We have a new department here at the Straight Dope Message Board, the first of our soon-to-be-expanded Straight Dope Archives.
Consider it the depository of all ye need know.
This section got off to a good start with Louie’s HTML tutorial. Thanks again, Louie (and everybody else that contributed), it’s a good job.
What else goes into the section, well, to some degree that’s up to you. What’s really worth saving? What do you want at your fingertips?
Among other things, we envision this being a place where you can find answers to the same old questions . . .like . . .oh god, I can’t even bear to say it . . . the g-- well, you know what I mean. ::: shudder ::: Instead of toasting the socks off the clueless newbie that asks the question we can simply send them where they need to go to get edjamacated.
Suggestions for worthwhile material for The Reference section should be sent to yours truly, I’ll be happy to see it gets saved in the proper place.
your humble TubaDiva/SDStaffDiv
for the Straight Dope
Order arising from Chaos, shipments daily
An explanation of the moderator duties and a short biography of the moderators. For example, I was interested to read recently that Nickrz had written some books.
J’ai assez vécu pour voir que différence engendre haine.
Stendhal
If there’s a way to have Louie’s excellent “Fun with HTML (tutorial) : All Ye Need Know” single-post thread" stay on top of the list of threads on the ‘About This Message Board’ board, that would be useful. It’s the first thing people should see when they come to ATMB, since it will answer most of their questions right off the bat.
Other than that, I concur with Cessandra and Sterling that a list of abbreviations would help. Many are obvious: most people can catch on to BTW, IMO and IMHO, FWIW, IIRC, etc. from context, but I’m still trying to figure out what AFAIK (‘as far as I ___’ ?), and a couple of others that I can’t recall right now, stand for.
Also, there seems to be a glitch in the reference section.
When I go to the reference section, then choose the “Slow Down” thread, then go to the bottom to the selection bar to choose which forum or archive I want next, the bottom 2 options are:
Archives: General Questions
Archives: Comments on Mailbag Items
clicking the General Questions line leads to a screen saying “We could not find that archive. Perhaps it has recently been deleted. Please your back button to return.”
