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AH.COM : A Chronology

This page covers most of the events and happenings on AH.COM from its founding in September 2000, to the move to the Second Board in January 2004, the move to the Third Board in May 2016, and beyond.

2000

30th of August - The Old Board is officially brought online.

2001

13th of May - Ian temporarily shut down the site while he moved to a new place. Due to unexpected technical difficulties, however, the outage would last for five straight days.

28th of May - AH.com first moves to a new server.

2002

15th of February - Part 1 of Beria's Soviet Union, one of AH.com's first major timelines, was posted by Anon.

30th of March - Earliest known ISOT scenario thread posted on AH.com, courtest of Jonathan Kan.

27th of August - From this date onwards, registration is required in order to post on the board. Previously anyone could post. This leads to some users engaging in user-name changes as they register for the new accounts.

2003

4th of January - Earliest known “The Race invades another TL's Earth” thread was posted. This genre remains popular in the ASB Forum to this day.

24th of January - GBW first suggested the idea of AH.com hosting awards for online Alternate History.

27th of May - For the first time, the site's traffic exceeds Ian's monthly bandwidth limit, forcing an upgrade from 15 GB to 50 GB.

18th of October - Grey Wolf posted Dancing the Shadows.

Early December - The Great Crash of '03

19th of December - New Board created by Ian.

2004

1st of January - The New Board officially opens. This is also announced at soc.history.what-if, the then major online AH community.

17th of January - The Old Board is officially closed and archived.

18th of April - The Great Crash. The board goes down when its internet host goes out of business, at the exact moment the Admin is on vacation overseas. It is back up and running on May 7, but has lost a week of posts which hadn't been backed up.

22nd of June - The Sheep Thread is begun by Prophet Landshark.

5th of August - Armageddon: Mike Collins goes nuts and spams the board.

19th of August - Doctor What dies and comes back to life.

30th of November - The Great Google Incursion

2005

3rd of February - Diamond posted the original Map Thread.

??? of February- The 1st Annual Turtledove Awards were held, moderated by RobertP6165.

17th of Febuary- The First Act of the AH.com The Movie is aired, written by Psychomeltdown, and has yet to be finished.

14th of April - Ian decreed that the Administrator was not a god and should not be worshipped as such.

29th of May- The First Series Episode, written by Doctor What, airs. In subsequent months and years to come, the AH.com The Series will become an important part of AH.com culture.

16th of June- Michael E Johnson, also known as MEJ graces AH.com with his presence for the last time.

30th-31st of July- Eco-fanatic GirlsGoFishing launches her assault on the evil worshippers of HAARP at AH.Com. Luakel, Romulus Augustulus, Archangel Michael, redrover, Leo Caesius, G.Bone, and many others take part in defending the board.

1st of August - IAN moved all episodes and acts of AH.com The Series and AH.com The Movie to date from the Chat forum, where they were originally posted, to the Alternate History Writer's Forum.

29th of August- The first real mega huge innuendo-filled Kit/Fellatio thread begins, started by Romulus Augustulus ironicaly enough. Up until then the two had been flirting, but never on such a huge scale as this.

4th of October - IAN split the Alternate History Discussion forum into separate “Before 1900” and “After 1900” forums.

5th of October - IAN announces that Future History and alternate histories of fictional worlds, both of which had previously been relegated to that Chat forum, would now be considered on topic. Future History timelines and discussions were moved to the After 1900 forum, while alternate histories of fictional worlds were moved to Alien Space Bats and Other Magic.

14th of October - The first instance of Blaming Thande occurred.

20th of November - The first series of AH.com The Series ends on a cliffhanger, in which we learn much of the previously hidden backstory of the AH.commers.

2006

2nd of January - Start of Series 2 of AH.com The Series. Thanks to the large number of contributing writers, this will be extended to 40 episodes.

17th of May - IAN created the Non-Political Chat forum, a place for all kinds of chatting except for discussion of politics. While non-political discussion was still allowed in Chat, it was not recommended since it would likely scroll off the first page before anyone noticed it.

6th of July - The truths of Bahaianism are revealed to fortyseven who subsequently revealed them to the Board.

19th of July - Start of the Sealion World Tour, as Sealion arrives from his suppliers (the Wehrmacht?) to Doctor What's desk in Ottawa.

26th of July - The AlternateHistory.com Chronology is started by luakel and GBW.

29th of July - The AlternateHistory.com Wiki goes live!

3rd of August - Beginning of AH.COM Government RPG

9th of August - Ian promoted Glen and Max Sinister to Moderators.

16th of August - On behalf of the site's Futurists, Darkest started a petition asking for the creation of a Future History subforum in After 1900.

22nd of August - The Future History petition is closed with 96 votes in favor. On (or shortly after) this date, IAN creates the Future History forum and moves all extant Future History timelines and discussions into it.

26th of September - Straha is banned

27th of November - End of Series 2 of the AH.com The Series.

