Other Straight Dope Message Board laws

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We all know what Gaudere’s Law is – or at least many of us know – but what about the other little-known laws of the Dope? For instance:

Jelsoft’s Law: The likelihood of a board crash increases with the length and composition time of a post.

elmwood’s Law: If you compose a particularly insightful or witty post, someone post what is essentially the same thing immediately after you start writing.

Zev’s 614th Mitzvah: Questions about Judaism, particularly Orthodox rituals, customs and beliefs, will be posted between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.

Reeder’s Law: As a thread grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving George W. Bush or Republicans approaches one.

Google’s Ordinance: As a thread grows longer, the probability of someone commenting about a terribly inappropriate Google Adsense ad approaches one.

Others?

2

OK…how did a Google ad on Greek Traditions get here based on the OP? Is Reeder Greek? :smiley:

3

I think it’s the “Orthodox” (i.e. “Greek Orthodox”) that brought in the Greek ad, considering its description is “Wedding supplies, Baptismal gifts and books on Greek Traditions”.

4

Everydoper’s law: When you are reprimanding someone for their spelling, you will make a spelling error.

5

I think we’ve got that one covered. Guadere’s law

6

The letters “TMI” should always be placed at the beginning of a thread title, but are always placed at the end.

7

I really hope that was deliberate.

8

Any accidental multipost will result in a barrage of in-jokes, including many or all of the following:
“I think it’s Rio, by Duran Duran.”
“Once, in 1960. For 20 minutes.”
“Ah, they’re 1920’s style [death rays or some more topical utterance].”

9

Any accidental multipost will result in a barrage of in-jokes, including many or all of the following:
“I think it’s Rio, by Duran Duran.”
“Once, in 1960. For 20 minutes.”
“Ah, they’re 1920’s style [death rays or some more topical utterance].”

10

Liberal’s Law: Every single subject in GD can and will be converted to debate over that wildly successful Libertarian philosophy.

11

No names for them, but…

A Pit thread lamenting a certain behavior will always contain a post exemplifying that behavior.

A thread created for the purpose of generating some sort of list will always have a post saying “I can’t believe no one has mentioned…”:

Corollary to the above: Any post saying “I can’t believe no one has mentioned…” will usually be followed by a post saying, “Pssst… check post #X”

12

Opal’s law-if someone does use “3. Hi Opal” in a list there will be 15 posts from newbies wondering why.

Doc’s law-If at any point someone has to write IANAD in a thread, it’ll get closed for offering medical advice.

13

Someone e-mailed me quite a while back and said I should have a law. My apologies to the e-mailer, I forgot the definition, but I did think it was clever. I remember it did involve the good Reverend Spooner and the good Dr. Freud, though.

Unfortunately, my faculties are not quite intact enough at this early hour with no sleep for me to conjure up a witty definition myself. Ah, well.

Penis. It’s what ensues.

14

Hal Briston’s law–Any post by Hal will immediately be followed by a post mentioning sheep.

15

Probably by **Hal **himself.

16

Article 403: In any given thread inviting picture links, there is a 50% chance that any link is “Forbidden” to visitors.

17

JDT’s Law All threads about foreskins will end badly.

18

Voyeur’s Law: In any TMI thread, the number of “replies” divided by the number of “views” will equal to or less than .001.

19

Any thread mentioning kittens but without pictures will continue untill there are pictures.

Any post with pictures of kittens will get at least 2 pages of “awww… cute…” replies.

20

Kythereia’s Law (I made it up, so it’s my law, tough beans) – any welcome-the-newbie thread will have a good chance of descending into a flirting thread.