jdporter kindly messaged me with still more vital historical information missing from my original post.

Though correctly identifying Ryan "dembones" Postma as one of the early Everything developers, I somehow totally missed that he was also the ninth Perl Monk! He seems to be quite mysterious, at least I couldn't find any specific contribution made to Perl Monks by dem bones (2021 update: Zombified user account on Selected Best Nodes adds to the mystery).

No 8a: dem bones

Node id: 1329; user since: Dec 23 1999 at 21:49 UTC; last here: Dec 12 2000; Experience: none; 0 posts.

Other Hope/Calvin College students from the early days who registered at Perl Monks include krikke (Josh Krikke) and Robo (Rob Oostendorp).

Gratifyingly, jdporter confirmed the correctness of my guesses about:

• Jonathan Pater
• Darrick Brown
• Patrick Schoonveld
• Bryan D Thomas

The revered paco, of course, is no test account. He's a real person all right, and, tantalizingly, jdporter revealed that he had some sort of mysterious, perhaps supernatural, association with the early BSI developers. The paco mystery deepens!

Update March 2021: jdporter noticed a mystery user trigger, the earliest user with no valid email on file (that is, his email field has no '@' in it). The mysterious trigger wrote just four nodes (consecutive node ids: 10895-10898), all made on May 10 2000, before disappearing the very next day.

• Re: Static news system and Reaped: Re: Static news system and Reaped: Re: Static news system - these first three nodes appear to be essentially identical! I found these quotes interesting: "i dont know anything about mysql though, even though my service does have it" and "before i really get the site up i figured i should learn perl enough to satisfy me and stuff, it won't be up for a while". Was trigger an expert in provisioning web sites ... but lacking mysql and Perl chops?
• RE: Re: Static news system - This quote "the answer is yes to everything (for the hosting service i will be choosing)" suggests he was answering a question (which appears to be lost?). Perhaps asking him about possible PM site improvements?

Unlike the legend BBQ (a pioneer user from Dec 24 1999 last seen Apr 07 2009), trigger did not join PM until May 10 2000 and only visited us for one day, last seen May 11 2000.

Was the mysterious trigger a consultant from an external organisation, helping the Hope College kids improve the early Perl Monks web site? No! It seems BBQ managed to salvage trigger's original question in Re: Static news system as:

hi, i'm very new to perl, very... how can I make a simple news system for a static page with a comment section? where you log in as an admin and are confronted with news submissions form? i dont know much at all so...explain very thoroughly please...i dont know much at all with perl

using server side and stuff, so the news will look good too, not just slopped together, kind of like slashcode, but minus everything else and simpler than the slashcode news and comment system, please. i'm very new and would like to learn a lot more, slashcode was of no help to me, and i want to do something much simpler although easy, i know this is a large request, but please help

Disappointingly, it seems the mysterious trigger was just a random early PM newbie asking a question about how to create a simple news system ... who somehow managed to mangle the early PM node integrity (presumably due to a PM bug) ... which resourceful legend BBQ worked around by pasting trigger's original question into his reply. Sadly, trigger was more PM vandal than PM legend ... I wonder what he is up to today?