I’ve been reading the books since about 1986 or 87, read the weekly column in the local alternative paper for many years, joined the boards in 2003 about a year after stumbling on them at the Straight Dope website. I read the first book so much the cover fell off, I taped it back on, then read it some more until the cover fell off again. Thanks for everything Cecil and Ed, it’s been a hell of a run!
Whoa, [del]Nelly[/del] Annie! Are you sure your “Sad Dance” attire should include nothing but tassels and a g-string?!?
bolding mine. <snip>
Ed, I think you should consider, * “Dopey McDopeface”* as your new posting moniker. It has a certain … je ne sais quoi.
…in any event, good run, Mr. Zotti!
I don’t think it’s clear that the SDMB is going away. It would be a very, very foolish move for the paper buying the Chicago Reader.
I don’t think the board is going anywhere. The operating costs have got to be negligible, and it generates revenue in the form of subscriptions and ads.
The Straight Dope will go the way of Saturday-morning cartoons and eight-track tapes to disappear and make me feel old and dated. Oh well. It was good while it lasted. But Cecil was not the original Cecil, was he? So maybe another Cecil could step up? Someone younger who still has his years ahead of him?
Since when have corporations refrained from doing something because it was a foolish move?
The second message board type forum I ever joined was called Epicski. It had an active base, I would guess similar to the 3500 currently active users here. It was bought by another company and shut down for…the domain name.
Hey, maybe the domain name gets bought by some Canadian marijuana company and they leave the message board up for shits and giggles. Maybe add a gardening forum.
I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you get a giant raise with whatever it is you will go on to do.
I’ve got to say that this disturbs me more than Cecil’s hanging up his mortarboard.
For the nearly two decades I’ve been involved with this site, it’s been your steady guidance, mostly behind the scenes, that has kept this place on track. Though we don’t see you much as regular posters, when things have gotten heated or confused, you pop up in your role as court of last resort, and quell whatever chaos is ensuing (to mix some metaphors).
Without you as administrator, I’m genuinely not sure how long this site can survive. Though whoever takes over will undoubtedly do his or her best, I can’t imagine he or she will have the history, knowledge or wisdom to keep this band of rowdies in line, and particularly that he or she won’t be able to do so with the light hand on the tiller that has been your hallmark (wow, I’m really mixing metaphors, here).
For years in the 1990’s I’d been reading Cecil’s columns in the New York Press, and had picked up his books. I had stumbled across the main site to read the columns online, but for the longest time I wondered why there was this link to a message board about them. Who needed that?
Well, one day I clicked and started reading, and kept doing so as a lurker until I just had to answer a question sometime in early 2000. Then it was off to the races.
The best time I had was as head organizer of the New York Megadopefests in the early 1990s. We’d manage to round up more than 100 dopers from around the country and beyond for a weekend in January each year, with three or more days of cultural and social events. Typically we’d gather in a bar somewhere on Friday night, split up into groups to visit museums or take walking tours during the day on Saturday, have a reservation for 85 “friends of Cecil A” at the cavernous America restaurant on Saturday night, followed up with drinks and conversation at a nearby bar, and conclude the weekend with Billdo’s Bagel Brunch where we would cram up to 40 people into my small one-bedroom apartment for New York bagels and lox with all the trimmings. (Here’s one of the planning threads.) At the dopefests, good friends and romances were made, with some of them winding up permanent.
I also traveled to Dopefests around the country, including the memorable one in Chicago where Ed himself showed up, and Eutychus, on seeing him, ran across the bar to kiss him on the lips.
In its early days, this site was an early form of social media. Though CCC and GQ were the core of the site, for many MPSIMS took the role that Facebook, Instagram and what-have-you take today. For better or for worse, the group that hung out on MPSIMS migrated to LiveJournal and then fractured to other platforms, with this site’s role as a social center waning over the years.
Though I post rarely, I visit regularly (though not as often in those hyper early years).
It is the end of an epic era with Cecil and Ed leaving. Fare the well, gentlemen!
" What happens in Wappingers Falls *stays * in Wappingers Falls.
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Makes me think of Shröedinger’s Doorway: Who will exit first? Will Cecil hold the door for you, or the other way around?
I’m hoping you are still reading our missives because there’s some more I’d wish to share with you as well as my fellow Teeming Millions.
