Announcing the Stack Exchange Time Machine [on hold]

Question

We are living in the gold age of user-generated content. Anyone can post a joke before breakfast, become a meme by lunch and be fired for the joke at the end of business. Ok, it's more like the "tin age", but still a unique moment in human history. Here at Stack Exchange, we're doing our part by hosting some of the very best content produced entirely by individual users at scale. I think it's fair to say we are the Wikipedia of Q&A.

It all started back in 2008 with a site named after a class of bug. Even so, it achieved some popularity within the developer community. The network first expanded to fairly technical topics, but very quickly sites popped up for just about every form of human knowledge including an endless variety of CMS and blockchain schemes. In the days BSE (Before Stack Exchange) it was certainly possible to share knowledge. There were podcasts and blogs and forums and Geocities pages. You could post on someone's Wall or microblog or be Tom's friend. And of course there were wikis and social news sites with alien mascots. But none of them capitalized on the simple genius of the question and answers format quite like Stack Exchange.

The Web turned 30 this year and we got to thinking it's too bad Stack Exchange sites have only been part of a third of that history. What, we pondered, would the world be like if Stack Exchange had started back in the year 2000 1998? Relieving you of the need to imagine it, we are proud to announce a new Time Machine feature that lets you experience Stack Exchange before its time.

What's that? It says "WELCOME TO STACKOVERFLOW" you say? I asked our designers about that and they tell me dank fonts don't need lower case. Oh, you mean why isn't it STACKEXCHANGE? That's a bit of a time travel paradox. We set the baseline at 2008, but the Stack Exchange brand didn't really show up until a couple of years later. We have our crack quantum mechanics working on it. Once they patch the timeline, we won't have any way of knowing.

As you explore the Stack Exchange off-ramp of the Information Superhighway keep your eyes peeled for content that could only exist in the '90s such as:

• Crystal Pepsi
• Spice Girls
• Funny Jim Carrey
• Descent secrets
• Pokémon or Digimon?
• Transgressive Simpsons
• Unblemished Star Wars movies

Feel free to note especially appropriate examples in the answers below, but please don't spoil The Sixth Sense.

Answer 1

Although the page footer saying

Best viewed in Netscape 3.0

StackExchange websites can't really be opened by Netscape 3 due to unsupported algorithms for TLS.

Answer 2

I find your lack of <blink> tags </blink> disturbing.

Answer 3

Had Stack Exchange (and all the supporting infrastructure) been around in 1998, the 'Y2K bug' would have been a flash in the pan.

• Q: Why does my system crash?
• Response: Question closed for lack of research.

Then again, maybe not. :P

Answer 4

I have only one thing to say: KEEP THE GUESTBOOK!

I mean, who wouldn't want to tell the world "OMG HAHAHA"?

Answer 5

I love this - the only thing I'm really surprised at is the seeming omission of the visitor counter.

How are we to know how many 1337 h4xx0rs have visited each page???

But this is great - reminds me when Geocities was the pinnacle of what the Internet had to offer :)

Edit: Well, silly me. I didn't see it by the OP, I was expecting to see it at the bottom above/below the guestbook. I know know how many h4xx0rs have seent it :D

Answer 6

April fool day

Answer 7

Just tried it on my i486DX with dial-up and Mosaic-browser and it looks as expected. The only downside was that I had to wait for 27 minutes for the page to load.. ;)

Answer 8

This is great! But I'm having trouble with one thing -- your frames aren't adjustable! I tried and tried and I couldn't get the controls to pop up over the division between the left and right frames. Also, isn't there supposed to be a line between them?

Answer 9

First of all, you need two versions of this page:

"Under Construction" should be a link leading to an empty page with the following information:

Also, each page must have this gadget with as many digits as possible:

The number should increment on every page refresh.

And don't forget to add this:

Answer 10

It STILL does NOT run with 640K memory!!

You need to free more conventional memory!!! *****^^^^^^^+++++++______+++++^^^^^^^******

Answer 11

Beautiful tribute to the internet's 30th birthday. Loved the comic sans.

The team at StackOverflow knows what's up. Proud of you :) :) :)

Answer 12

I've been seeing the unicorn like this the whole time:

Answer 13

I think I've disabled this about a dozen times now, and I expect at least a few more today :|.

That is: both of the computers I use, each of my browser profiles on both of those computers, as well as every single site in the Stack Exchange network.

This really needs to have a single disable for all sites (either using cookies, if possible, or storing a setting on one's user profile, although this won't help with anonymous visitors).

