Does anyone know when the ETS forums started?
Before me at least! I started by lurking in 1999 and it was an established forum at that time; my first post was just after 9/11. Some years back I believe ETS had a computer HD failure and had to reboot and rebuild the user list. That's how I got user #34.
Doing a bit of looking around, the ABOUT page says ETS was established in 1994 but based on Doug's postings on CompuServe. Not bad since the WWW has only been around since 1991 in the lab and 1993 in the general public.

By comparison, I've been online since 1986.