Sure, but the owners have been just fine with it for 20 years, and people ponied up cash when it was needed. I agree, though, totally up to them where they want to spend their money. I sometimes wonder if the Sun-Times doesn’t want it’s name associated with the SDMB, because it seems an ideal way to cross advertise, thus leading to board exposure for a new audience. Especially since newspaper readers tend to be older.
Problem is, he didn’t want to hear any of that. I think he even mentioned Substack himself by saying he wanted to to a Substack like column, he just wanted to take money from the board to do it.
And I wish you could read your own comments for what they say. That thread was indeed fine, until you arrived with your unnecessary aggression and accusations, e.g.:
I guess neither the barn stuff or his ability to follow the ups and downs of Game stop have paid off for him.
Instead of having the SDMB make enough money to cover Ed’s salary and expenses,
What I object to is using money raised thru the board, which we all use, and paying Ed’s salary to write a weekly column that was usually only published in give away newspapers that people line bird cages with.
It’s certainly not the same old guy that couldn’t hold onto enough readers then to save his column.
But what was Ed an expert in? Using a telephone? Having his staff do research and experiments for him?
But putting the onus of Ed’s salary on the board income helps only one person, Ed, at the expense of all the board users.
As of now, all we know is Ed wants to write a column again and he wants the board to pay his salary, and I’m sure it’s not minimum wage, to do so. Plus the whole idea of having people pay even more money to do half of his job for him. Meanwhile, the board gets nothing back after having their membership fees doubled.
From my perspective, you took a joke Cecil_Adams made about GameStop and spun it into this fairy tale about the board having to support his salary, making him look like some money-grubbing, useless, sponger. (Those quotes are just a selection, there are more). Any useful critique you may have had about the Modest Proposal was lost in all the spittle.
The entire idea was:
Cecil writes regular columns again.
The board stays almost entirely the same.
People who choose can subscribe (for about $30/year, probably) to a particular new forum to interact with and help Cecil find questions to answer.
That’s it. And yet you acted like Cecil came to your house, broke into your safe, stole all your money, slept with your wife, and kicked your dog on the way out. And now accuse everyone else of not reading for comprehension. For fuck’s sake, dude.
Yeah, this is one of the big wrinkles I’m not sure of, I don’t know who really owns the Cecil Adams intellectual property and the column, I know the column at one point ran in a number of papers, but I’m not sure how the legal licensing for such things normally is. It could be that there isn’t really an option to publish a “Cecil Adams” “Straight Dope” column outside of the Sun Times umbrella.
Yes, I do. I started a poll on that there at the height of that forum. Looking at that poll and looking at the people who are still posting there, I’d say it’s about a dozen on the generous side, not counting people who were banned.
I also know the number of people who went there during the week of migration to Discourse when no one could post on the Dope. That number is one.
None of them were modded so I’m guessing the posts were ok. He asked for input and he got it. Even he said he got what he needed when he closed the thread. What more could he ask for?
Vitriol in ATMB is inappropriate, absolutely. But “love” as Ed’s motivation seems questionable when the last time he significantly engaged with the site was 13 years ago in order to promote his new book - which mysteriously got its own forum after posters had been begging for various site modifications and had been told it simply wasn’t possible.
Now,“Cecil” has posted for the first time in 8 years because he wants something from the members to help reactivate his column.
Look, I wish Ed all success in his writing ventures. His Straight Dope books gave me hours of enjoyment and much edification. And if Ed wants to use the board as a stepping stone to greater writing success, I don’t even begrudge him that, if he’d be a bit more transparent about it.
The big issue for me is people’s belief, which files in the face of all evidence, that their blind devotion to Ed is somehow reciprocated. What “love” has he shown? He obviously doesn’t have the slightest interest in being part of the SDMB community. He can’t even give a shout-out to Beckdawrek, and you know that would make her day.
Credit where credit is due, of course. There is one important exception to his indifference: the work he did on the memorial fundraising and gift-giving in the name of TubaDiva. That was a very good thing, and I’m sure it took quite a bit of time
I just don’t think Ed cares about the community here - if he did, he’d engage with it, instead of only showing up when he wants something, and then ignoring all the questions and advice he got.
I don’t really see the problem here. Ed opened a thread asking for feedback. He apparently got the feedback he wanted, even if it wasn’t really what he wanted, and closed the thread. I mean, would you have preferred if he just ghosted, or posted something like, “Thanks all, I got what I needed. I won’t be reading from here on out”?
I don’t think this is about “blind devotion” to Ed. More like blind devotion to keeping a community alive. Ed is the only lifeline to make that happen. So poo-ing all over him isn’t helping.
You mean if he doesn’t produce new columns, the board dies? I’m not clear on how that mechanism goes from point to point.
If the two AREN’T irrevocably linked, the thread could have started with a simple, “Hey everyone, TPTB are considering shutting down this board if we don’t produce revenue; I need a sense of whether there are enough people who would make annual payments of, say, $30/year, to keep us going. Comments, please?”
But the column and the future of the board were tied together, and things got messy fast. Who’da thunkit?
I just dislike the false dichotomy that has been brought up lately. That if you aren’t calling someone cancer you are fellating them. That is actual language that has been used.
I would have thought that here of all places we can disagree with each other without going full nuclear about it.
Anything other than being if not obsequious then strongly supportive and thankful was labelled as “violent opposition”. The “cancer” post was far over a line, but sharing that not all who post here think that “Cecil” is important to this board currently, that some actually resent Ed Zotti (not me btw, I just don’t see him as part of the community), and that the plan really does come off to many of us as an effort for him to make a few bucks off of some nostalgic old farts than any concern over the board’s staying alive, was a fair perspective to have shared, agree or disagree with it.
