I heard that there was another web site/message board that was setup similar to the SD. Does anybody know what it is and how does it compare with this. My very educated guess is that it doesn’t come close to the wit and wisdom spread around here, but I was just curious.
They may mean the Snopes board, which is on the Urban Legends site (http://www.snopes.com/). There’s nothing WRONG with it, but I prefer SD. Snopes has a much narrower focus, topic-wise, which I find limiting. But you’ll find several people moonlighting on both boards.
Our own OpalCat has a board, too—you wanna jump in here with details, dear?
You might be thinking of Opalcat’s teeming millions web site. Never been there myself, but I hear it a larf.
Manual sig line #37
Or perhaps its the LBMB, basically a bizarro SDMB. If you sub the word “Cecil” for “God” and “reason” for “scripture”, it’ll be eerily similar.
First question: Are you asking about the software or the stated purpose?
Quite a few message boards use the UBB software (as we did until a few short weeks ago). There are several competing message board software systems, as well, (obviously including the vBB software we are now using).
You will note that the “look and feel” of the current board is not extraordinarily different from the board when we used UBB. Most of these boards (frequently employed by companies with an image product to sell to encourage discussion of the product) follow similar approaches to the idea of a message board that is met by this software. The actual maintenance and control of the board occurs on the host’s server and a visitor needs no more than web access to use all the functions found on the board. The Chicago Reader hopes to promote The Straight Dope through this MB; LaHaye and company hope to promote the Left Behind series of books through their LBMB; I believe that Warner Brothers was using a UBB board to keep their movie and TV projects in the public’s eye. It is a legitimate use of the product and this software format is a good match to their intentions.
The other sort of discussion arena is the newsgroup which is generally not moderated and is available through software that a person loads onto their own machine (meaning everyone sees it in a slightly different format). There is no true “host” except to the extent that various ISP’s do or do not agree to pick up and pass along the messages to their subscribers. (There are some outfits (e.g., Deja) that provide software to read newsgroups that does not need to be loaded on the visitor’s computer. Just people providing services as a way to earn money.)
As it happens, OpalCat has been maintaining a “Teeming Millions” board for a couple of years. It was always intended as a more personal location than the SDMB sites (both on AOL and here) and was never intended as competition to the SDMB. Recently, Opal loaded up some UBB software and re-established the Teeming Millions Home Page under a new format called the Fabulous Forums of Fathom. (Fathom is the DNS home site for several boards and a few rings that Opal oversees.) Again, it is a different place that is not in competition with SDMB.
If your question had to do with competition to the SDMB, there are several sites out there attempting to try to capture what Cecil and the Teeming Millions have been doing for years, as well. I actually stumbled on one during a search, yesterday, but was unimpressed and did not bookmark it.
I’m afraid that I cannot give you the names of any of them. When I hear of them I often look them over, but I have not found the breadth or depth of knowledge that we have here in any of them.
Two newsgroups are also inspired by Cecil, but are not in competition with the SDMB:
alt.fan.cecil-adams and misc.facts.straight-dope
Refine your question and we’ll try to get closer to an answer for you.