Talk:The Straight Dope

message: Is there another way that anyone would like to see this material presented? I'm not stuck on how, exactly, it's written; just that it be in there. It's a valid part of the history of the Boards.MichaelCaricofe 5 July 2005 02:36 (UTC)
How about not "presenting" it at all? Believe it or not, neither the board nor Widipedia revolve around you and your issues. Your banning is no more important than a good dozen or more other incidents on that board that aren't included here because this is supposed to be a bloody encyclopedia entry, not a place to air your spite.
Get a grip, get a life, and get lost. And I say this as someone who thought the Admin in question should have been demoted to Member because of this.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.197.238.119 (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: History of the boards

message: I wonder how the crew that watches the SDMB wiki would feel about a link to my Snarkive page somewhere in the entry.
http://cloudhelmut.4t.com/snarkarchive.html
If you take a look you'll see that, despite the name, I give a pretty objective telling of "watershed moments". Also, as it icludes Michael's personal fav it might stop his trolling here.
I know this is an open-edit community but I feel silly just putting it up myself. Nominating it is as far as I can go. I'll leave it to the more regulars here to decide. And hopefully I don't screw up the page with this entry, Wikipedia is mucho not intuitive.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.131.159 (talk) 1:23, 6 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  SSS link 

message: A casual search on the earliest threads in CoSR turned up this thread, dated 1999-04-29
A similar search in IMHO turned up this post by manhattan, dated 2000-05-25, where he mentions IMHO as a new forum.
My search is based on last-post times, so earlier threads (based on OP time) may well exist. However, with the gap being over a year, unless the earlier CoSR threads were carved out of CoCC or GQ threads -- which I'd imagine would be a painful manual process and therefore unlikely -- it appears that CoSR was created well before IMHO.
I realize that a lot of dates got screwy when the board switched from UBB to vBulletin, but I really don't think that's the case here.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.166.203.62 (talk) 05:29, 7 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forum Creation Order 

message: Not sure you can rely on the forum/thread numbers.
Here's the pit creation thread (started by Tuba)
03-11-1999 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.131.159 (talk) 06:32, 7 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  also on creation dates 

message: I just corrected the date for the first SDMB incarnation on AOL. However, it's unclear to me how exactly it came about -- in Zotti's announcement, he says:
4. Does this mean the end of a.f.c-a?
Of course not. The Straight Dope has no formal connection with a.f.c-a. It is a spontaneous efflorescence of wit and learning on the part of Teeming
Millions, proving that our many years of selfless labor are finally paying off. Cecil is very proud.
So, did the Chicago Reader contact AOL to form a Straight Dope group? Or did Cecil's fans who were also AOL subscribers organically coalesce into a group there? If it's the latter, how did it come to be officially blessed by the Reader?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.166.204.158 (talk) 17:58, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  SDMB on AOL 

message: It would really be nice if this article talked about something beyond just the size and formal structure of the message board. It's hard to tell from reading this why anyone would care. Are there topics that are particularly commonly discussed on the board? Notable participants? Something? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:00, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
No. Nobody should care. Just more wanking on the part of SDMB posters that think their board is the end-all of the internet. WLight 08:24, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability 

message: Put in the slashdot incident so as to improve notability, :P.
Also trimmed the last para so it wasn't so advert like.
-CH— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.131.159 (talk) 19:37, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  add&trim 

message: I think that this should form the basis of an actual Straight Dope article (currently a redirect).  Cecil Adams is not the only person that does things there (the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, for example) and I think it all deserves its own article.  I think that this should then be part of a larger Straight Dope article.  violet/riga (t) 12:09, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straight Dope article 

message: I like how, despite the fact that the article has been running for at least 20 more years than the message boards, the message board section is more than twice as long as the section on the article. You don't even mention the date that The Straight Dope was first printed, for chrissake. (It was during the week of February 2nd, 1973, says the Straight Dope website.) Are you people even trying?
Congratulations, Wikipedia. Once again, you completely fail at not being totally parochial.
-anon— Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.205.198.51 (talk) 18:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  omissions 

message: Most of the section on the message board just simply isn't notable.  Unless someone can explain why an encyclopedia should name and describe every subforum an unremarkable message board, I'd like to trim that section to:
"The Straight Dope Message Board (abbreviated SDMB) is a collection of forums inspired by The Straight Dope. The board is owned by the Chicago Reader, and operated mainly by volunteer moderators. It uses the popular message board software vBulletin and has over 56,000 registered members, of which ~3500 are paid subscribers as of August 2005. It is ranked 70th by big-boards.com in number of posts as of January 29, 2006.
The SDMB had its fifteen minutes of internet fame when the thread If LotR Had Been Written By Someone Else!? became a victim of the Slashdot effect. The thread garnered a little over 2000 replies and close to 420 000 views." 130.132.199.75 21:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that most of the text about the message board is/was not notable. Tskoge 09:23, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree as well. Do members of the "recent changes patrol" actually read the discussion section or the article's content or do they just make educated guesses based on the length of text removed? sheesh.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.139.33.21 (talk) 15:59, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, it looked like blanking vandalism (especially as it was from an anon. user). I should have been more careful in this instance. Hynca-Hooley 16:40, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Notability, really

message: It appears that there is currently a revert war regarding two of the external links in the article. In my opinion, these two links should be removed because they violate some principles in the Wikipedia style guide for external links, mainly item 1 in the section titled "Links normally to avoid" and possibly numbers 3 and 9 as well. The link labeled "History of the SDMB" links to a site called "Trainwreck Snarkives", which appears to be original research and does not seem to be a notable POV. The link labeled "SDMB anonymous snark pages" goes to a DeadJournal page called "SnarkPit", which is a discussion area for the Straight Dope message board which may or may not be notable. In fact, there is currently a thread on that page about this very issue. It seems that everyone who has either added the links or removed them has been an anon (except for me). What are everyone else's thoughts on it? --Cswrye 07:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After looking at the content of the links, I realized that they were not spam as I had originally thought, and they are related to the Straight Dope Message Board. However, I still think that they are not relevant enough to the Straight Dope column to merit inclusion, especially given Wikipedia's guidelines that generally discourage external links. The consensus seems to be that three out of three users believe the links should be removed. That's hardly an overwhelming number, so if anyone disagrees, feel free to voice your opinion. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and remove the links, although I predict that they will frequently be re-added by anonymous users. --Cswrye 16:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevant external links 

message: Shouldn't we refer to the idiom from which the name of the column derives? Ventifax 01:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "The straight dope"

message: There should be a section for criticisms of The Straight Dope's accuracy. There are plenty of them. Tragic romance 21:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are there any cites for these inaccuracies? Alastairward 10:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticisms 

message: Hi, I'm the administrator for The Straight Dope.  
You have the site listed as Inactive; this is not the case, which you can see here:
https://www.straightdope.com/
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/
We are not currently producing new content;  Cecil Adams is on hiatus and longtime SD editor Ed Zotti is now working as a local columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, the corporate owner of The Straight Dope. But the site continues, both the column side and the message board.  There is still a weekly mailing.  
We may return to providing new content but there is no current date for restarting.  
Please correct this.  Thank you.
JParadisHagar
TubaDiva@aol.com
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope
JParadisHagar (talk) 20:16, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. --Escape Orbit (Talk) 23:34, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correction please:  The Straight Dope site is NOT inactive.