Actually, of the "on-line communities" I visit regulary, perlmonks is my
least favourite. These are the communities I visit regulary, in backwards
order of when I joined:
Perlmonks. Since 2Q 2002 as 'Abigail-II', before that as Abigail,
with about a year of not being here.
alt.sysadmin.recovery. I joined this Usenet group in 1997 or 1998.
I recently ended my year long vacation from Usenet.
IRC, #perl. Since early 1997. Certainly the busiest community I visit.
Of all the people I know both in RL and from an on-line community,
I know most of them from IRC.
p5p, the perl5-porters mailing list. Since about the same time as IRC.
I'm a member of about a dozen mailinglists (the exact number varies
over time), but this is the only one that gives me some sense of
a community.
comp.lang.perl.misc, previously comp.lang.perl. Since Januari 1995,
the same day I started to use Perl. This community has given me
the best exposure over the years.
VikingMUD, since 1993, and before that, IgorMUD, since 1991. My most
precious community. By far the least amount of traffic, but I've
spend 1354 days there. That 1354 * 24 hours being online there.
It has given me jobs and some very deep (and long) friendships.
nl.eeuwig.september, split-off from nl.misc, which was called
nlnet.misc before, and nlnet.general even before that. Been part
of that community since 1988 - some members go back even further.