There should be a Cecil/Straightdope in other languages. A Cecil Chen in China, a Cecil Santos in Brazil, and a Cecil Petrov in Russia. There are billions of ignorant people in the world just dying to ask stupid questions. Why limit it to English?
Question is: how do you clone an elusive entity for the international market? Inquiring minds want to know.
I’m sure Cecil has equivalents in some foreign countries. The problem with rebranding Cecil is that outside the Anglophone areas he may well not be trusted and Russians, Chinese, Arabs, etc would be suspicious of information coming from an American source.
I think the bigger issue is that they have Google and Wikipedia in those foreign countries so I’m not really sure what the point would be? It was a great concept back in the day and still works as a legacy thing, but nowadays everyone’s an expert on everything thanks to being able to look shit up on the internet from their phone.
Doesn’t make everyone smart though, or ensure what they find is accurate, however…