Inspired by this thread. I also have this vague unease that this may have been discussed before, but I’m not exactly sure how to search for the topic.
I’m thinking about the idea of having a sticky which includes a compilation of terms which pop up periodically on the SDMB. I’ve seen the “Overlords” thread a couple times, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover similar things involving “Hi Opal!” or “Band Name!” or any other random terms, so maybe it might save server strain, wear and teat to have a universal, board-centered index that could be upgraded as something new enters the vocabulary.
Formatically, I’m thinking something like this:
"I, for one, welcome our new <whatever> overlords" - makes reference to the Simpson’s episode Deep Space Homer, in which news anchor Kent Brockman mistakenly believes that giant ants will take over the Earth after Homer accidentally breaks an ant farm aboard the Space Shuttle. Episode details are here, and examples of SDMB usage are here and here.
Og - SDMB board deity. “Og” first surfaced as the result of a typo, from a former board contributor who consistently misspelled the word “of” in the phrase “son of God” as “og…”
…and then relevant links again to origins and examples.
My thinking is simply that this may save a lot of time in searches, new threads, etc., if there’s a constant rolling index of terms. Possibly alphabetical, although it would take something along the lines of having the opening post constantly modified by a moderator after submissions/requests to the thread, the requests/suggestions posts being deleted after the content surfaced in the main post.
There’s such a great common vocabulary on the SDMB, and I’d like to make it possible for someone to have a reference guide that would be easily accessible that puts the least possible strain on the system in the process.
Hi, Opal: Back when SDMB was a feature of AOL rather than a separate website, OpalCat, longstanding member here and proprietor of the Fathom board, complained that a list truly ought to have at least three items in it, and people were using the list function for things which only have one or two items. Someone posted a list of only two items shortly thereafter and added “3. Hi, Opal!” to it – the gimmick caught on, and has become a SDMB cliché ever since.
Mod Hats: David B., the original moderator of Great Debates (who served faithfully in that capacity for nearly six years, stepping down last month), enjoyed getting involved in discussions as a participant. To distinguish when he was giving a formal statement based on the rules from his own personal opinions, he “put on the Mod Hat” to do the former, and would distinguish them in that way. (This custom has spread across Internet message board-dom, by the way; people who have never heard of David B. or the SDMB will don mod hats when making a formal statement of how the rules apply.)
1920s Style Death Ray derives from former member Dogface’s startled exclamation incorporating that phrase in the midst of a discussion of “scalar weapons” that was probably the longest GQ thread ever.
To Pit is to rant on a subject in The BBQ Pit. (Probably obvious, but the verb form is used so commonly here that it’s worth specifying.)
Unless I am mistaken, the “once in 1960, for 20 minutes” came about not because of a multipost, but because of an oddly worded and terse OP that was immediately ignored. The rest of the multipage thread was spent making fun of the phrase.
A glossary of terms would be handy. Then, those of us who are still uninitiated could find out what is meant by abbreviations like MAD, MMP, and the like.
Hey, if you want to learn the origins of all the in-jokes, common abbreviations, and other board trivia, you gotta work for it like I did: read thread after thread after thread after thread until you get a headache, and then read 100 more. Every day. For a year. Then become a Charter Member and
By the way, todd33rpm, what the heck is “wear and teat?” the new Janet Jackson CD?
I’m a rel newbie but I’ve figured out “Band Name” as being the response when a term gets posted and someone thinks that would make a good name for a musical band. For ex., when I posted in a “What’s your TMI?” thread, that my proctologist used an anal flashlight to check for colon polyps and that Katie Couric showed her colonoscopy to the world on tv, a poster posted: “Band names, two in one thread: “Anal Flashlight” and “Katie Couric’s Bowel”.”