7th of December - Resident Ottoman expert Abdul Hadi Pasha returns to the board after more than a year of self-imposed exile.

2007

21st of January - Start of Series 3 of the AH.com The Series, which will be plagued by repeated delays.

3rd of March - Legendary member, expert on royalty, absinthe connoiseur, old board veteran, and prolific writer Grey Wolf returns to the forum after a long absence. There are celebrations throughout the realm of AH.com, and people are eagerly on the lookout for furry unicorns again.

7th of April - AH.com is rocked by the Robot Revolt.

9th of May - Infamous memetic troll hypern launches his celebrated "PC Cracked Up" Thread.

24th of May - joatsimeon@aol.com is banned. When Diamond supports him, he is banned too.

6th of June - Thande makes the mistake of drinking too much whiskey while wearing his superhero PJs. The result, also involving MrP, elle-jay, various other Britishers, and an odd new religion called Threesomendo, shakes the board to its very core and strikes the gays senseless. Well, maybe not the last part (what would shock them?), but you get the point.

7th of August - Michael E Johnson otherwise known as MEJ in the guise of Geminonone reveals that he has never actually left the board and has in fact been lurking for the last two years. A flurry of threads on topics related to racism experience a massive mushroom in activity, as he reveals that everyone on the forum with the exception of himself could be racist. Things are expected to liven up again in the Chat forum, and Star Trek threads are expected to have many more contributions as the good fellow has a penchant for the show.

23rd of September - The Universal Colour Scheme is finally finished, after much debate.

24th of October - Demosthenes posted the first yearly predictions thread in the Future History forum, asking members to predict what they think will happen in 2008.

November to December - The Noob Movement begins just around the time of the Great Troll Invasion.

11th of November - The Great Troll Invasion begins.

21st of November - The Dark Age of AH.COM begins when Archangel Michael decides to leave. This was not the first departure by an elite board member, but his leaving comes at a time of darkness brought on by trolls.

22nd of November - The Dark Age of AH.COM ends when Archangel Michael decides to return (despite never having stopped posting in the first place). His re-appearance also coincides with the final defeat of the evil Trollish forces.

2008

9th of January - Famed member Glen, leader of Shared Worlds, and strongest (as opposed to strangest) member alive (in terms of post count) returns to AH.Com, after a nearly six-month long absence. His brief return was marked by joyous celebration, as many had thought him dead. And no, he's not a zombie.

20th of January - After many delays, Series 3 of AH.com The Series ends almost a year to the day after it began.

31st of January - First Heterosexual Reconquista Day (see AH.com Calendar)

5th of April - The AH.com Newspaper publishes its first issue.

7th of April - Glen officially took over as moderator for the Turtledove Awards.

13th of April - Start of Series 4 of the AH.com Series

21st of April - Memetic troll Eleven11 starts his legendary "Little Boy Failed to Detonate" thread. Uncles, backup plans, Jewish tribalist hoaxes and potato-peeling soon enter the AH.com lexicon.

3rd of May - Byzantine expert Midgard returns to the Board after almost 9 months' absence. Much rejoicing is heard from resident fans, and Byzantine themed threads experience a new renaissance.

15th of May - The Great Schism begins with the accession of Pope Awesome I (aka Flocculencio). Within days, a horde of new board religions floods Non-Political Chat, including Berralutheranism.

27th of May - Adam awards d-done the "Vlad Tepes Cruelty Award", the earliest known reference to the Vlad Tepes award in the site's history.

14th of July - A thread is posted regarding Communion wafer desecration. This sparks one of the board's most infamous religious flamewars. Within a week, MrP and Archangel Michael have been kicked; many criticize this decision of IAN.

20th of July - DominusNovus declares his intention to leave the board, largely because of the above events. He stays on for a while longer. First instance of Rickrolling. The attack was minor, and mostly unnoticed by most of the board, yet it ushered in a new, dark era.

22nd of July - Calbear, zoomar and Ward all end up being kicked in a discussion about flag burning. This leaves Acting President Sargon to comment that it will be remembered as the Week of Kickings following the others that occurred earlier in the week from the Communion Wafer thread, as well as The Bald Imposter in the John McCain manhood thread and Mr Evangelical in a thread about liberals and conservatives.

The first Shared Worlds Tournament begins.

10th of September - CERN brings the LHC online. To the great disappointment of all, the world fails to end.

4th of November - In the 2008 US presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama defeats Republican John McCain. Five minutes after the result is announced, AH.com's American contingent begins discussing the runup to the 2012 election.

5th of November - After months of work and delays caused by the Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, qazaq2007 unveiled his epic blank world BAM. By 2009 this would come to be known as the Q-BAM and serve as the ultimate BAM basemap for AH.com.

2009

2nd of January - Leo euler posted the original “Things that look like alternate history, but aren't” thread in Alternate History Books and Media.

