Back in October of 1997 a young Internet surfer called Sean was reading Usenet when he stumbled upon a post which asked the question, "why do we have to view nothing but these huge dicked guys? Where are all the average to small ones?" Sean responded with, "yeah, where are all the small guys? Maybe I should start a club!" This was the moment that marked the creation of Measurection.com, a website for men endowed with smaller-to-average sized penises. Measurection.com began life as a discussion board called the small-X-change, hosted on a free webserver. But Sean didn't count on it becoming an overnight hit and within days the site was racking up over 30,000 hits/day.
The rapidly increasing traffic made it necessary to shift the site to a dedicated server. Sean wasn't happy with the name either, so decided to change the name to Measurection. While small-X-change was totally focused on the "small" issue, Measurection would be a more general term, based on the word "resurrection" while having elements of "measure" and "erection" in it.
Sean believed the new name would fit the mission and goals of the site. He was convinced that guys needed reassurance that they weren't alone and that a man's penis size shouldn't be a prohibitive factor impacting his sexual well-being.
It wasn't too long before Sean, who is largely non-technical, was overwhelmed with the daily operations and had to take on someone to help. Measurection's current webmaster, Josh, joined in 2001 and is now responsible for the overall operations of the site. "I started out just as a normal member of the site," said Josh. "I was initially very happy to learn that I wasn't alone with my issues. I received the help and support that I needed to appreciate my body for what it is. When something helps you so profoundly you want to shout it from the rooftops, you want to help everyone else who needs it." Since then, Josh and Sean have had to recruit another administrator and several moderators to help them manage the ever-growing site.
"It's amazing because I was member number 117, and recently we just celebrated our 40,000 registration. Growth has been phenomenal," said Josh. "There are generally 40 to 50 new registrations a day and a couple of hundred new posts per day."
"We get questions about penis size related insecurities, about the shape of the penis, about erectile dysfunction, about sexuality, about relationships, questions about everything," said Josh. "We've had suicidal users who are very troubled come full-circle when they get the help they needed. We really believe in our role of promoting self-acceptance."
Measurection is supported to a large extent by its members. Those members came forward when the hosting and bandwidth costs became too great and launched a Save Our Site campaign to collect voluntary donations. The site has been member supported ever since. "We do have paid access as well, which gives access to special forums, email addresses and some other additional perks but by and large we are supported by donations," explained Josh. "Our main support forums are free and open to the general public, and they always will be. We want men everywhere to receive the support and help they need. We are the real deal, a support network dedicated to helping men with men's issues."
