In retrospect, I give a lot of credit to the fact that we were young and dumb and didn't know any better. I've been revisiting a lot of the stories from back then and so many of them end up with us saying, "I dunno, let's see what happens!" and not being dissuaded by "best practices" or even common sense.
Also lots of credit goes to the early internet era when people were a LOT more forgiving of, well, everything.