Answer 14

Can you please make it work on profile and homepage as well? It only works when I'm on an actual question, and that makes me sad

Answer 15

Check it out:

Answer 16

It may not be very popular, but can I keep it for longer?
It keeps a good mood ;]

Answer 17

Thank you for rescuing me from....

..the barrage web perfection,

the high expectations, the sleepless nights, of debugging syntax, obsessing about border spacing, my inferiority complex, at not getting it right first time, the crazy ugly neatness, mind numbingly created by armies of...

Zombies like me. Brainwashed into forgetting how things used to be...

Although... if you really want to impress me, MAKE THIS BLINK. In rainbow colors.

Once again, thank you for making my day. Thank you for making me feel a little bit more human, and a little less numb. Thank you for making the Web a friendlier place, a little more human, always.

We love you!

Edit: I just noticed the color of the left bar changing as I scroll down. Wheee!!! That's so cool!
Edit: Wheee!!! Glitter in Chromium!

Answer 18

>Y2K jokes

For those nostalgic about unwarranted doomsday calling, this April 6th we are getting the 1024‑weekly GPS rollover, just saying.

Answer 19

Can we keep this? It's better than the "responsive" theme dumped on the beta sites?

Answer 20

MEMORANDUM

To: Design Department

From: Time Continuity Bureau

Subject: Navigation Enhancement

Message: Urgent, please use over designed graphical elements for the navigational links. Attached are examples for use (including "hover states") which have been submitted by the Dept. of Authenticity. Your designers may use them freely without concern for copyright as they do not "officially" exist in your time.

Be aware that failure to comply with this request has catastrophic effects in our time!

Answer 21

I like this even more than Space Jam.

Answer 22

This is nice and all, but I've noticed a troubling use of GIFs. As we all know, Unisys is trying to enforce their patents and charge us for using their new-fangled image format. We should remove all GIFs and become a certified GIF-free zone, at least until 2003 when the patent expires!

We need to replace all GIFs and add this to the footer:

This site is certified GIF-free. All images on this site are either JPG or PNG. Unisys are trying to charge all webmasters $5000 for the use of GIF images, which are patented. Don't let them get away with it!

Answer 23

This is not the real thing. ;)

I've created an update for your message board that is compatible with all internet browsers:

body {
  background-color: #0C0D0E;
}

marquee {
  border-bottom: 4px solid #32E830;
}

<marquee>
  <img src="https://meta.stackexchange.com/content/Img/april-fools-2019/headline.gif?v=f81430a4e488" alt="Welcome to Stack Overflow">
</marquee>

Answer 24

The wizard for creating a new question should be guided by clippy.

Answer 25

My only reaction is to say "what in the fresh bowels of hell is this nonsense?".

I don't need to turn it off at every individual site - just each one where it's happening - which I don't know until I go to them. Great, more toggles to muck around with.

Please, stop doing things that aren't thought-out.

Answer 26

I like the fact that it's actually Proudly built in notepad
But, VIM for life everyone
P.S. don't start a emacs vs vim battle

P.P.S. Did they just say that this site was built in Windows? Win 98?

Answer 27

Mercy! Please, mercy!! Make it stooop!!!

Well at least a meta posting debut to remember..

Please save it somewhere once it is stopped. :)

Answer 28

It really is better in Netscape Navigator 3.0 :D

I've been using 2.0 for years, thanks for the heads up on the newer version!

Answer 29

I thought it would be interesting to see how this impacted new users, so I gathered some statistics about how many new users created an account on Stack Overflow during the last 24 hours compared to the same period previous weeks. I looked at how many Stack Overflow accounts were created between Sunday 19.51 UTC and Monday 19.51 UTC this week (when the time machine was enabled) and the previous weeks (when the time machine didn't exist). This is what I found:

• Today: 8398 new Stack Overflow users
• 1 week ago: 5143 new Stack Overflow users
• 2 weeks ago: 5227 new Stack Overflow users
• 3 weeks ago: 6082 new Stack Overflow users
• 4 weeks ago: 5280 new Stack Overflow users

This means that 55% more users created a Stack Overflow account today than on a normal Monday. I'm not sure why this is, but looking at the numbers, this doesn't seem to be a coincidence. Maybe the new users liked the time machine. Maybe they were annoyed by this bug and thought creating an account would solve the problem. Maybe there are other reasons that I haven't thought of.

Answer 30

I don't mind this for the most part, but this rule:

        .container .favicon {
            background-image: url("https://cdn.sstatic.net/Img/april-fools-2019/broken-image.png?v=a2722a3b4e69");
            background-position: 0px;
        }

is kind of obnoxious. I like being able to tell which site a question is from, and this single-handedly forces me to disable the joke.