...well, it's #1, at least.

 

In the face of silence from Max and Ron, and as the longest-serving PA forum member still active (I was the third person to join the forum, after "Dude" and Maani/Ian Alterman), I believe I can shed some light on this, if memory serves:

 

Over five years ago, I stumbled upon PA, quite by accident. At that time, there was no forum, but there was a guest book, which I (and Maani, and a few others) used to post in. PA was already a going concern Max and Ron purchased it as a pre-existing entity), and already featured reviews. Max and Ron were among the reviewers, as was, I do believe, one Eric Neutboom (sp?), who, I believe, wrote reviews semi-professionally, and had his stuff on the site (though not, I believe, written expressly for PA.

 

(I hope I am naming the right person -- I do know he had tons of reviews, and they used to flood in!)

 

I soon offered my services as a reviewer, and as one who could help with language issues (both owners are Francophones, and much of the site's text was in non-standard English), and when Maani noticed the "Prog Reviewer" title attached to my name and reviews, he asked me how I had gotten that "vaunted" status. Soon he too was an official PA reviewer.

 

if you look at the list of PA Collaborators, the Reviewers are listed in the order in which they joined (thus I am near the top), but this later changed a bit to give "place of precedence" to those with administrative/moderating duties. Thus Maani appears right before me -- despite his becoming a PA Reviewer after me -- because he later became the forum's first Moderator. Still, reviewers are mostly listed in order of joining. You can then view an individual PA Reviewer's reviews chronologically, simply by selecting that option when viewing his or her list of reviews.

Here's a link to the first review I wrote, anyway. It dates from December 2nd, 2003 -- like all PA reviews, its exact submission date appears on it. You may notice that compared to those I later wrote, my early reviews were rather brief, and somewhat lacking in detail. (I later augmented many of those early efforts):

 

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=23257 - http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=23257

 

 

 

I would likely have "joined" PA (that is, started posting in the original guest book) some few days before writing that first review of mine. I guess I became an "official" Reviewer immediately prior to my submission of that review.

 

 

I was one of the first to strongly push for a forum, BTW, after Max had indicated the possibility of starting one, and sought input as to what features we might like to have added to the site. 

 

Thank you for pushing for the forum, without it I don't know what I'd be doing right now...probably sleeping .

 

I envy those who were first around when PA just started. You get the awesome user names...pretty much anything you'd like