It was within the last 10 years, I think the topic was ‘TV shows you would like to see’ and readers were invited to submit their own ideas for a tv show. I’ve been posting here at the SD ever since the AOL days. Is my brilliant synopsis of a TV show gone forever, is there any way to find it?
You can search all the way back to 1999, when you were asking about freckles.
On the search page, fill in your user name, and then use the search options fields on the left. You can search threads from 10 years ago and older, or newer, or choose some other parameter. I looked at most of your posts before 2013, but couldn’t find what you were looking for – you did post in an awful lot of threads about T.V. shows. 
If you remember a somewhat unusual word from your synopsis, you could put that in the search box along with the other parameters to try to narrow it down.
Wait - you weren’t looking for Mystery Cupcake, were you?
Easiest would be if you can recall a word you used in the post (>4 letters, natch). Search criiteria should include yourself as the poster, Cafe Society as the forum, your keyword, search any date or older for time frame, show results by post, and “Ascending.”
Easiest is often to Google something like
site:straighhtdope.com salinqmind TV <other terms>
This will find the thread. <other terms> can be from non-salinqmind posts
There’s probably a good reason to prohibit short common words in searches. Is there a good reason to prohibit RARE 4-letter words? :mad:
Or don’t specify Cafe Society as the forum, if you think the thread might predate its existence.
Is this it? What Storylines Would You Like To Have Seen In TV Shows
found it by the dope’s advanced search page.
keywords : “shows”
search titles only
user name : salinqmind
Find posts from : Any date and newer
Sort results by: Last posting date in ascending order
Show results as: threads
I almost said that, but then I noted that the desired post was less than ten years old. Definitely after the introduction of the forum.
There might be, if the software doesn’t support a customized list of what makes a word “rare.”
Except that the software does include a list of prohibited words, which includes most of the really common ones anyway. If a word isn’t on that list, it should be used, regardless of how many letters it has.
Has the Winter of our Missed Content been restored? If not, it’s worth noting that. I don’t recall the dates off the top of my head.
Thanks for the answers. I will apply myself when I have some free time this weekend, maybe I’ll stumble across my masterpiece!
It’s gone, and can’t be restored. The dates were December 7, 2001 to March 10, 2002. (Posts made on the board between December 7 and February 11 were lost. The board was down and replaced by a temporary board from the latter date until March 10.)
Have other old threads been lost as well?
I ask because I’m unable to find the first post I made on the SDMB back in December 2000. This was the OP of a thread I started about whether lightning rods actually worked or not. Chronos posted a reply in the thread, as I recall.
(This thread was started about 8 months before Cecil addressed the question in his column here.)
Right here.
Found with a Google search of “site:straightdope.com robby lightning rods chronos”
No, but the usernames on some early threads are screwed up, and appear as “Guest.” This would make searching for them by usename impossible.
Thanks! For some reason, it doesn’t come up using a keyword search of “lightning” in the title (using the board search function).
I actually did manage to find it myself a moment ago by searching for all threads that I’d started that were older than ten years, and was coming back to delete my post, but you beat me to the punch.
P.S. Apparently I misremembered that Chronos posted to that thread. Actually, I was quoting him from another thread instead.
It depends on what you consider rare. The list can be found in this thread. It is embedded in MySQL, which vBulletin uses.