This is one of the more esoteric tags, because it was specific to alt.fan.dragons, being a kind of descriptor of how long someone had been part of, or how well-integrated someone was, with the community.

Baxil explained, “It's one of the great running jokes of alt.fan.dragons that there are two types of dragons: Old Fruits and Young Nuts. Nobody really knows what makes a Fruit (also variously called Olde Fruites); it's been the subject of much debate. Generally, though, if everybody knows your name, and people generally listen to your rants, you're a Fruit.

“I've been told I was a Fruit from the time I joined AFD, so fruitiness doesn't always come just with age. But nearly all of the dragons who have been around for a year are Fruits – those who can't outgrow their Nuttiness generally leave. (Trust me, there are a lot of nutty fruits around, though.)”

As Wyrm's site puts it: “No-one really knows why the regulars of alt.fan.dragons are called 'fruits'. It's one of those things that's just evolved over time. Many claim that one is called a Fruit after one's first year, but this is not really true. Fruitiness is also a lot to do with ones attitude, amount of involvement, and interaction with other contributors to the group.”

If you happen to know what sort of fruit or nut you are, you can specify it after the rating in “double quotes”. Apparently Baxil (the original maintainer of the code) was a Fr+++“kiwi”.

For reference, alt.fan.dragons came into existence on 1993/12/01, presumably part of the explosion of Usenet use arising from Eternal September. At the time I was most active, mostly the early 2000s, fruitiness/nuttiness seemed to be rarely mentioned outside of the Dragon Code, so the concept may have faded out somewhat with generational turnover. As a result, I may be missing a significant amount of context here.

When the original Dragon Code was being created, two standards for measuring fruitiness were proposed: one was based on time spent participating, and the other was based on “fruitlike attitude and tendencies”. As Baxil said, “Both of them provide useful yardsticks, but I don't think one has any inherent advantages over the other, so I've kept both. My personal recommendation is that you choose the standard that works best for you, and then just give yourself +/-'s based on that standard. You are under no obligation to reveal which standard you are judging yourself on.”

I don't think I ever made it past Fr++, one way or the other.

I remember when humans ruled the newsgroup!: I assume that this was before otherkin-dom and therianthropy became prominent in the AFD community. If so, it must have been very early on, as sources give references to accommodations between different approaches to dragon-ness within a year or so of the newsgroup's beginning.

I remember Dalvenjah posting regularly.: Not sure if this is the same person as the founding server admin of DALnet; AFD apparently had several channels on that network, which I was not aware of at the time, so cross-over was evidently happening. Maybe I should check in to see if the channels are still there.

I've been here for a couple of years or so.: From this point onward there's no way to tie this tag to particular events aside from the user's own date of joining.

I've been here just over a year now.

Old fruits know my name and what I'm like.

My name is known, but that's about it.

They're still responding to my welcome post.

I haven't posted yet, I'm just lurking!

I've never heard of AFD!: Very meta.

I'm too fruity for my hat!

I am well into the fermentation process.

I have accidentally been used in food fights.

Friends have spotted me in fruit salads.

Squeeze me! I'm ripe!

I haven't fallen off the tree yet!

It can be said that I am very a-peel-ing!

A squirrel tried to hoard me the other day.

I'm only a sparkle in the eye of the tree!

Have joined, left, returned, etc.: I'm not sure whether it was valid to use this with any of the above, for example Fr++^ for “I've been here intermittently over the last few years.”

I got flamed off the newsgroup for yelling at Shim!: When the proposal for time-based fruitiness was made for inclusion in the original Dragon Code, it was Shim who made it, and it included this. I assume it was an in-joke, but not knowing anything about Shim beyond this fact, I'm not in a position to say more.