lou said:
the very first posts were made in May 2000, though she doesn't have an exact date for that, as for the current incarnation of the site it was set up on the 2nd of August, 2001.
Do you know what is meant by "current incarnation"? Were there two consecutive versions or appearances of the forum? I think the answer to that question is important.
If we assume that significant changes to a prior site effectively resulted in a new forum (the Aeclectic familiar to us), I would take the exact time and date of the first post as equivalent to the site's "first breath." The first post might have been made by Solandia, herself, inviting others to join her; in any event, hopefully the time and date were specified as part of the post (as they are today). If there happened to be a record of the time and date when Solandia first clicked the "publish" button for the site, then those (rather than the time and date of the first post) are the data I would use. In either case, Solandia's location as Aeclectic's creator/webmaster would provide the latitude and longitude.
If, on the other hand, today's Aeclectic is simply a more sophisticated version of a prior site, then I believe its birthdate and time remain uncertain. The data for the first post on the present forum might provide the basis of a secondary chart, but would not represent its core.