng. Cars of the World) was a great place. It has a typical spirit for passionates forums - was vibrant and active 24/7, to die silently in the next decade. Facebook Groups, baby...

Screenshot 2023-12-12 at 14.47.05.png

29 REPLIES 29

islam_zidan
Champion

I remember XDA forum, i used to visit it to check for the custom images for android and rooting techniques 😉

2004.jpg

 

Dynatrace Certified Professional - Dynatrace Partner - Yourcompass.ca

How much time I spent there looking for how to root my phone 😎

Have a nice day!

Oh my old times when I had time (and courage) to test custom roms in my Motorola Milestone!!

Site Reliability Engineer @ Kyndryl

Mike_L
Dynatrace Guru
Dynatrace Guru

While I've been on the Internet since 1994, back then I was not really attached to any community. The first community I really joined, was a forum and IRC channel for a text-based online game called Orkfia.

During a community get-together 20 years ago in The Netherlands (I'm from Sweden), I met my fiancé and mother of my son. So it has shaped all of my adult life.

Allipage.png

Mike

DanielS
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

Great challenge and lot of memories.

My first online communities emerged in the era of BBS, I remember playing chess online writing down the moves in txt. It wasn't as dynamic and full of content as it is now, but the spirit that the sum of the parts is greater than one always remained present in various communities I was and am in, such as Dynatrace.

DanielS_0-1702392469927.jpeg

 

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

Oh my, from about 1986, I remember transcribing assembly code for a chess program from a magazine into a Spectrum. It was through hex codes, and I still remember some like C9 (RET), since I did a lot of Assembly programming at the time 😃

Antonio Sousa

AntonPineiro
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

Hi,

My first forum was an internal University forum near 2005 but I cannot share pictures. Then, I would say a dedicated Spanish forum about Perl language:

AntonPineiro_0-1702397142868.png

It is not relevant at 20 years ago, but it is not closed totally.

Best regads

❤️ Emacs ❤️ Vim ❤️ Bash ❤️ Perl

kuncarlos
Dynatrace Helper
Dynatrace Helper

Back in the day, around the 2000´s one that standed out in Spain was Forocoches. It's like this digital man cave and it can be a tad silly and macho at times. It's a wild ride down the information highway, with a touch of 'what... did I just read that?' The good thing is that it still exists, although I think it lost a lot of relevance during the last few years.

kuncarlos_0-1702401331198.png

 

 

WHomES

ChadTurner
DynaMight Legend
DynaMight Legend

Oh this is going back. I remember joining a forum about my Volvo. That Swedish car maker had a ton of tech in their cars and I need to access all of it. The closest dealer was over a hour away, as a broke teen, I found a Volvo VIDAS system for $100. Tossed it on an old XP Laptop and rolled back the system clock 3 years because the install would block itself if it was past the subscription expiry date. 

Many tinny little forums out there that covered how to use it, i think i joined them all. Ohh those were the days! 

ChadTurner_0-1702409216817.png

 

-Chad

im still a kid who began work with technology about 4 years ago, so the firsts forum that i knew was StackOverFlow

natanael_mendes_0-1702410566856.png

 

Dynatrace Professional Certified

StackOverFlow was one of my first forums as well! 

AntonioSousa
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

OMG, I have a competitive advantage here. But I don't have screenshots from the time, so I had to scrape them from the Internet. Some old ones, that were the start for me:

  1. Newsgroups, Usenet
    AntonioSousa_2-1702423828373.jpeg
  2. BBSs, yes they were a thing:
    AntonioSousa_3-1702424036973.jpeg
  3. Compuserve, early nineties. Not really Internet, but quite cool at the time:
    AntonioSousa_0-1702421800053.gif
  4. Gopher, already Internet
    AntonioSousa_1-1702422737197.gif

     

I'll stop here 🤣

Antonio Sousa


@AntonioSousa wrote:

I'll stop here 🤣


Don't 😀

I am glad you mentioned the Usenet. I have fond memories of those days 🙂

Where else would you find Larry Page asking how to set a user agent?

Oh yes, good old times...

Was not aware of the Larry Page thread, but it's an excellent example of how collaboration already existed at the time! And it's quite easy to search for early questions of a lot of today's VIPs 😁

Antonio Sousa

Malaik
DynaMight Champion
DynaMight Champion

Hohohoh

This is a little funny,

 

My first forums were totally Gaming oriented: Supercell, Asterix, Fifa, ...

 

From professional part:
A french forum called: Comment ca marche...

Thanks to mobing us back to such memories.

 

Have a great day.

Sharing Knowledge

Shirai
Helper

Since the late 1990s, companies have started using email to access news groups. I remember accessing topics unrelated to work behind my boss's back. At the time, I was using an IBM OS/2 PC.

