Hooray for 2008! All the best users joined the forum then
The GoF had a huge impact on my personal growth as well, its quite a remarkable site and bunch of people. My Welcome thread is basically the first thing I ever posted on the internet under my own identity (everything earlier was like Wikipedia edits), so I basically learned how to behave online through how y'all treated me. And I couldn't have picked a better group to learn from!
I remember when landbeforetimelover messaged me a few days after I joined saying he'd removed the white background from my avatar (the same sandwich you see now) just because he figured I'd like it to look nicer. I was blown away by receiving a random act of charity from a regular when I didn't even have 10 posts yet. And then, sometime later, when I posted a cryptic vaguely-alarming message and left the forum without explaining why (wasn't y'all, was teenage depression mixing with real-life stresses overwhelming me) Malte emailed me to ensure I was alright, (he actually did it twice! Once immediately, and once a month later after I didn't reply to the first.) I never thought people online would care about other users to that degree, and his act of caring really helped me get through a tough emotional point in my life.
So yeah, I guess I'm trying to say I owe a lot to the GoF too, and I'm really glad its stuck around all these years. The current bunch of admins (especially rhombus, Mumbling, and nick22) really put a lot of work into fostering a positive and healthy community, carrying a torch that's been burning as long as I've been a part of the forum and earlier.