Not only has the tone of your columns and the Big Founding Rules of the SDMB created an environment that could be best described as Radical Welcome, but you gave an awful lot of us something we didn’t really have, or hand’t put together before reading the SD.
You gave the wisenheimer’s of the world a safety net. You can be smart and you can be witty, and you can admit when you’re woefully wrong- and humbly learn from that wrong while laughing a bit at yourself. Some of us are still working on that, but the tone of all of those millions of posts has been guided by what you saw as a pretty fair way to live.
Do your homework. Love each other. Don’t be a jerk. When you’re right, you’re right. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Own it.
I’ve met some wonderful powerful people through my time on SDMB. Never forget the first Dopefest I went to in NYC. People were ruminating as to how to identify who was whom, and I said in the thread, " Oh easy. I’ll be the guy wearing the 2" wide hot pink sash that reads, " CARTOONIVERSE. Cajun Man agreed that this was a foolproof method.
Indeed, I showed up that night at the bar, slipped on my sash, and walked into a crowd of interesting smart good-humored people. I met Biggirl and her husband that night. And a gaggle of other great people.
I’m pretty sad about this. Thanks for the hard work, Ed. Especially in the pre-Internet days when research was a time-sucking bitch. Thanks for caring enough to A)Get it right and B)Do it with a wink and a nod.
I will never forget the endorphine rush of laughing SO hard, laying in bed in upstate New York, as I read this from the first book, “The Straight Dope”
The paper didn’t buy the SDMB, just the Reader. The board still belongs to the Sun-Times Media group.
My feelings aren’t as dire as Billdo’s, but I won’t say I’m not worried.
Thanks, Ed, for all you’ve done to make this wonderful zoo a going concern. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed wasting tremendous amounts of time here over the past two decades.
We need to throw you a party or something.
Ed has been doing this gig for forty years*, and is/will be 67 this year. Sending him to that farm in Wisconsin** after all that work seems like the least we can do. 
Seriously, Ed, I hope they paid you well enough over the years and that you have enough to retire in whatever manner of style you want.
*IIRC
** Where he can run around free in the meadows and frolic with all other former editors.
I’m saddened to hear of the column’s demise. I’m happy the board will survive.
Good luck to you, Ed/Cecil. Thanks for the years of service.
enipla, aldiboronti beat me to the punch. The Sun-Times retained the Straight Dope property in the Reader sale. Thus, severing the connection and ending the weekly print column. If the new owners of the Reader had taken the column, it likely would have continued as with previous ownership changes.
I am far too sad to post in this thread, but I want you to know I really thought about it.
So long and thanks for all the fish, Mr. Zotti.
“… is that…oh my goodness, is that?..”
" Yes. It’s a herd of Editors. They’ve been put out to stud. "
" No kidding? "
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The Master and I are deeply touched by the many kind thoughts expressed in threads on this board and in the messages sent to us by recipients of the weekly Straight Dope mailing. We can’t claim to have appreciably moved the needle on the global ignorance meter; on the contrary, present evidence suggests dumbosity, and the related indicator jerkality, have reached historical highs. On the other hand, to have brightened up a few lives for a moment or two … we take some satisfaction in that. My own contribution has been primarily to introduce errors into Cecil’s flawless logic and generally sow confusion; I have no doubt the SDMB staff views my departure with relief. That said, I’m not retiring to a cabin in the woods and my posting privileges haven’t yet been revoked. So if things get too tranquil here at the SDMB, I’m happy to return (if asked nicely, and on a short-term basis) and get them back to being screwed up. Meanwhile, please take every opportunity to express your interest in buying more Straight Dope books. This will aid us in our negotiating posture with tight-fisted publishers, and as editor I get a cut.
Ha! This explains a lot. Got an email from Cecil a week ago about a month long trip to Croatia and some references to liquor and dirty whores. I have been trying to rework my schedule at work to make it happen. I keep asking when he’s going to write a book about all of those types of exploits.
I know this was said in jest, but I can’t let it stand.
To tear back the veil a bit, when I speak of the endless debate society that is the mod loop, that doesn’t include Ed. Instead, when we get in a 200 message never-resolved-loop Ed was the one we could always appeal to for a calm, reasoned decision with which we could all abide. His calm, all-in-this-together demeanor has been one of the hallmarks of being on the moderation staff.
His voice will be missed.