T.Shirai IIM Corp. Osaka Japan

radek_jasinski
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

Hi All,

I remember once being interested in the topic of how to become a DJ (yes it's those beautiful years in high school xD). I spent hours browsing, listening and downloading music from the 4clubbers.pl forum. At one time you could find everything there.

Zrzut ekranu 2023-12-14 o 15.48.55.png

Another type of forum to the heavily pirated Polish Internet site darkwarez.pl, which has already been shut down by the police. There we exchanged all kinds of games, programs, solved technical problems how to run some program, write a crack, etc.... That's where I learned to program 🙂

darkwarez-forum-torrenty-za-darmo.png

Now there is no need for that anymore. Everything we want is available at our fingertips and affordable. On the other hand, such combinations strongly taught logical thinking and problem solving.

Radek

Have a nice day!

Fellow 4clubber here, before the Spotify era it was my top #1 source of trance and house music. I literally just visited them a few days ago as I couldn't find a full version of one new tune, frankly - they're still alive, same layout, and even the shutdown of Zippyshare didn't prevent them from operating 😎

gbaudart
Champion

I wasn't very old in the 2000s, barely over 10 years old, and therefore at the start of adolescence.
So, I went a lot to jeuxvideo.com

gbaudart_1-1702582152512.png

I had difficulty finding a corresponding image ^^

Observability consultant - Dynatrace Associate Certified

RazTN7
Dynatrace Champion
Dynatrace Champion

As a Car enthusiast teamBHP was my first active forum.

RazTN7_0-1702637445461.png

 

 

Have a nice day!

IzabelaRokita
Community Team
Community Team

My first Community was heavily connected with my emo-phase in the 2000s. I was 12 when my mom (yup, she is pretty cool) showed me bands like Panic! at the Disco, Green Day, 30 Second to Mars, Rise Against, etc. But my biggest crush was My Chemical Romance, with their pioneering concept rock opera album "The Black Parade". 

There was no Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube just getting started, so if you were a fangirl like me, you had limited access to the news about your favorite artist. So, I've joined the Polish Community of MCR fans and met some amazing people there, some of whom I still keep in touch with. So hail to the power of the Community! 💪

Screenshot 2023-12-18 at 09.02.57.png

Patrick_H
Dynatrace Champion
Dynatrace Champion

Had no real contact with forums until I started studying at university - back then first forum was either the one of the university for students, or the one in our students dorm - sadly no screenshots of that ancient times 😆
First online community probably was geocaching - but I'm no longer active there.

iOS help: https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/shortlink/ios-hub

cesarsaravia
Dynatrace Pro
Dynatrace Pro

Well, I remember one of the most import forums I used was Stackoverflow because I started programming with .NET ASP.NET, Visual Basic and C#.
Wow! Nice days programming initiation 😁

-César S. - LATAM Solutions Architect

Pierre_L
Helper

I'm not so old but I do remember back in 2000's I was using a lot forum mainly for small strategic online games where the only way to talk to people was though these forums.

forum2.png

Later, the main forum I did use is a French Mac community forum which always exist.

forum1.png

Observability Consultant - Dynatrace Associate

dannemca
DynaMight Guru
DynaMight Guru

I spent hours and hours daily in forums, mostly from bands I liked in that time.

The one I used to the most is a Brazilian dedicated page for the band Korn (kornbrasil.com/forum), where I was one of the admins, in Top 3 posters, and Limp Bizkit (thearmpit.com), which I still has in contact with some members, including the founders (who still has direct contact with the band members 😮) in a Whatsapp group chat.

Of course I don't have any screenshot, not even found in archive.org. This was between 2004 and 2009.

Good old days.

I miss this old times... social media killed them all. 😓

Site Reliability Engineer @ Kyndryl

High five, the rockbands communities were the best! 🎸 😀
I miss that vibe of the early 2000s when everything was so mysterious. You knew almost nothing about the members' personal lives and just enjoyed the music.
I'm still listening to those songs with pleasure and sentiment. ❤️

I spent too many hours in MMORPG - Metin2 ‌🤠‌. Back in the days it was really popular in Poland and everyone at my age played it at least once 😄 I used these forums and looking for people to be prepared for events and team raids. Slay this dragon with people I met there was my biggest achievement back then ‌🤣

Pawel_Zalewski_8-1704649078283.png

Pawel_Zalewski_0-1704648800493.png

 

"The lions does not ally with the coyotes"

Kenny_Gillette
DynaMight Leader
DynaMight Leader

This is a tough one since I am so old and don't remember 🙂

There were some old social forums i was in but really don't remember any names :(.  

Now there are current forums/groups in facebook that I am in:

Star Wars

Disc Golf

Fishing

E2M (Eager to Motivate) - health/workout group

Dynatrace Certified Professional

Bill_Demsky
Helper

the pre-internet BBS were amazing for the time, moving from a phone handset in the cradle to an actual modem was such a major step. The star trek game was amazing and getting hints from the community was a big plus!

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