New Layout and the death of the Mailbag

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1

So, its been a week or so since the Straight Dope Homepage was revamped. I like the layout but was mighty concerned when I saw that there was no Classic Columns or Cecil’s Mailbag . This brought to mind several questions.

[ol]
[li]Does this mean I only get one new column every day or so instead of three?[/li][li]What will become of the Mailbag since AFAIK the only place it’s distributed is on this site?[/li][li]What will become of the SDSAB and its cronies, should I lock my doors knowing they’ll have free time to roam now?[/li][li]Whats the motivation for the change?[/li][li]Whats the motivation for the reduction in content?[/li][li]Why do I like vB formatting so much?[/li][/ol]

2

Classic Columns and the Mailbag still exist, they’re just more streamlined. If you look at the “current column”, for instance, it’s written by Jill. Personally, I’m not sure I like the layout: We have enough people confusing the Mailbag with Cecil to begin with.

3

I agree. If it’s not by Cecil, the author is noted in small print near the title, but I really don’t think that’s enough. I liked the old format better - it separated Cecil’s current column, his old column, and non-Cecil columns. Now it’s all a big confusing mess.

4

Omniscient inquires:

[[Does this mean I only get one new column every day or so instead of three?]]

Yup.

[[What will become of the Mailbag since AFAIK the only place it’s distributed is on this site?]]

Mailbags will be published at the same frequency as before, three times a week. Reader honchos don’t like the name Mailbag (they think it sounds too much like a letters-to-the-editor column), so we’re trying to think up something snappier. Our thought was, hey, they’re all Q&A columns, why do we make such a big deal about diffentiating them on the main screen? However, several have made the point that comments on columns may be posted to the wrong forum on the SDMB, so we may tweak this a bit.

[[What will become of the SDSAB and its cronies, should I lock my doors knowing they’ll have free time to roam now?]]

This is probably a good idea regardless. However, the SDSAB will continue on the same disreputable basis as before.

[[Whats the motivation for the change?]]

Several things: (1) Editing and posting nine items a week (one current column, three Mailbags, five classics) was a lot of work. (2) We were running out of material for classics. The contents of all five SD books are now online. Lately we’ve been updating old “current” columns and reformatting them as “classics,” which is something we need to do, but a five-per-week schedule chews up a lot of copy. It seemed reasonable to cut down to one classic per week.

[[Whats the motivation for the reduction in content?]]

Sloth or realism, depending on how you look at it. We want to give people a reason to visit the site every day, but one new column per day does the trick–two or three per day is overkill. Besides, as I say, it was sucking up a lot of time, leaving little for more creative work, participating on the SDMB, etc. There’s no net reduction in content - the columns we were converting from “current” to “classics” were already online; they were just being edited and reformatted.

[[Why do I like vB formatting so much?]]

We all have our strange little compulsions, I guess. At least yours doesn’t involve whips or firearms.

5

Thanks Ed, 'preciate it.