HAHAHAHAHA!
I get the irony, even if no one else does.
I drink my morning coffee out of my slug-mug–every morning. For eight years. Every morning. It makes me realize the true mission of the SD. It also keeps me from nodding off after reading 1000’s of mundane OPs in General Questions.
New forum idea: ‘Mundane General Questions I Must Share’
Then rename MPSIMS to ‘General Discussions’
To keep you awake?
-D/a
I do that all the time. Where’s my reputation for idiocy? I demand my rights!
I’m going to drink more, and post more! #Occupy STMB!!!11!!!
So basically a combination of geneticly based obtuseness with laziness.
Yes, it does need a niche. I would say it probably already has one, and if it needs a different one, it definitely does not need to be the exact same niche Google already has (not to mention all the other search engines). They’ve already got that pretty well covered. There’s always going to be some overlap between the board and Wikipedia, but for elementary stuff like “where does Mount Rushmore’s name come from?” Google and Wikipedia are pretty trustworthy. We’re asking you to figure out for yourself which of your thread topics could be answered through sources liki Google and Wiki, and frankly, I think the answer is “most of them.” They’re reliable sources on some topics and not others, and if you get used to using those sources like most people have, you’ll figure out when you can trust them and when it’s better to ask the board.
This indicates part of the problem, Jinx – the SDMB is a good resource when you’re looking for opinions, but a lot of the questions you ask are not matters of opinion, they’re matters of fact. There are many resources available where you can look up facts for yourself, and the folks around here get understandably annoyed that you don’t do so.
Which is why the words factual question are bolded in the General Questions forum description.
Jinx, if you’re actually interested in the opinions of other Dopers, here’s an honest bit of advice for you:
Firstly, if the straightforward and uncontroversial answer to a factual question can be found just as easily by typing your question into Google or Wikipedia as it can by starting a thread here, you probably don’t need to start a thread. While GQ is intended as a forum for questions with factual answers, that doesn’t mean that it’s intended for every single question with a factual answer that you might be able to think of.
Second, and this is (for me, at least) one of the more frustrating things about your posting style, is that you would probably annoy people far less in GQ if you would, on occasion, actually return to the threads that you start in order to engage in some follow-up conversation or, at the very least, thank the people who have gone out of their way to help you.
I just did a search for GQ thread you’ve started, and then clicked on the Replies link for each of the last 100 threads. In the substantial majority of your own GQ threads, you have only made a single post, which was the OP. This small sample confirms my more general observations about your GQ style; more often than not, you never return to threads that you start.
You say that you don’t want to ask Google or Jeeves or Wikipedia about these things, and that you want the Straight Dope’s opinion. That’s fine, but this isn’t just a fucking search engine, it’s a community, and the very least you could do is acknowledge all the people who go to the trouble of satisfying your never-ending quest for answers to the questions that no-one else wants to ask.
I just looked back over my own GQ posting history, and i noted that, in every case where i posted a GQ question, it was because i had an actual interest in the answer and also in engaging in some discussion on the topic. At the very least, i virtually always make sure to thank the people who helped me, and i usually also contribute something further to the discussion.
Your own posting style seems to suggest an attitude of, “Here’s something i might be interested in. Why don’t the rest of you talk about it and entertain me.” It gets a bit old, is all.
Just MHO.
This.
+1
Like.
Are there any others of these I’m missing?
No-one else is channeling Garth.
It would be another matter if you checked google and Wikipedia first, then inquired the reasons (if any) that you found their views dubious with regards to your question. It is good form to carry at least some of your own water.
As for paying customer… yes you’ve given a donation to those running the server. But last I’ve seen you haven’t placed funds into the pockets of those who have penned answers to your questions. They are doing you a favor. And it appears that you are not respecting their efforts.
QFT.
Yes, this particular statement describes my thoughts as well.
I was wondering why it took so long before this came up. It seemed to be an obvious answer from the start when the OP started making noises about being a “paying customer”.
Me too. Maybe we were cutting Jinx some slack at the time – but when he brought it up again, I felt that it needed a reply.
Er… Prolific?
There are about 7500 active members at the board – those are people who have logged in during the past 60 days. Most of those are probably guests. But say the SDMB scores $10 annually from them (again this is conservative since Charter Members pay $7.50/year). That totals to $75,000 of revenue. Now admittedly some paying members may not have logged in for the past 60 days. Still, I’m guessing that 75 grand is a highball estimate. And that’s not sufficient to run a business.
Membership fees are not a money-spinner and neither are advertisements. Their main function is to justify benign neglect on the part of the bean counters. I opine that there’s a pot of gold somewhere in this venture, but it seems clear that it has yet to be mined. But I digress. The point is that our $7-15 fee doesn’t amount to much and most of us understand that. We do it to fight ignorance, which is its own reward.