17th of January - In response to the ASB forum's teen infestation becoming intolerable, the Landshark Offensive is launched.

20th of January - President Obama is inaugurated and fluffs his presidential oath, thus clearly proving he is a commie muslim atheist terrorist who wants to impose an Evil Socialist System on the USA.

21st of January - AH.com figures out that Obama is basically the same as George W Bush, except with a Microsoft spellchecker.

15th of February - Series 4 of AH.com The Series comes to an end.

10th of March - The ASB Colonisation Map Game is posted, inaugurating a new era in forum culture.

21st of April - The AH.com People's Funny Hat Revolution storms Parliament.

28th of April - Northstar posted the original Social Thread, a staple of the Non-Political Chat forum.

3rd of May - Launch of AH.com The Next Generation, a spinoff of AH.com The Series.

7th of June - Start of Series 5 of AH.com The Series.

7th of September - Launch of AH.Com The Creepy Teen Years.

23rd of September - End of AH.COM Government RPG

26th of September - The Second Great Board Crash occurs (although technically the Third if one counts the one on the Old Board), and lasts over a day until restored by the Admin. Desperate refugees head for other websites such as counter-factual.net and Sargon's Stronghold until the crisis is over. Much rejoicing is had when the Board returns.

2010

11th of February - AH.Com The Creepy Teen Years ends its first season after only eight episodes.

12th of February - Georgepatton creates the modern Count Vlad Tepes Award for Excellence, awarding it to William Blake.

25th of May - Techathon started the original 'ban' the person above you game in NPC.

22nd of June - Northstar's Social Thread was closed and replaced by Wanderlust's Social Thread.

4th of July - US Independence Day sees a rumbling of discontent, but not about tea this time as some forum members wonder why the Board is running so slow. The Almighty Ian steps in to remark that things are being taken care of and a new server that is 4 times faster than the present one will speed things up. This of course means that addiction levels to the forums will probably increase as the numbers of posts rise along with the increase in board speed as a result of a new frenzy of contributions.

24th of July - The Date The Almighty Ian chose for the switchover.

25th of July - AH.Com runs better than it has in years. World still Here.

30th of August - AH.Com celebrated the 10th Anniversary since its founding.

9th of September - AH.Com The Creepy Teen Years returns with its second season.

11th of October - The infamous Russia Color Poll closes, ending the UCS Civil War standoff with a slight Greenshevik majority.

18th of October - Massive incursion of spam, led by Jasofina.

29th of November - Ian appointed four new moderators for the first time since the appointments of Glen and Max Sinister three years earlier: Burton K Wheeler, Calbear, Doctor What, and maverick.

1st of December - Ian the Admin opens the Public Forum thread, for adressing various questions, suggestions, and complaints related to official forum business (in an on-topic manner, of course).

2011

1st of January - 2011, the Year of the ASB, begins.

11th of January - Jay Roosevelt starts the 2016 Election: America Decides timeline, officially starting the absurd surge of American political timelines in the Future History subforum in the leadup to the 2012 elections in the United States.

19th of February - LSCatilina announced the debut of the AH.com Podcast.

21st of February - Ganesha posted the first Time Capsule thread in the Future History forum, inviting members to make predictions for what things will be like in 2013. The thread is subsequently locked, not to be reopened until 2013.

19th of March - charl posted the first episode of the AH.com Podcast.

21st-23rd of March - Fulfillment of the Modi Prophecy - The Modi Prophecy foretold of one who would bring balance to AH.Com; however, in his quest to rid the board of evil, maverick begins to strain under the pressure. His massacre of a bunch of threads leaves much of the Board and the Mod Order in chaos. A tearful Ian confronts maverick on a lava slope, before banning his ass.

28th of April - Ian quietly appointed TheDarkServant (later known as TheDarkMessiah) as the board's newest Mod, replacing the Fallen One. How TDS convinced him to do so is a classified secret known only by Ian, TDS, and the girl in the cake TDS sent him for his birthday.

22nd of June - The Board breaks IAN.

26th of June - The Shared Worlds forum no longer augments post count, significantly altering the pointless hierarchy based on such. It is also hidden from anonymous users.

8th of July - The second and third episodes of the AH.com Podcast are released. These would be final episodes of the show's original incarnation.

11th of July - Abdul Hadi Pasha is banned.

22nd of September - After a five-year long journey, Sealion returns from Brazil to Doctor What in Ottawa.

29th of September - Wanderlust's Social Thread was closed and replaced by Othyrsyde's Social Thread.

14-18th October - Unbeknownst to even himself at the time, Petike starts what will eventually become the Great Wiki Reform. Sometimes, beginnings can be so innocent. And then gradually snowball into something unprecedented

23rd of November - The Q-BAM Improvement Project begins.

24th of November - Blackadder mk2 posted the first political megathread, Official PMQ's and Other British Politics Thread, in Chat. It becomes the primary venue for discussing British politics.

