Why? What would be the point posting there?
Well, since the group pre-dates the message board by several years and not everyone likes web-based boards(see all the grumbling about slowness and moderation and such), some people choose to use usenet. The point of posting there is the same as the point of posting here. Getting into a community of like-minded people and talking about interesting things and fighting ignorance.
Enjoy,
Steven
As mtgman notes, it predates this board by a bit.
In the olden times, Cecil had a presence in only two places on the internet, a web page and a spot on AOL with a pair of AOL message boards attached. (One board was the equivalent of Comments on Cecil’s Columns and the other was the equivalent of all the rest of these fora mushed together.) That was back in the days before vB and UBB and other message board engines, and it was not a particularly user-friendly atmosphere, even if one did happen to have AOL access.
So, a group of Cecil’s fans went to the newsgroup powers in the æther and arranged to establish a newsgroup, alt.fan.cecil-adams. In 1999, AOL decided that Cecil was not dragging in enough mar. . . customers and decided to drop his columns. At that point, the Chicago Reader chose to make the investment to overhaul the web page, purchase UBB, and establish this board as a public face for Cecil on the net. (A few servers, multiple new fora, a change to vB, and a lot of work later, here we are.)
Back in 1999, however, the newsgroup readers of a.f.c-a looked around at their existing community and many decided that they had no overwhelming need to abandon their stomping grounds. There are any number of reasons: when originally established, this board was even slower than it is now, it is moderated (and there are people who detest moderation in all things), and the core founders of this board were originally the old AOL crowd–with whom a.f.c-a had carried on a mild rivalry for years (usually friendly, but with the occasional jerk–on either side–who had to be spiteful). There are still people who prefer the options of reading newsgroups, with the some of the whistles and bells (especially filtering) associated with mail readers not available on controlled message boards.
Among the other events in the spring of '99, it was not absolutely clear that this board would be successfully established (and, as UBB was pretty new and the earlier web-based message board software was junk) there was no guarantee that it would function, when up. When the suggestion was made that the AOL crew “move” to a.f.c-a, there were several complete fools on both sides who started threads encouraging board wars (despite the fact that several people already posted to both groups).
Since there were several “cultural” differences between the boards, OpalCat spearheaded an effort to establish a newsgroup where the AOL crowd could migrate without causing interminable warfare and disruption on a.f.c-a, thus misc.facts.straight-dope was created. That newsgroup is still out there, but this board was actually pretty successful from the get-go and m.f.s-d never really took off, with the AOL crew either coming here or integrating with the a.f.c-a folks.
(And after all that hoopla, the AOL message boards have not yet been taken down, although they are no longer connected to Cecil’s own words, as this board is connected to www.straightdope.com. They get about three posts a month among a very few ancients who keep up a light conversation.)
I bet that sucked
Should have thought of that. I was suprised at how active it looked. I mean, we all love Cecil but come on!!!
Thanks tomndebb. Oh, and Mtgman.
For most people, I think there is no point. I’ve gotten the idea that the group there is rather tribal, and doesn’t take particularly well to outsiders.
IIRC a fair number of SDMB-ers started hanging out in alt.fan.cecil-adams and misc.facts.straight-dope during the winter of our lost content when the SDMB was out of comission due to hacking and crashes and such. I recall a few threads after the SDMB came back along the lines of “how did you get your fix when it was down” and several people mentioned how they had hung out with the guys on usenet and it was a good time and they were really welcoming and friendly. Long-established groups tend to have that kind of effect in my experience. I visit several groups regularly and they, because of a dedicated membership, don’t even really have much spam and the signal/noise ratio is quite high. None of these groups has the word “sex” in it anywhere of course.
Enjoy,
Steven
Hmmm. This could lead to an interesting experiment in social evolution within an isolated society. Leave the usenet group alone for several years and see how they develop and differ from the messabe board users.
Who want’s to help me write the grant application? 
I had almost forgotten about mfsd! Boy was that whole thing a pain in the ass! Heh. Good learning experience though.
I participated from time to time on alt.fan.cecil-adams before I came here. It seems like I couldn’t break into the community there; I really never felt like I was a part of things. I really gave up on Usenet in 2000, when the noise-to-signal ratio became too high in many non-binary newsgroups.
a.f.c-a is very much like a combination of GQ and MPTIMS here.
There is a usable, though somewhat buggy hack to vBulletin that integrates Usenet newsgroups into vBulletin subforums. Considering the stripped-down vBulletin that operates here, and previous bad luck with the MySQL database, I don’t think the admins would be too keen on implementing vB hacks.
Looking through Google, I get the impression that a.f.c-a users look down on SDMB users, while we tend to ignore the Usenet Dopers.
I wonder if a.f.c-a has their own Dopefests …