Are there *new* SD columns?

I saw in the text here somewhere that you can submit questions for Cecil/Ed to consider answering
I didn’t think he did that any more. Are there still SD staff answering questions?

Are you volunteering to? :wink:

But no, there haven’t been any new columns in a while. That may or may not change at some point in the future.

No I ran out of topics to write straight dope articles about

But that’s what the question submission thing is for!

Cecil retired, then Ed retired too. Both of them are on a cousin’s farm, running and playing with other columnists.

Zotti retired and nobody has picked up the Cecil Adams pseudonym.

But the “community reports” pseudonym is still available. I’ve often thought that, just to maintain interest, we could re-package some of the general-questions material as front-page material, even though it would be not be of the same standard.

And when fights break out, Dear Abby settles things back down.

This idea popped into my mind:

Now that the column is retired can we finally get an official list of all the people who worked on the column over the years?

It would be nice to be able to see the actual names of the people that we can thank.

Define “worked on”. I imagine that all of the SDSAB members have helped to fact-check something or another at one point or another, but we weren’t exactly co-authors. Almost all of the writing was done by one person. A couple of times, there were columns that were just quoting Colibri with bookends by Cecil, and Una Persson did the experiments for a few columns, but that’s about the limit of the non-Cecil contribution.

Actually, I helped extensively on a number of columns. I don’t need a bouquet of flowers or anything, but just to set the record straight. Jill

Examples? I don’t recall them off the top of my head, but then, I’m sure you remember those columns better than I.

The Straight Dope Science Advisory Board was (is?) always a loose, ad hoc kind of thing, with a lot of people involved over the years. If Cecil needed more information or fact checking or wanted to solicit a wide range of opinion on a subject, there was a group available to him for his needs.

Some of the SDSAB also stepped up and wrote Staff Reports/Mailbag columns over the years. Really dedicated SDSAB members like Jillgat and Chronos (to name just two), did a lot of great work.

We still see some of these people on the board today, including many of our moderators, past and present. The Straight Dope community has been fortunate they have shared their expertise and greater knowledge with the rest of us.

Here’s an example of how putting a query to the SDSAB turned into a pretty good column. [Does anybody actually like Circus Peanuts?

Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator](Does anybody actually like Circus Peanuts? - The Straight Dope)

I’m talking mostly about the Cecils. And “Slug Signorino”? C’mon. Enough of the childish pretense.

Come on, gentlemen (I use the term loosely). Admit that Cecil left a bowl of milk and some crackers on his back porch, and the columns were found in the morning.

Why? Why the determination to peek behind the curtain? Does it really matter? Would a “real name” imbue the columns with a greater authority?

I like Circus Peanuts.

i was thinking of the same thing basically … just do staff reports until we empty the question box… theres probably years worth of questions cec never got to …

That’s usually how it works, yes.

Even aside from that, it’s disrespectful to keep up a pretense like that. We do it to children for a while, because it’s tradition, but “Cecil Adams” doesn’t have that excuse, and we think adults are “people” more than we think children are people, so lying to adults is seen as worse than lying to children.

(We also take assault more seriously when it happens to adults, but that’s an entirely different problem.)

A pen name isn’t a problem. Insisting the pen name is a real person is a problem. Anyone who thinks “Miss Manners” is a real name is clearly naïve, and indeed her official website acknowledges that her real name is Judith Martin and makes no pretense that Ms Martin is merely a literary agent or editor or suchlike. This is because her column is aimed at adults, as opposed to the Stratemeyer Syndicate (“Nancy Drew”, “Hardy Boys”), whose real authors labored in anonymity for decades. Those books were, needless to say, aimed at children, who could be expected to buy the idea that “Carolyn Keene” was somehow one real person with prodigious output.

Finally, insisting that something is true years or decades after the lie has been exposed simply makes the person doing the insisting seem stupid.

Slug Signorino is definitely one singular person. He’s also done other work, for other contexts, under that name (but in the same style). And while his parents almost certainly didn’t name him “Slug”, that’s the only name he uses, and for all I know, he might have gotten it officially changed.

Cecil Adams is a pseudonym, and it has been used by (IIRC) three people over the column’s history, but the first two lasted only something like a year each. The vast majority of the work labeled as “Cecil Adams” was all written by one man.