2012

22nd of January - Climax of the Pony Wars. Casualties summarized here.

22nd of February - Beloved member Wolf passed away. The board mourned.

29th of February - News breaks that “Snooki”, of MTV's Jersey Shore, was pregnant. The Great Jersey War (AKA the Snooki War) erupts as a result.

5th of March - The first chapter of The End of the World: The Jersey War was posted by Noravea, immortalizing the Great Jersey War of 2012.

2nd of April - IAN disables polls in Chat on the grounds that they were cluttering the forum, prompting widespread outcry. The Retrospective Presidential Elections project is subsequently relocated to Books and Media.

7th of August - Maccaulay banned for the third, and likely final, time for breaking his promise to stay out of Political Chat.

14th of August - Two members, bizarrely, chip their front teeth within hours of each other.

16th of August - The Hall of Infamy VI thread, to cut down on off-topic posting, is removed from Chat and put in Forum Rules & Administration.

6th of September - Beloved member RobertP6165 passed away. The board mourned.

15th of September - “I'm done with politics on this board” mutates from an anti-anti-conservative complaint to a rapid-fire string of pointless posts before being locked on the thirty-third page. Thread also known as “General Discussion Thread 1”. This mega-thread gained 200 posts in 2 hours. The entire incident was over in a couple hours.

25th of October - Thespitron 6000 proposes that Disney make Star Wars on the grounds of its diverse cast.

30th of October - Disney announces its buyout of Lucasfilm.

21st of December - The scheduled end of the world and (presumably) alternatehistory.com too (though some indication exists that AH.com will outlast humanity). While the likely cause is unknown you are more than welcome to blame Thande for it.

22nd of December - We all woke up and found the world still here.

30th of December - For the first time, Glen opened recruitment for Turtledove Staff to assist with running the Annual Turtledove Awards.

2013

14th of January - 3,021 users were online at 8:35 PM US EST (0135 GMT on 15 January), the most to date. Of course, most of them were Guests, Ghosts, and Google Spiders, but a milestone nonetheless!

16th of January - TheDarkMessiah created The Pond, a thread dedicated solely to keeping track of which members have “Gone Fishing” and how long until they would return.

18th of January - In honor of robertp6165, Glen announced the creation of the Robert P. Perkins Award for Outstanding Contributions to Alternate History.

20th of January - In an unprecedented move, Medicus Verni has himself voluntarily banned until the 6th of January 2015.

7th of February - To the surprise of many, MrHuman revealed that he had just turned 13, making him only 10 years old when he first joined the board in 2010, and the first person born in the 2000s to join AH.com. At least, the first one to admit to it.

9th of February - robertp6165 became the first recipient of the Robert P. Perkins Award for Outstanding Contributions to Alternate History.

16th of February - Yelnoc, Krall, Alex Richards, and Black Angel revived the AH.com Podcast.

18th of February - The long-running Things that look like alternate history but aren't thread was moved from Alternate History Books and Media to Non-Political Chat by Burton K. Wheeler.

1st of March - The first episode of the revived AH.com Podcast premiered on Youtube.

8th of March - Beloved member Grimm Reaper passed away. The board mourned.

Meadow posted the very first TLIAD, Things Can Really Get Worse.

29th of March - Evil Opus returned to AH.com after four years.

1st of April - Leo Caesius returned to AH.com after a nearly two year absence.

16th of April - Following in Medicus Verni's footsteps, The Wandering Poet has himself voluntarily banned until April of 2015.

8th of May - The Antichrist revealed himself to AH.com, ushering in the End Times. Panic ensued.

9th of May - AYoungContrarian began posting in green.

10th of May - Riding in upon a White Steed and accompanied by a Chorus of Mods, Calbear smote the Beast of Revelation with his mighty Ban Hammer. The Apocalypse cancelled and the world saved, the board went back to bickering over more sane topics.

27th of May - The Vulture was banned. The resultant furor saw 5 members kicked in the newly established Hall of Infamy VII thread.

1st of August - After several months of prior discussions on the topic, Ian the Admin launches the brand new Alternate History Maps and Graphics forum, reserved primarily for maps and other artworks. Understandably, the board members rejoice. We wish the new forum and its users a successful future.

15th of August - As scheduled, Ian takes Alternatehistory.com offline to perform maintenance. This lasts for over 12 hours and is the longest outage for the site in several years.

16th of August - After many months of waiting, Ian the Admin decides to test new forum software and creates the Test Alternate History Discussion Board, also known as the Third Board.

22nd of August - After a series of member purges, Emperor Norton I, vultan, and Tank Cdr are banned for racism. By the 27th of August, however, Ian had commuted all three punishments to only a kick for each.

25th of August - The fourth and final incarnation of the Off-Topic Thread was locked by Burton K. Wheeler, who warned members not to create another one. Members flocked to othyrsyde's Social Thread as a result.

