Does this happen to anyone? I think of the Straight Dope as a very little-known community, different from the likes of Gawker and so on. I’m not sure why, but I guess I always have. So it’s a little surreal when I see it mentioned on other sites.
Jezebel also gave the Very Vaguely Creepy threads a shout out, too, in the comments. (Having trouble finding it now, but it referred to our threads as true classics. Yay!)
It shouldn’t feel surreal, but I suppose it does. And kind of awesome!
Googling rare questions will often produce Straight Dope threads, sometimes at the top, hence all our zombie outbreaks.
When ‘probably the best site in the world’ is mostly girlie pics (not a terrible thing but…) and other influential sites are often bastions of heartless nastiness, I am happy to have this relatively quite corner of the internet here.
There was the time when a well-regarded bit of speculation (I forget what) about the last season of Breaking Bad came from a Doper (I forget who). This Doper, who said he’d read it on reddit ‘somewhere’ ended up having his SDMB username cited quite a bit in the run up to season 5.2 of Breakign Bad.
Our “If Somebody Else Wrote The Lord Of The Rings” Thread was famous for 15 minutes.
Apparently, at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, if rumors be true.
Cracked.com readers may be familiar with their Image Macro contests. For those who aren’t, these contests ask contributors to present facts on a theme in an interesting way. Sources (or, as we would call them here on the SDMB, “cites”) are required, and sources are checked; and entries that cite unsuitable sources (such as Wikipedia, IMDB trivia, or other user-edited sites) are tossed.
Anyway, in the “entry discussion” thread on Cracked’s message board, somebody once asked if the Straight Dope would be a valid source. The answer was “no.” IIRC (and I can only recall, as I cannot find the message to cite to), while the Straight Dope was seen by Cracked as reputable, the problem lay with the identity of Cecil Adams–without the ability to cite back to an identifiable person, who had done and published real research (is “Cecil” a pseudonym? does he or they have a team behind him or them? who are they?), Cracked was reluctant to accept the Straight Dope as a cite for its Image Macros.
As a longtime Doper, I did like seeing the Straight Dope mentioned at Cracked; but as an occasional entrant to the contests at Cracked, I was disappointed to see that Straight Dope cites would not be accepted. Never mind; if that is Cracked’s policy, it is what it is. Regardless, the SDMB has taught me the value of research and reputable cites, so the sources for my entries at Cracked usually pass muster.
I definitely feel this way. I wish I had discovered the Dope when it first came about… although I would cringe if some of my idiotic views from my college years were immortalized
Me, too. I was naive for a long time, and still am sometimes. The Dope would’ve set me straight sooner, however!
I read a few other message boards, and have seen the SDMB quoted on quite a few occasions. Most of the time I chuckle like I have a secret, but sometimes I think, “Seriously? You’re quoting that tool??”
I just read and enjoyed *The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible *by A. J. Jacobs, and was delighted to see that he cited to the Straight Dope in his endnotes.
