This forum is for posting comments about Staff Reports. Staff Reports are not written by Cecil, they are written by staff members of the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, and occasionally by guest reporters.
When you have are starting a thread, please include a link to the Staff Report you are talking about. This helps keep us all on the same page, and avoids someone making a brilliant comment that was already made in the Staff Report, for instance.
To post a link is as easy as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
In other news, Staff Reports are on temporary sabbatical due to data lost in the recent unpleasantness. We hope to resume in the next few weeks.
C.K. DEXTER HAVEN, OH, C.K. DEXTER HAVEN! (Oh, hell, I can’t remember the rest of the scene, but I do consider Stewart’s “three sheets at the Dexter Haven Mansion” to be his funniest work ever!)
IWBNI (it would be nice if) the ``Comment on this answer’’ link gave the same courtesy, i.e. link to the relevant thread rather than to the board as a whole.
The “Comments on…” threads aren’t generated automatically; individual posters start them, so there’s really no way for the system to automatically link to the relevant thread. (For one thing, there may be more than one “relevant thread”–sometimes people just start up a new one without bothering to check if there’s one already going and they probably should put their comments in the existing thread, but some topics may legitimately give rise to more than one thread commenting on different aspects of the report.)
i know this is probably laughably way old, but what about incorrect mime headers? (please excuse if but after a comma is grammatically incorrect) (not to mention “laughably way old”)
The Staff reports themselves should be considered the start of a thread so that when one clicks on the “comment” link they can add their comment to the list of comments already there. There should actually be two links for commenting on staff reports, one to view other comments on this report, one to post your own comment to this report.
As it is now, I found your site through google when I looked up an obscure piece of nostalgia. I found a staff report that seriously needed comments and when I registered then clicked on the link to comment I wound up with 29 pages of comment topics to look through to see if anyone had already commented.
Please don’t take offense since I took the time to write THIS post, but that system seems nearly useless. I won’t bother to try to reply or add info or correct any staff reports so long as this silly system is in place.
I do like the site and will continue to read.