12th of September - Due to the huge numbers of users coming from the by-then-defunct Off-Topic Thread, othyrsyde's Social Thread was closed and replaced by Turquoise Blue's Social Thread.

26th of November - Dahveed323 starts a poll trying to remove Ian as Admin. This goes about as well as can be expected, and, while he isn't banned, Dahveed323 leaves the site.

17th of December - Dave Howery announces that the last 4 to 5 episodes of AH.Com the Series Season 5 will be aired some time in the near future, thus ending the series and paving the way for a new spinoff.

18th of December - Ian removes the link to the Old Board archive, reasoning that it was too much work trying to maintain 60,000 posts (less than 1% of the New Board in size) operating on 13 year-old software and that after 10 years few still actually used the archive for anything more than simple curiosity.

21st of December - Ian deletes the Test Board and announces that the board would be down for 12 hours on the 22nd of December for maintenance, sparking speculation that this would be the long-anticipated switch from the Second Board to the Third Board.

22nd of December - Word spreads amongst the refugees weathering the downtime at Counter-Factual.net that Ian had put up a new Test Board. Users accessing the New Test Board while Ian was still setting it up causes a critical error that forces him to start over, extending the downtime to 3 PM ET US on the 23rd of December.

23rd of December - The board returns, running better than ever but still in Second Board form. Ian explains the reason for the extended downtime and asks members not to use the New Test Board until he makes an announcement giving the go-ahead.

26th of December - Ian folds the “Announcements” forum into “Forum Rules and Administration” and then makes the forum public for everyone, not just members. He also removes the “Wiki Discussion” forum and folds it into “Help and Feedback”.

27th of December - In a brief unexplained bug, User Control Panel, Private Messages, and the Wiki stop working properly for a few hours. Nobody knows why. Also, Ian releases the New Test Board to user testing, while announcing the date of the Big Move to the Third Board.

29th of December - Francisco Cojuanco starts a thread called Ask a Catholic in which he answers people's questions about Catholicism. This unleashes an absurd number of “Ask an X” threads over the next few days.

2014

3rd of January - CalBear locks all the “Ask an X” threads and fuses them into The overarching "ask me" thread, which he stickies at the top of Chat.

26th of January - After a nearly three year long hiatus, AH.Com The Series returns with an all-new episode by Dave Howery.

12th of Febuary - Glen starts a strange thread the was partially created by his daughter here.

23-24th of February - The board goes down for several hours for unknown reasons.

24-25th of February - A troll claiming to be the kicked Vice President Mike spams the board with porn, starting the Porn Terrorism attacks. However, some doubt it was Mike. The Hall of Infamy is soon locked due to claims that its wealth of discussion of Vice President Mike was feeding the troll.

25th of February - Turquoise Blue's Social Thread is locked. Soon, Turquoise Blue's Second Social Thread.™ and TB's Social Thread mk II are created by Stolengood and metastasis_d, respectively. The War of Social Thread Succession begins. It ends when Turquoise Blue's Second Social Thread.™ is locked and TB's Social Thread mk II is renamed Boudica's Social Thread.

28th of February - The Hall of Infamy is unlocked.

10-11th of March - The board goes down overnight (assuming you're not in Asia or Australia) for over 14 hours straight, the fourth 12-hour-plus outage in less then seven months, and the second such outage in less than a month to have gone completely without explanation or warning; as the board is expected to update from vBulletin to XenForo on the 11th or 12th, speculation abounds that the downtime was due to Ian backing up the board, before changing to worries that either Russian hackers or Vice President Mike had launched a DDOS attack against the board. The tension increases when Ian is discovered to have been missing in action since several hours before the start of the crisis.

12th of March - The board goes down again for over 7 hours, less than a day after the end of the last outage. Ian explains that this is due to unplanned maintenance in an effort to resolve server instability. After another brief outage, the site stabilizes again.

15th of March - Ian upgrades the Wiki to a new style. This change is mostly well-received, although it has its vocal opponents (most notably Alternate History Geek), and, due to a small error made during the upgrade, is temporarily read-only to everyone not Ian; this is fixed relatively quickly, but the mobile version is still (as of 17th April 2014) read-only. Meanwhile, Calbear moves the Hall of Infamy from Forum Rules and Administration back to its traditional home in Chat, once again making discussion of all kicks and bans accessible to registered members only.

19th of April - Alternatehistory.com's 30,000th registered member joined the site. By day's end, AH.com had more registered members than there are people in Gibraltar.

29th of April - The Wampanoag Incident begins. d32123, Prime Minister, Tsao, and VT45 leave the board in the following days. Prime Minister returned on the 21st of October.

8th of May - Calbear announces that from this point forward all Evolution/Geologic-based timelines will be moved to the ASB forum.

22nd of June - Abhakhazia cares about Football (Soccer) for 8 seconds after the USA scores against Portugal. Brazil quits playing soon thereafter since no one could top that.

