Democratic Underground is 25 years old today [View all]

[EarlG]

Many of you already know the story of how this site got started: following the (s)election of George W. Bush in 2000, two twenty-something liberal web designers, angry at the outcome, and aghast that there didn't seem to be any competition to right-wing web communities like Free Republic at the time, threw together a site and promoted it by waving a hand-painted DEMOCRATICUNDERGROUND.COM banner at Bush's inauguration in DC on January 20th, 2001. The rest is now quite literally history.

Unfortunately I don't have a copy of what the site looked like on launch day, but this is pretty close -- below is a screenshot of the DU homepage from February 19, 2001, just under a month after we launched. If you want to know how times have changed, note that at the bottom of the page, we offered people the option to contact us by fax



At launch DU was intended to be more of an article-driven site than a web community. This was before the age of blogs, so one draw of the site was that we would publish articles by regular people who couldn't get published by mainstream media. It's hard to believe now, but at the time this was somewhat revolutionary.

The discussion forum was initially an afterthought. We tacked it on at the last minute, having never operated or even given much thought to running such a thing, and it quickly became apparent that it was going to take up more of our time than we realized -- mainly because the forum was immediately flooded with freepers and trolls, and at launch the forum software didn't even have the ability to ban people.

Over the years, as blogs and then social media became widespread, the need to provide a space for liberal authors to get published waned, and DU's discussion forum community essentially overtook the entire site.

I'm not sure how many websites there are out there that have been in continuous existence for 25 years, but I suspect the number is not enormous. I believe that DU is still here because after all this time, there still isn't anything exactly like it on the Internet. We wanted to create a place where people from the center to the left can have civil discussions, free from right-wing trolls and disruptors. And we still strive for that goal every day, thanks to the efforts of DUers serving on Juries and as Hosts, taking part in MIRT, and -- most importantly -- simply posting in a civil manner, with the intent of having a good conversation.

And really, that is why DU is still going strong after a quarter century -- because of all of you, and the community that you have created here. We built it, and you came -- and you keep coming back, after all these years.

DU would not exist without all of you. So thank you for being here, no matter how long you've been here.