For me it was from someone mentioning it on the LBMB. Oh and one more question does anybody know how many registered users are on this board?
I was really bored at work.
So I was checking out the sites listed on bored.com
After I found this, I spent a couple of days going through all the archives and about a week going through all the old message board postings… now I’m here every day…
What Straight Dope Message Board?
(btw, # of registered users is 11598 – it is on the main page of the boards.)
I found this wonderful haven of information and humor from a link at bored.com. Liked it so well, I stayed. 
As for the amount of registered users, it has already been stated that it is, at this moment, 11598. It only seems like yesterday that posters here were taking bets on who would be #10000.
I found out about it at Yahoo!
There was a link to the AOL SDMB on the main screen of AOL. I clicked on it, found the board, and have been on ever since, off and on. This was back in 1997.
I think that this subject will be welcome in IMHO.
I read the first book a decade ago and have read the column from the day my local weekly started carrying it. A year or two ago, a question came up on another MB. Since the SDMB had just gone from AOL to a real website, I posted it.
I thought I was just going to post once (just like with drugs, that’s how they get you started!), so I just grabbed a username. There are other things in my life that I regret more, but I wonder what sort of first impression “cornflakes” makes on people…
I agree. Now where did I leave that button? Oh, there we go. Much better.
As for myself, I stumbled across a link to the site from who-knows-where, and having already read one of the books, took interest. I lurked the columns for quite a while, and eventually started commenting on them. I then realized that in GQ, I didn’t even need a column to comment on, and so I just sort of stuck.
I found the books, first.
Cornflakes,
I thought about putting it there IMHO but is it really an opinion where you heard about it. I mean it is a fact based issue isn’t it? Not that I care if they move it but I did think I put it in the right place.
I found out about the SDMB from the Straight Dope website, which I found out from some other source (snopes or News of the Weird, I think).
IMHO is also the place for polling, which is what this is.
From another message board, and we were arguing about ducks. Someone brought up this article; Is it true a duck’s quack won’t echo? and I found this site. I read all the articles and then I found the message board.
There’s more of these tales at this identical MPSIMS thread
What brought you here?
Must be something going around, because I was thinking about posting this very question last week.
I found a blurb about the site while flipping through Yahoo magazine. I came here, went through quite a few articles, and really enjoyed it. I didn’t come back for a long time because I forgot to bookmark it and couldn’t remember the name. Many months later, I saw a link to the site on bored.com, came back, and started reading the articles again.
Eventually I wondered what the message boards were like, lurked for quite a while, and finally started posting.
I’ve recently started buying the books, too.
First off, remember I’m not a moderator; I’m just another schmuck here, same as you. This is my opinion:
My take is that General Questions is for subjects that could have value, no matter how trivial, in either an academic setting or as applied knowledge. In other words, something Cecil could write an article about. The thread might have fit there if you were doing research on how people discover message boards, but since you were polling people specifically about this board, it struck me as an IMHO-worthy thread.
The alien residing on my noggin in the guise of hair (though not a very acurate replication) compelled me go to this website, and after that i was hooked…
I used to watch the Straight Dope TV show back in the late eighties/early nineties (dont remember the exact year but it came on late at night and i think it came on A&E). Then one day i was just thinking about the show and decided to see if i could find anything about it on the net and I ended up here. I read pretty much all of the archives but i purposely avoided the 'boards for long time. Then i guess i must have had some kind of question or something and just started posting.
The Straight Dope was mentioned a few times on the message board at http://www.snopes.com, so I thought I’d cruise over and see just who this “Uncle Cecil” was.
As much as I hate them, I must admit that AOL first warned me of the existance via the Welcome! page. The demon-spawn also turned me on to James Lileks.
–Tim