10th of July - The first Fox Comics thread begins. It is a collaborative ASB ATL, significant portions of which involve “re-imagined” public domain superhero characters alongside entirely new ones.

19th of July - Alternate History Geek, having finally tired of seeing off-topic posts in the Hall of Infamy repeatedly get deleted, creates, with the approval of CalBear, The Spillover Natter that Shouldn't Go in the Hall of Infamy Thread in which to continue off-topic discussions started in the HoI. Although he initially has trouble getting people to use the thread, it eventually catches on.

23rd of July - metastasis_d is granted control of the subreddit /r/alternatehistory. An AH.comese colony is established there by several members, beginning the Colonization of Reddit and heralding the Era of AH.comese Expansion.

25th of July - Boudica's Social Thread is locked. It is replaced by Valena's Social Thread (slightly confusingly, created not by Valena, but rather Petike).

31st of July - Colonial Governor metastasis_d annexes the subreddit /r/map on behalf of AH.com.

24th of August - 3,646 users were online at 9:43 AM US EDT (0543 GMT), breaking the previous record by several hundred.

18th/19th of September - The Scottish Independence Referendum occurs. The thread surges about 130 pages in two days and ends on page 671, making it the second largest in Chat.

20th of September - Magical Wizard founds /ahist/ on 8chan. Founding AH.Com's Second Colony. Unlike r/alternatehistory it was directly claimed by AH.Com, not taken from the AlterHist Company's control. It can be roughly summarized as AH.com equivalent of Van Dieman's Land.

25th-26th of October - Culmination of the October Crisis.

26th of November - At 03:17 PM (GMT), the post numbered 10,000,000 is made (by Meadow). It says, appropriately, “10 million get?”

2015

22nd of February - Valena's Social Thread is locked, and is succeeded by Sabot Cat's Social Thread.

27th of February - 4,301 users were online at 9:43 AM US ET (1443 GMT), breaking the previous record by nearly seven hundred. Oddly, this event appears to have occurred at the same time of day as the previous record.

28th of February - Alex Richards posts the pilot episode of AH.com Enterprise.

8th of March - Beloved ex-military member SergeantHeretic unexpectedly passed away, a fact revealed to the board two days later. The board mourned.

9th of March - After a year-long absence, Burton K. Wheeler returned to AH.com and resumed his Mod duties.

15th of March - The Great Nation Games Exodus begins. Over the next few weeks the bulk of the Nation Games community, citing lack of software and administrative support from the AH.COM administration, decamped to a new forum on Sufficient Velocity. By mid April the subforum became a ghost town with only one or two active games and no more than a dozen players left.

10th of April - A member named Candyman sent child porn to various members. Whether or not this is another attack by VPM is unknown.

14th of April - The first General American Politics thread is posted in Political Chat by Abhakhazia, modeled after the General UK Politics series of threads. Within five months it had reached its eighth iteration and over 70,000 collective posts.

20th of May - The Great Soverihn Revolt occurs.

13th of June - Calbear announces that Future Blind What If threads will no longer be considered What-Ifs and instead as either RPGs or Stories. They are all moved from the Future History forum to either Shared Worlds or the Writer's forum.

25th of July - Meadow announces the founding of Sea Lion Press. The first books published include titles by EdT, Lord Roem, and Thande.

9th of August - Sabot Cat's Social Thread is locked, being succeeded by Upvoteanthology's Social Thread.

26th of August - After another long absence, Glen returns to AH.com.

29th of August - 5,752 members were online at 5:38 AM US Eastern Daylight Time, blowing the previous record from January out of the water by 1,000 more members.

30th of August - The website celebrates its Fifteenth birthday!

1st of September - The Culling occurs. After several members point out how many old and unused accounts cluttered the members list, over 10,000 accounts are removed bringing the member list back down to about 23,000.

9th of September - It is announced that our sister site/friendly rival, Counter-Factual.net, will shutdown at the end of 2015.

26th of October - Beloved member Torqumada passed away. The board mourned.

14th of November - In the aftermath of the Paris Terrorist Attacks on November 13, several members are either banned or kicked during the November Riot for various reasons. They included revenge fantasies, bigotry, and advocating mass genocide. By November 11th, 2015, it overtook Black October in terms of the number of actions taken.

26th of November - Since this day, all the subpages of the form *address*.alternatehistory.com redirect to www.alternatehistory.com/discussion; this had the effect of making the (already long since disused) landing page formerly on alternatehistory.com unavailable entirely.

1st of December - Beloved member Gurroruo died in a car crash; the board was informed by his real life friend Ladislao. The board mourned.

3rd of December - Upvoteanthology's Social Thread reached 500 pages and was succeeded by Kaiser K's Social Thread, but, due to the mods being asleep, Upvoteanthology's Social Thread ran on to 504 pages before being locked.

