From a DDL forum -- you know, those forums whose members give out tons of DDL links for them to gain money from those DDL sites. I lurked there in the Anime uploader's section until the day I asked myself why I never looked closely at their filenames -- they have those other text in front of the actual name of the anime series. I started looking at those [Eclipse], [gg], [Coalguys], [SS], [SFW], [Nutbladder], [UTW], [Conclave], [Menclave], etc. -- whatever they were, I thought. I didn't know back then.
Google and I became partners and through his help, I figured out how fansub groups work. However, before I ever came to the sites of these groups, I first started appreciating the work of those japanese voice actors and of those in the fansub groups. I never downloaded English-dubbed stuff since then. A time nonetheless came when I realized I have to check those fansub groups' sites to know more about them. This was when I first visited Doki.
A while later, I became more aware about which groups frequently drop projects (which I hate), the ones frequently making grammar mistakes (irks me a little), the ones using Engrish (Ah.. *ahem* ...yako), and those who don't even know the terms in the show they're doing (still Ah-Yuck-Oh).
Frankly, back then I just sorted out fansub groups into "good" and "bad" categories. When the world wasn't so black and white anymore, ranks sort of formed and Doki quickly rose to the top of my list of favourite fansub groups. This is the time when I joined the forums.