Ha, fun topic!
Most of the blanks have been filled in.
Leah and DeShawn (mantiskingdom.com) began the forum (help me out here, Orin). There's some gossipy stuff from that first year or so that I wonder if Rick privately recalls. I was in the hobby before this forum, but dabbled mostly in phasmids (some 100 species), but was branching out into other groups. In 2000-2001 I ran a business called Mysterious Creatures with a friend, Lowell Brodersen, and that's when we brought in Phyllocrania paradoxa and coined the term "ghost mantis" for them. Orin tells me we weren't the first to have them in the US, but I imported them legally from Germany and I do suspect I was the only one bringing them in "legally" and that we were the most mainstream source offering them. A few years later, I actually became a member of mantisforum, but, being the bug generalist I am, the single-insect theme of this forum was a little slow moving for me so my attention span prevented participation. It just seemed like a neat place with a devoted following for one of my favorite insect groups, so I thought I should be a member. Besides, some pretty big names in the hobby frequented the site including my friends, Orin and DeShawn, and later, Yen.
Orin bought the site from the previous owner(s). (mantidforum.com)
A few years(?) after that, the forum's software platform was outdated and it was plagued with spam. Orin and I had worked together to move the Allpets Roach Forum over to a new software set at roachforum.com and he asked me if I wanted to buy mantidforum. I think I probably gave him twice as much as he was expecting (and he still has a good laugh to himself each month when I pay the $80 or whatever bill, I'm sure).
On an interesting side note, I bought mantidforum.com from Orin but he was not able to get the person he bought it from to release that name to me. So, we actually migrated the site over to mantidforum.net (which still kind of irks me when I think about it every two years or so ;-). At least I got all the old content of the forum.
Rick has been the power-moderator on this forum since further back than I can remember. I'd love to hear, actually, how you became a moderator Rick, and whether it was when Orin was owner or the other two.
So, yeah, aside from the growing number of Forum Supporters who help us out with their yearly contributions, my two sites BugsInCyberspace.com and DeadInsects.net foot the bill for this forum. More than the money it costs though, the commitment that Rick and Orin show, and now Tammy for this past year, is more valuable to me than every dollar I dump into this place. And the costs for running this is just my way of giving back to a community of people that do two things I really appreciate. Love bugs and buy them from me for many, many years now!
So, there's a snapshot of my version of MF history. I'm off to photograph some moths for National Moth week. Caught a very nice
Arctia caja tiger moth, last night:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/810545
And on Thursday I'm off to the Bugguide.Net Annual Gathering!
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/2013gathering/ and may drop in at the American Tarantula Society Conference that is being held nearby, simultaneously. Orin and I went in 2009 and it was a hoot!
http://atshq.org/conference.php
Never a dull moment when you like everything that crawls!
