I can send a question to Cecil, I can post a question in the General Questions board, but there does not seem to be any way to submit a question to the Mailbag.
Are the Mailbag questions ones that were submitted to Cecil, and forwarded by him to the mailbag? Do all questions sent to Cecil that he decides not to answer himself go to the Mailbag, or only some of them?
You got it on the first guess.
The Mailbag/Special Report questions are queries Cecil doesn’t want to deal with. We don’t answer all his discards (some are truly not worth doing anything about except maybe calling the FBI), but we do try to get answers for the ones we consider worthwhile.
Hope this clears it all up for you, and all best.
your humble TubaDiva
Adminstrator
I rather liken it to the dogs getting the table scraps, but I’m not completely convinced that Cecil holds us in that high a regard. 
Thanks. I get it that once things are routed to the Mailbag you try to answer everything that doesn’t seem completely silly and/or nuts. Do you think Cecil sends everything he doesn’t want to answer to the Mailbag?
That’s our assumption. . . we’re not sure what he does with the envelopes that contain cash, maybe those are the ones he answers.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
There are several screenings in the normal process. Mail to Cecil is first sorted by Staff, for example deleting spam mail quickly. No, Cecil doesn’t want to make $50,000 a week working at home. No, he’s not interested in yet another copy of the “true story of Snow White.”
Some mail is too stupid to be believed, and is usually discarded. We get stuff that is better sent to Dear Abby. I swear, it’s true, we got someone asking, “Is my husband having an affair?”… I mean, yeah, OK, Cecil knows everything, but he ain’t like omniscient, you know.
Some of those too-dumb-to-be-believed questions are filed away and used by Cecil as filler (“Why do they have a marijuana leaf on the Canadian flag”, frinstance.)
There are also a bunch of questions that have already been asked. (We must get the one about men’s nipples two or three times a week.) If the Staff reader is feeling generous, he/she will send a response that includes a link. Sometimes, just a note that says go look it up in the Archives (or Dictionary, or any cheap encyclopedia.)
Cecil is looking for questions that will make a column. Thus, movie, TV, and sports trivia usually are discarded; sometimes, we respond to suggest the question be posted on the Message Boards. Questions that can be answered by a simple yes/no response, or that have already been thoroughly handled by snopes, tend to die at this point.
The rest go on to Cecil. Some questions Cecil tosses to Staff, and those often become Mailbag/Staff Reports. Other languish for months, or even forever. For instance, the recent question on the origin of pizza was asked about two years before the response was put together. The question of what Staff members do is purely up to them, which questions strike their fancy and which don’t. There are usually around ten to twelve new questions posed to Staff each week, and we only post two or three on the website. We don’t pretend to run an “Information Please” type of site that will try to answer everything.
OK, that’s the “standard” process. OTOH, we’re dealing with Cecil, and his tastes and selections are beyond mortal ken. (Nothin’ personal to SDStaff Ken). Sometimes he recalls questions that he sent to Staff. Sometimes he takes a question that we thought was really stupid and makes it into a stunning article. So there’s always exceptions.
But that’s how it works, mostly.
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
I can’t believe you said that!
Everyone knows that Cecil is omniscient, but he sometimes chooses not to answer!
You realize that, having so off-handedly dissed Cecil, it’s entirely possilbe that he’s gonna send his Brute Squad out to break your kneecaps, or have your credit cards cancelled or he’ll insure that every time you go to the movies, you be stuck sitting in front of a chair-kicker who talks loudly about plot flaws. And he’ll have BO.
If I were you, I’d apologize quick and maybe send Cecil a sawbuck or two.
Fenris
Careful, Fenris… Are you saying that Cecil will have BO? That’s blasphemy of the highest order!