Yeah, what’s the deal? Just 'cause he doesn’t post to the SDMB and cleverly cultivates the trappings of not being a real person?
I don’t care. Cecil is my homeboy. I [heart] his royal Irish ass. Whenever I pass thru O’Hare I omit the ketchup on my Vienna dog in honor of Cecil.
I have to admit, posters can get very assholish when they make a point of saying how a thread topic has been already discussed and implying the new thread starter is wasting everyone’s time, etc. Personally, I like to just throw in a link with a nonconfrontational label like “Relevant Earlier Thread”, simply because the people interested enough in the topic to open the new thread might find the earlier one interesting as well. Especially if the older thread has a witty comment in it by yours truly, which all by itself is worth the price of admission.
In any case, if you want to start a thread, do it, and ignore anyone who gets on your case about repetition. Fuck 'em.
God thank you for saying that. Its so cliquey to try to force an inside joke like this. So much quacking about Cecil and goats and sheep and bacon salt. And even using expressions like newbie is not exactly inviting. I keep getting offered advice on how to modify my behavior if I plan on sticking around or to just tone it down and give it some time. I mean I’ve been reading this website for two years, how long are you supposed to pay your dues before the grown ups stop wanting to haze you all the time.
Well it is the pit, tell them to go to hell. I don’t think it is hazing though, I think you just piss some posters off.
Most of us that post a lot manage to do that. Some more than others.
This board runs on in-jokes, I actually enjoy it, I can understand if you don’t.
Have fun, don’t sweat it,
Jim
Is there actually a debate about who is the “dog” and who is the “tail” in the Straight Dope world? Holy crap.
Cecil is the driving reason this Board was created in the first place. The stuff about goat felching and sheep sex and bacon salt is just shopworn “in” jokes of the community. You don’t have to like or even read what Cecil writes, but surely you can understand why there is a “Straight Dope” and message board in the first place.
We even have a mission statement, which is more than you can say of most internet message boards, I believe (“Fighting Ignorance,” which, by the way, does not make us the Fighting Ignorants. Although that would make a cool Straight Dope t-shirt.)
Even though I’m really only an occasional reader of the Straight Dope column and haven’t bought the books (for which my opinions were actually dismissed, so to speak, by an admin), I have to agree with Una Persson’s last post. There is no reason to think this group has much coherency if it was transplanted without the SD articles as a nucleus and draw.
There were rumors floating around way back when that (in)famous GQ moderator manhattan wanted to either buy the board or “split off” and start his own. Without giving any credence to that story, but taking it as a hypothetical, for that to have been successful he likely would have had to mimic the core idea here (fighting ignorance) to bring over fellow Dopers but still somehow aggressively set up his own board’s “personality” and something to draw in the new people other than pure word of mouth. Of course, a slightly safer/wimpier way could be just a SD fan-club with a forum. The alt.fan.cecil-adams group doesn’t have any official sanction from the Reader, AFAIK, and it’s going strong.
No kidding! You mean there are still people out on the Usenet?
Holy crap - I had no idea it still existed anymore!
All extant Usenet groups are Google Groups now
As an (extremely) long-time lurker, I would have to agree that the boards have not been as lively as they have been in times past.
I think part of it may be related to the political climate of the US in general and the boards in particular (not to alienate out non-US friends). We have problems as a country, but most of them have been with us for years. There may not be much more anyone wants to say about the war in Iraq, for example. I think that once the 2008 election really heats up and the climate changes a bit, things around here might change a bit too. I also think that if new issues arise we might find that there is a greater diversity of opinion around here than there might be for some of the current hot issues.
I also think that part of it is cyclical, and just the nature of message boards. I’m active on a message board devoted to a particular hobby, and there are definitely lulls in the action there too. There are even threads lamenting how quiet it is, or how we never talk about [hobby] anymore. In that case, if there is a period with relatively fewer active new members most of the questions about [hobby] have already been addressed. Lurkers think that the discussion is cliquey and above their level, so they won’t participate. Sometimes threads like this one smoke out a bunch of lurkers so they DO become participating members. I would have to say that it looks like this thread has done so for me. Let’s hope some of the other lurkers emerge from the shadows and generate more discussion around here.
Hi Emilee! I feel like I just said hi to Big Foot…
99er with 17 posts. That has to be a record.
I don’t know, do you consider when asked point blank outright denying to be the same person as the old sceenname as “not tying to get away with anything”? To me that suggests that she knew she was doing something that wasn’t above board and hoping to continue to get away with it.
Zombi! Zombi! Shoot it in the head! Shoot in the head! For Og’s sake! Someone shoot it in the Ogdamned head!
Why? This is just getting interesting again.
Only one thing can save the Dope, a babe thread.
Shoot her Wardell! Shoot her in the hai-yud.
[Gay Dopers who love low-budget cult classic cinema will get it.]
I think that issue has been resolved, and this is definitely a zombie thread.