Are we (Sdmb) becoming more relevant ? Or less?

[Cheshire_Human]

@GuanoLad

No, that’s real life. Here, everybody likes me.

fingers in ears LA LA LA LA LA

Hahahaha! This time it was a good one. Wasn’t it? Did I get it right this time?

[Cat_Whisperer]

@The_Niply_Elder

YahooAnswers is practically useless compared to the SD. And I found this site as a reference to a wikipedia article (can’t remember which article though). So, I think the SD is very relevant +1.

Agreed. I use the Dope mostly as a social hang-out, but the resources here (in the form of other posters) is incredible. I also think that more and more in the future, people will need a referral service to help them get access to the wealth of stuff that’s available online, and the Straight Dope fills that niche for me very nicely.

ETA: Millions of people have read my brain droppings?!? AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[Squink]

@Spoke

I think the Google hits are bringing a lot of new people here.

We must then find some way to drive them off.
It’s the SDMB way after all.

[samclem]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

More and more, since being indexed by Google. At least for me.

I too have been contacted by a wide variety of folks around the world, based on my thread comments. I’ve been offered (and taken) some consulting work, given my perspective on prisons, modern medicine, addiction and the law, Tolkien, and surviving airplane crashes! Other stuff has appeared in my mailbox too, virtually all positive or neutral, that I would not have gotten had I not posted at SDMB.

That’s just this Mercotan’s experience, for what it’s worth.

All hail the Dope. It’s magic.

@Spoke

I think the Google hits are bringing a lot of new people here.

You’d be correct. Some good, some bad. But a net positive.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

@kasuo

Reddit seems like the place to be. I’m a fan of their voting system for posts though they tend to favor the earliest and root posts.

Yeah, reddit is amazing. Very little moderation in fact leads to quite a pleasant user experience. Further, there’s reddits for everything, every little niche interest has its own reddit with a little community set up around it. Their “Ask the …” threads put ours to shame too. Star Trek actors, Nick Clegg (UK Deputy Prime Minister), Joe Satriani etc.

[hajario]

@Shagnasty

I have also done, many, many Google searches where a SDMB thread is a top result if not the top one.

@Quimby

I first noticed it when I created a thread about King Kong and Thanksgiving and after did a Google search on same and the thread I had just created showed up near the top of the search.

You guys do realize that Google’s search results are partially based on what Google thinks is relevant to you via cookies, right? You might get a different result if you did it from a public computer that doesn’t log in to the Dope everyday.

This does bring up a good point though. The powers that be here stubbornly refused to allow Google indexing for years for reasons that I can’t fathom. Imagine where we would be if this has been allowed from the beginning. For that matter, imagine where we would be if they hadn’t totally fucked up how we originally went to pay-to-post. They should have started it using the model that we have now which was suggested by scores of us.

[kasuo]

@Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party

Yeah, reddit is amazing. Very little moderation in fact leads to quite a pleasant user experience. Further, there’s reddits for everything, every little niche interest has its own reddit with a little community set up around it. Their “Ask the …” threads put ours to shame too. Star Trek actors, Nick Clegg (UK Deputy Prime Minister), Joe Satriani etc.

Thanks for reminding me of that subreddit! I’ve been perusing IAmA and saw they had Stephen Colbert, Roger Ebert, and Dr. Michio Kaku.