Do any of you guys know when The Answerbank started and what was the first question asked. I have been a contributor (not as prolific as many of you) since August 2004 and i wondered how late i was to the party ?
Andy Hughes was, indeed, one of the people who piloted The Answerbank into existence but, as my link shows, he didn't post the first question. However many questions and answers in the early days of any site like this one will be posted by members of the editorial team, or those close to them, just to make the site appear active (rather than because anyone actually wants to know anything). Nobody's going to post on a site that doesn't appear to have any members!
The removed posts might have appeared several years after the question first was and possibly came from people who've since been banned (resulting in the removal of their posts from the site). Two people in particular spent several years, under various usernames, posting foul rubbish all over the site.
Ah, but when was the first 'real' question? The first 100-odd questions were all asked by ATOB2 on Fri 01st Dec 2000 (quite some going), so I've always assumed they were simply to populate the site and get things started.