16th of December - Work begins on the M-BAM, a successor to the Q-BAM. It's planned for this new basemap to be nine times larger and more detailed than the old Q-BAM basemap.

2016

4th of January - 9,986 users were online, blowing August's record out of the water.

8th of January - Ian accidentally granted Locheil mod powers for several hours, before realizing his mistake. That same day, it was discovered that Gurroruo had faked his own death after Burton K Wheeler revealed that Ladislao was a sockpuppet of Gurroruo's, in fact it was one of many sockpuppets that he had. Gurroruo never returned to the board, but did return to sufficientvelocity.com.

8th of February - Glen announces major changes to the Turtledove Awards ahead of the 2016 nominations, eliminating and consolidating many of the categories in an effort to simplify the process.

19th of February - Pulitzer Prize winning author Harper Lee passed away at the age of 89. Almost simultaneously, AH.com goes down and proceeds to suffer the longest outage in nearly two years.

8th of March - Kaiser K's passing is broken to the board by a family member. The board mourned.

9th of March - Due to a server error, the site is down for nearly 20 hours - the worst outage since the Great Crash of '04.

7th of May - Ian announces the upgrading of the New Board from its vBulletin software to the XenForo software. The transfer of board data to the new software is planned to occur between the 12th and 15th of May.

12th of May - The Second Board goes dark. It will take days to transfer numerous posts from the Second Board to the Third Board. The wiki is rendered unoperational, even after the Third Board is opened.

15th of May - After years of anticipation, the Third Board, based on XenForo software, comes online a day before schedule.

18th of May - Someone began to tag many threads across the site with “We Must Build A Canal”, an ASOIF meme. Once noticed by other members, it took on a life of its own and spread like wildfire.

19th of May - The Wiki is rendered operational once again. Users are now required to register with Ian in order to edit.

20th of May - Due to the rapid proliferation of the “We Must Build A Canal” meme in thread tags, Ian disabled the ability to tag threads members didn't create, noting “Despite the board's age limits, some posters are apparently twelve years old.”

2nd of October - Beloved member Beauhooligan passed away. The board was informed on the 19th of February 2018 and mourned.

25th of October - The Shared Worlds forum undergoes its biggest reorganisation in years. The three subforums (Map Games, Nation Games, Moderated Games) are cancelled and merged with the rest of the main forum. Newly introduced genre-based tags for the titles of Shared Worlds threads are used as a substitute, allowing to sort games by genre or type without a need to add new subforums.

29th of November - Sea Lion Press publishes their first paperback titles.

1st of December - After nearly eight years, Glen announces he will be stepping down as managing editor for the Turtledove Awards.

14th of December - Glen names SargentHawk as the new managing editor of the Turtledove Awards. Glen remains involved, but only in an advisory role.

2017

2nd of March - Ian reveals to us that Linda Besner of Real Life Magazine wrote a whole article about alternate history fans and writers online, with a hefty portion of the article focusing on AlternateHistory.com and the ups and downs of its community. Ian was briefly interviewed by the article's author.

19th of March - Ian introduces voluntary donations to the boards. Members are henceforward able to make one-off or regular monthly donations either publicy or anonymously to contribute towards the running costs of AH.com. Many members, long desirous of a way to help out financially with the board welcome this announcement.

21st of March - partly thanks to the exceptionally successful donations available since the 19th, and partly in an effort to counter mounting clutter in the ASB forum and NPC forum, Ian the admin creates two new forums, both for discussing established fictional universes and non-AH works of fiction. The Fandom AH Forum in the Discussion section, for the fanfic timelines, stories, etc. based on existing fiction, and the Media and Fandom Forum in the Off-Topic section, for general discussions of existing fiction (from other genres than alternate history).

21st-22nd, 23rd-24th of March - The April 2017 Big Weekend Crash. Something went awry with the web server, resulting in two different board crashes from Friday to Saturday and Sunday to Monday. Luckily, Ian fixed the issues by the start of the new week.

29th of April - Sea Lion Press launches its Patreon.

19th of August - Beloved member ppaul16 passed away. The board mourned.

2018

24th of January - We received unexpected sad news about the untimely passing of Just Leo, one of the board members that were most knowledgeable about aviation.

28th of April - Criminal kingpin Ephraim Ben Raphael sends his sister a care package. Tony Montana is reportedly pleased.

23rd of March - Having grown tremendously since its founding, Sea Lion Press launches its own message board, Sea Lion Press Forums. Many AH.com members, particularly British members, join the new community.

23rd of May - Burton K Wheeler locked the final Ban Thread, citing that the threads had reached a “critical mass of drama”. Many of the members who frequented the Ban threads shifted over to the ATL Meetup threads in Shared Worlds.

19th of July - chankljp received a mysterious package from Germany containing a military-themed first day cover from the DDR during the 1970s’, and an authentic Hitler postage stamp from the Nazi-era during WW2 plus a small, handwritten note in English that addressed him by name. AH.commers quickly conclude this is the work of time traveling pranksters.

