I found it occasionally informative, frequently exasperating and always entertaining.
Oh-you mean how did I locate it? I kept being referred here by SpoilerVirgin who happens to be my sister. Once I let on that I was posting here she fairly quickly figured out my screenname so I can no longer post anything about how annoying my sister is.
My friend in college kept talking about this board and I eventually joined. Of course that was 14 years ago where he knew it primarily from AOL. I won’t say who it is, but it’s pretty easy to figure it out.
Someone on the Snopes forum linked to a Straight Dope article to disprove an urban legend. I then read a bunch of articles, and saw one I wanted to comment on. That took me to the board, and I had a look around, but I held off joining until I knew pay to post was going to go away. I intentionally joined one month before it would go away, so I would never have to pay.
I voted “a link at another website.”
I was a regular on the snopes boards for a while about 15 years ago and in those days there was a significant crossover. I used to browse here occasionally but nothing major. Then there was an announcement over there about a long-term doper’s death, which spurred me to read a bit more and IIRC register here. This place moves a lot faster than snopes did, so I never really posted at all. Then after a few months of getting irritated at the snopes moderation and the general “hi, hun! lol!” tone over there, I gradually realised I spent no time there any more and all my random browsing was done here. Still don’t post very much here either. There’s a sizable chunk of my snopes contemporaries here as well - lots of names I’ve known in both places. I had no idea of the books, the column or anything else before I got here and I’ve still never seen any of them.
I think “from the Straight Dope online column” should be an option…
Which I found by searching for one of the sort of questions Cecil is apt to try to answer. I had read some books that were either Cecil’s or in the same vein.
I said “some other way” because I don’t remember now, but it was definitely online some way, either by a google search or a link from another site.
I answered Google, but really it was some other search engine prior to Google. I remember searching for a rather unusual question about Jesus, not expecting to get any useful answers. A post on the SDMB was one of the first hits and I was impressed by the intelligence and humor of the discussion here, so I stuck around.
Through alt.fan.cecil-adams back in the USENET days.
I don’t remember the exact details, so I voted for pie.
I used to visit the Straight Dope web page to read Cecil’s column. At one time, I had more free time than I knew what to do with, so I started following various links. I clicked on some thread spotting, and decided I liked what I saw. So I joined.
Now about this pie…
Via the old Page O’ Flames and Page O’ One Liners. I wish they were still around.
An article about Cecil and the Straight Dope in the Reader’s Digest lead me to the books long before the Internet had been dreamed up.
I googled a curiosity and a SDMB thread was one of the search results. Once here, I just kept reading and eventually joined.
I’m not sure if I had switched to Google yet when I found it, but it was a search and I believe it ended up on one of Cecil’s columns.
I found the Dope way back in the AOL days.
AOL. I was only about 13 or so when I first started reading, and a little later I started posting. Didn’t know anything about the books, but I thought the columns were awesome.
Baltimore and DC City Papers that carried the columns, first (in the 80’s) turned me on to the SD, then books, then internet.
ETA: Probably one of my favorite recreational sites. Been on this board version soon almost after it began.
Bored.com, I worked a few months on an overnight shift, most nights were painfully slow. This was in the early 2000s and there was pretty much unlimited internet surfing with no sites blocked. I found the actual message board a couple years later after reading the column regularly.
Missed edit window, but I thought it funny when Cecil would start a reply with “Why do these questions always come from Baltimore?”
I was young, stupid, and a 9/11 truther. It wasn’t long after the incident, and I was hungry for alternative theories. One of the google results was a thread on this site. I liked what I saw and stuck around.
(That thread also caused me to reevaluate and change my views on 9/11.)
Well, we’re up to ~175 respondents and steadily holding at ~1/3 here from the newspaper/books. Is that about the distribution you were expecting?