With the rise of Google and Wikipedia, many factual questions have a ready place to find an answer. I’ve also noticed lately that several IMHO threads have originated in GQ.
So, would it greatly damage the mission of the Dope to get rid of GQ? In interest of disclosure, I seldom visit GQ.
Would it greatly damage “Fighting Ignorance” to close down General Questions?
Would it greatly damage “Fighting Ignorance” to close down General Questions?
What are you, some kinda weird bean-counter?
Also many people come to GQ from places like Google.
In interest of disclosure, I freakin’ love GQ.
There are varied fora here offering something to most everyone.
That’s not a bad thing.
Yes, indeed. Let’s close down the one forum dedicated to dealing with questions in a more-or-less factual manner instead of “snit my friend once told me while half-drunk” or “random nonesense pulled directly out of my ass.”.
While we’re at it, the existance of many sites dedicated to analysis and review of pop culture entertainment should justify shutting down Cafe Society. By all means, let’s reduce the SMDb to poorly informed political arguments, Mindless Bullshit No Sane Person Gives A Fuck About, and Badly Written Recreation Outrage and Miscellaneous Ranting by Infantile Morons.
Yet another modest proposal…
Stranger
These two statements are linked. We’ve been moving threads from General Questions to IMHO for at least ten years. I’d say that we mods in GQ do this an average of 5-10 times/day.
Asked, and answered. :D. Yeah, admitting to not frequenting GQ crushed my credibility.
PS, the OP was my 9000th post. 
Wow, no.
We have a ton of great questions that come in there. Many require experts in certain fields to either provide new info. or to explain complicated info in a simple way.
As I said, I was wrong, and nobody was shy telling me so.
Google and Wikipedia have their place if you are interested in basic information on a non-controversial or complex subject. Beyond that, they may not be able to help you.
Google merely serves up the most common hits on key words, with little guarantee of the reliability or even the relevance of the information. Unless you go to Google Scholar, you usually won’t get the primary literature on a subject. If I’m trying to research an obscure subject that has key words in common with popular searches, I often find Google nearly useless since the results will be overwhelmed by references to more common searches.
With Wikipedia as well, there is no guarantee that the information will be accurate or relevant. Many Wikipedia articles are written at either too simple or too complex a level.
Information here isn’t guaranteed to be accurate either, but stuff that’s wrong is likely to be challenged and corrected. And discussion can help to explain some very complex subjects.
Maybe you should spend a little more time there. 
Yes, comments on Cecil’s columns and GQ are basically the core mission of this board. If anything, we might ponder extending GQ into eg a SDMB wiki. Etc. I’m not saying that would work: I’m trying to convey that we might think about more GQish mechanisms, not less.
Please, no!
Did you see tomndebb’s post here, regarding Twickster’s re-directing a poster?
Funny!
Says the person with a long track record of asking easily-researched questions in the Game Room regarding sports statistics. Physician, heal thy self.
GQ is the core and primary purpose of the board.
I am thrilled to get into this thread and post before it gets closed down.
This is possibly the worst suggestion in all history since Eve said, “Go on, take a bite. What harm could it do.”
Worst suggestion? It resulted in the invention of hot monkey love!!
ETA: The eating of the fruit suggestion, not the closing GQ suggestion.
ETA again: Tho if I spent less time in GQ I’d have even more time for hot monkey oh never mind.
Do we really need both?
I would also add to what’s already been said that there are invaluable benefits to the interactive nature of the discussions, which obviously allows for questions and clarifications and, less obviously, for related discussions that can be extremely informative in their own right. Essentially the OP is asking, “what is the point of informative discussions when the Internet is full of information”? Quite a lot of point, actually. What is the point of going to school when you can just Google whatever you need to know?
There exists in GQ a unique culture of people that are well versed in the minutia of any manner of subjects that fact-seekers are in search of and often Google and their ilk aren’t always very helpful. So…no.