Who are these “most of us”? I, and the other people I know IRL who post here, check it daily.
Ed,
Ya GOTTA bring back Weird Earl !
Put the links each week back on the homepage, or as you suggested, make it an ongoing thread.
I could live with that compromise. But really, the New Additions list on the main SD page is quite long. It seems to me it could be trimmed ever so slightly to make room for Weird Earl’s.
But…but…you’ll bring in the “wrong” sort of people! (Yes, I’ve seen that argument before, when they started the facebook sharing button, I believe. Seriously.)
Christ, people, just have them both.
(And Twitter can be cool. If you read some celebrity twitter accounts, they’re seriously funny. Not to mention parody accounts! And you don’t HAVE to have a twitter account to use it! Sometimes, I wonder why yinz are on the freaking internet itself)
Although I already voted, I think that TPTB would be more likely to read this thread.
Please bring back Weird Earl’s!
I’ll gladly donate the equivalent amount of money to charity if you’ll stop the Luddite whining about stuff like this.
Fewer than 70 people in a message board with a couple thousand active users? Really?
This shouldn’t be about what a bunch of people who clearly don’t understand Twitter think about Twitter. It should be about what might bring new people to the board and generate revenue. I highly, highly doubt that WEs brings us any new users. Twitter very easily could.
It’s been said before, but why can’t both be on the front page?
Of course they could.
But then someone would have to do the work of updating the link every week and checking all of the submissions first to make sure that they are good and appropriate. It doesn’t sound like very many people even looked at them so it’s work for nearly no benefit. It also doesn’t seem like the person who did the work is interested in continuing to do it.
Now in the poll, it’s well over a third of voters who want Weird Earl’s back. And the straight Yeses are leading the straight Nos by 50%. (No word yet on the gay ones.)
Honestly, it’s fine with me either way. Just realize that you are voting for and demanding that someone else has to do a bunch of work that doesn’t benefit the bottom line of the board when that same amount of effort (Twitter feed) could very likely bring in revenue.
Okey-doke.
But of course the no plus don’t care is over 60%. When deciding whether it’s worth their trouble you can see why that number might matter more to TPTB. Also a couple of the yeses are dubious too reading the comments in the thread here.
Just having an ongoing Weird Earl’s thread makes a lot of sense to me. Weird Earl’s fans can of course bookmark the thread for convenience. I don’t see much added benefit of having it on the front page.
I’ll take the risk of being thought of as a Luddite if someone will tell me what “zapping”/“getting zapped” means.
Please, guys. Don’t make me go to urban dictionary and learn it on the street, the way I had to with “felch” and “squicking.”
You won’t find it anywhere else. It’s from the thread about board problems, and means having all posts suddenly marked as read despite still being active.
Siam Sam seems to get the worst of it, to the point where he is, I believe, the first Doper allowed to have a sock, which they used for testing to see if they could pinpoint the problem.
What’s with this either/or thinking? There’s no reason Weird Earls have to mean being without Twitter.
And when the owner himself asks you what you want, it’s kinda stupid to call it “demanding.” “Would you like a cookie, Sarah” “Yes, mommy!” “Well stop demanding cookies!”
What’s with this either/or thinking?
OK, we’ve gotten close to a couple hundred poll responses, and so far “yes” to restore Weird Earl’s is running an anemic 37%, with everyone else voting no, don’t care, or don’t know what we’re talking about. Bear in mind that I have to pay someone to review WE submittals and post links on a scheduled basis, and while any one instance doesn’t take a huge amount of time, over the course of a year it adds up - and I can put the $ to better use. (Example: looking for good Threadspotting candidates, which we don’t always get enough nominations for, but which draw people into the stickiest part of the site. And yes, I know there’s a thumbs-up plug-in for vBulletin; one discussion at a time.) The posted comments generally confirmed my impression that WE makes the site look dated. So I’m not going to bring it back.
Still, I know WE has its fans. There’s an obvious solution: a Weird Earl’s thread in (presumably) Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share. WE lovers need merely post new links to this thread on a regular basis (no bumps, please) to keep it on the front page. In MPSIMS, judging from current traffic, this would mean a new link every couple days, same as we used to do on TSD’s home page.
To get the ball rolling, here’s a link to the WE archive, if the thread starter (Sam?) cares to use it in post #1:
http://www.straightdope.com/weirdearls
I concede one shouldn’t go to one’s grave without having seen this:
http://rubegoldbergphilly.com/videos/ (top video)
Thank you, Ed.
It’s a Christmas miracle! 
I think poor jabiru actually gets the worst of it. But the thread in question is here.
Okay, the Weird Earl’s link is now up and running here in MPSIMS.