Well maybe not, but if you could which one would it be?
Sorry slythe, I would have to vote for IMHO.
Although I have been posting in here tonight like a rabid dog I still can’t get use to it. I know that it is serving a really good purpose but I don’t think of it with the same love deep down in the bowels of my heart that I do when I think of mpsims. I guess mpsims just made too big of an impression on me 10 months back when I first registered. Old dog new tricks you know…
More like a Magicalsilverkey who is neither Rabid or a dog. (I think)
I would {u}have toit would be IMHO. Although, without it, MPSIMS would be flodded with posts and such.
Osip
The Pit seems to contain no real questions and answers, so it should be the first to go.
I have no use for GD. Same religious rhetoric, pro or con, over and over and over and over.
MPSIMS was alrady flooded. That’s kinda why this forum was created. MPSIMS is still flooded, just not flooded with polls & stuff.
Nope. Gotta keep the Pit. Otherwise, all the other forums get a bunch of ugly crap in them. It’s easier to control when it’s all in one place.
I can’t see getting rid of any of them, really. Although, if you really wanted to stay true to The SD, you’d have to get rid of everything but CCC & GQ. And then I’d have to throw myself off a cliff.
We could off the Mailbag forum. It seems to be the most dead of them all.
I’d vote off Comment on Cecil’s Comments, because it’s awfully presumptive to question the Master.
For actual relevance to the site, I’d have to vote of MPSIMS since it has no bearing to The Straight Dope and was put there just to keep the personal info off the more dedicated forums. Even IMHO has some relevance since posts like “What sort of VCR should I buy?” is closer to gaining wisdom than “My wife is having a baby” (which is good news, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not really connected with TSD).
For personal gratification, I’d like to do away with the Pit. As far as I know, when it first came out it was meant to be a place where threads would go once they were too heated for the other forums and might offend some of the other readers. It hasn’t been that, though. Instead it seems more like “we can say whatever we want in here!” and looks like a home for Tourette’s syndrome sufferers, trying to out gross each other with imaginary sexual references and talk of animals in various states of decay. The well thought out and sensible debates in there could just as well be held on most other forums and the degenerate bitch and flame fests really don’t hold any use anyway. Yeah, yeah, I know: If you don’t like it, don’t go in there. Except when I’m really bored, I don’t.
Nasty question to stick in IMHO, since the obvious answer is IMHO–it would just make MPSIMS a bit more crowded (with a little slop-over into GQ and GD).
On the other hand, AudreyK’s suggestion has some merit–fold the Mailbag forum into Comments on Cecil’s Columns. (I have my preferences set for two days, and not long ago I went into Mailbag and found there had been no posts at all in the past 48 hours. An empty forum is an eerie place.)
Comments to Mailbag Answers
What Jophiel said.
Actually, I don’t see the need to vote off ANY forum, though I do see some merit in combining Comments on Cecil’s Columns and Comments on the Mailbag Answers.
I also understand the Cathartic nature of the Pit, and how it keeps crap out of other forums. But my concern is that it’s very existence can breed hostility and ill feeling.
If there were no Pit, yes, some stuff would bleed into other forums. But any really out of line comments would be quickly addressed, just as now. And if the absence of the Pit caused us to be more polite and civil to each other, would that be such a bad thing?
I myself occasionally post to the Pit, but generally only to serious and relatively flame free threads (if I do post to a thread with flames in it, I don’t join in the attack). And I find the “Since this is the Pit (insert lame flame here)” to be at best boring, and at worst, pathetic.
I’ll admit that it’s sometimes entertaining to read posts of people trying to outdo themselves in outrageous, humorous, putdowns. As long as it’s relatively good natured. But the suspicion here is that what’s starts off as being all in good fun often actually creates ill feeling.
Personally, I don’t really see the need to eliminate ANY forum. But if one had to go, I’d either vote to combine the two column threads, or I’d get rid of the Pit.
There was talk about getting rid of the Pit months ago here and here. Although quite a few people favored getting rid of it, the results of the now broken poll showed that only 25% of the voters wanted it gone. Then again, only 200 people voted, so don’t think that poll was scientific.
I must admit that I have not visited all forums on SDMB, but of the ones I have I would vote to get rid of the Pit. It seems to serve no real purpose other than for irate posters to flame each other. I mean, What’s the point? You don’t feel better after.
Huh? I see a lot more going on in the Pit than just flames.
I like the Pit–it is sort of like the parallel universe to MPSIMS. It’s “Bad MPSIMS.” Frankly, I usually prefer the Pit to MPSIMS. At least people don’t give each other all those damn bracket-hugs in there. And it’s not really a free-for-all. If you spend any time in there, you will see that Lynn keeps a pretty tight lid on things.
You could add my vote to the “let’s combine CMA and CCC” list. CMA gets too little traffic, but serves a definite purpose. CCC would be the logical place to put it.
I’ll put my vote in for GQ. Just because you know no one else is gonna. I like being the contrarian.
Ditto for CMA and CCC. They could be combined.
Personally, I don’t like GD much. There’s usually a lot of religious debate there, which I avoid like the plague. Still, it seems way more popular that CMA and CCC.
I say lose the Pit. It’s childish and unworthy of such fine intellects as we have here.
But, (hijack coming…) I also suggest we ADD a forum: the Soap Opera. I know I’m going to get tons of flak for this, but I think we need a separate place for all the {{{{{{hugs}}}}}, sordid confessions, pathetic cries for help, transparent fishing for compliments, gushing birth/wedding/date/post count announcements and other crap that makes me roll my eyes and move to the next thread.
I know that there are many Dopers who just live for those posts so I’m not suggesting we ban them – just put them all in one forum so that I, and similar-minded Dopers, can avoid them wholesale, like I often do with the BBQ Pit.
Results so far ( and feel free to count and correct me if I am wrong)
IMHO-2
MPSIMS-1
THE PIT-5
GD-1
CCC-2
GQ-1
Mailbag-5
Although some of those mailbag votes where for combining CCC and Mailbag.
Looks like a tie so far for THE PIT and MAILBAG
I’ve never even bothered to look at the Pit, so I guess I could do without it.
Maybe I should check it out before I say that, eh?
I’ll throw in my vote to combine CMA with CCC.