16th of August - The Fake MrP Incident rocks the board.

19th of August - Information had surfaced that Beauhooligan, who hadn't visited in a long while, died already in October 2016. Though the possibility had been speculated about before, it was only more than a year later that we found out about this. Coupled with Just Leo's recent passing, the loss of a member who frequented the site for many years hurt.

7th of September - With site crashes happening frequently, Ian mentions that he hopes to move the site to a new server without increasing any costs. Thanks to the generosity of members during the 2017 donation drive, the site is funded through at least mid-2019.

26th of September - After a five year absence, longtime member LordMoogi returns to the board.

2019

26th of January - SargentHawk opens nominations for the 2019 Turtledove Awards, announcing new categories for Best Pop Culture Timeline and Best Chat Timeline.

26th of February - mattep74 is struck by a car while cycling. Thankfully he survives, although he loses part of a finger in the process.

18th of April - Thande marks the occasion as real life catches up, this day being the far future date referenced in the very first line of Look to the West.

9th of July - In a major shakeup, the Administration forums are moved from the top of the forum list to near the bottom in between Wiki and Off Topic sections. The Help and Rules forum is divided into separate forums, both of which are no longer public. In probably the biggest change of all, Ian shuts down the Hall of Infamy, moving kick and ban reports to the new Rules forum and dramatically reforming the way bans/kicks are discussed in an effort to cut down on chatter and bickering.

9th of October - saint polype discovers a bizarre eldritch creature on the shores of Normandy, clearly establishing him as the protagonist in a Lovecraftian horror tale.

3rd of November - Mr. BoJangles returns to the board after an extended absence.

8th of November - Our cover is blown. Members move rapidly to hide and dispose of the evidence.

18th of November - Miranda Brawner announces the first in what is planned to be a series of biweekly writing contests, posting the main thread in the Before 1900 Forum.

30th of November - After twelve years in the Future History forum, the yearly predictions thread for 2020 is moved to Chat. The Time Capsule thread follows shortly after in December.

19th of December - SergeantHeretic's Social Thread, the longest to date, finally reaches its 501st page and is replaced with Social Thread 2020-.

30th of December - Ian announces that the site will be upgrading to Xenforo 2 in January 2020, moving the site to its fourth incarnation. He opens a Test Board in preparation for the move, adding that the actual move will come with an outage that may last two to three days.

2020

3rd of January - The site is taken down for maintenance as Ian begins the update to Xenforo 2. Chaos ensues worldwide as AH.commers, unable to get their alternate history fix, wreak havoc.

4th of January - The site returns in shiny new form. Ian begins the process of tweaking and bug fixing leading to several very short outages over the next few weeks.

10th of January - As part of the ongoing tweaks in the wake of the upgrade, Ian announced several changes to the Likes system. Most controversially, Likes were from this point forward disabled in Political Chat.

Early February - A user points out to e of pi that links are broken on the Eyes Turned Skyward Chapter Page. Investigating, e of pi finds that the links on all wiki pages were broken at one point in board updates. He creates a script to automatically fix every link on a page, and begins a multi-week project to correct all posts on the wiki. This page was fixed 2/5/2020, and in the process e of pi inserted this record. Also noted was that attachment links are broken as well, but fixing will be a second project, fortunately effecting fewer total pages.

3rd of June to 8th of June - Ian announces that he was the victim of doxing, and that he was denied access to a private discord maintained by some members to investigate. These members informed him that he was “pre-banned”. Fighting and infighting ensue, and by the time the dust clears, twenty-six people (many of which were long-time, established members of the site) were banned.

30th of August - Alternatehistory.com turns 20 years old!

2021

April 10 - Ian announces that threads in Chat and Non-Political Chat that have been inactive for six months will be entirely deleted from the forums. This was done for a variety of reasons. First, it would speed up the board, as it would free up memory space. Second, and most important, it would protect member privacy, as many have previously posted political opinions they have long since move on from, several have discussed gender-transitions, and some mused on old relationships. This was met with a mix of approval and concern, with some pushing back on Ian’s announcement. Ian conceded to only deleting threads that haven’t been active for a year, but remained adamant that this was the right course of action for the board.

April 18 - Ian begins the process that is, from here forward, called the Great Deletion. Thousands of threads are moved to specially created subforums and out of Non-Political Chat and Chat, scheduled to be deleted the next month. The Great Deletion would be on track to remove nearly 8 million posts, some dating back to 2004. A few notable threads would avoid the Great Deletion and be placed in a special Archive subforum.

2022


See Also

Some statistics on AH.com - Mostly concerning membership of the site and its development over time.

Alternatehistory.com turns fifteen years old today!

AH.com Structure


offtopic/ah.com_-_a_chronology.txt · Last modified: 2022/05/21 13:28 by max_sinister

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