> I know many people already think I'm some sort of hate-filled denizen of the Dark Side who likes to flame people just because there's a huge global conspiracy against newcomers to the forum [...]

Ah, the good old glorious days.

When Internet in Italy was not more than 10 HP workstation in the Milan Polytechnic of Italy hall, when owning a 2400bps modem imported from the USA meant to be an high-tech oriented person, I started my online life.

I've seen the rise and fall of Italian Fidonet network.
Many of the actual newcomers, expecially if born after the 1980, can't even know what I'm talking about.
I'm working on some web-related projects that involve msg.forum moderation, sometimes as a job, sometimes as a personal favour to a friend, sometimes just for pleasure.

In a few words, I've got a bit of expertise about message forums. Just a bit...

Sometimes I meet again someone from the 'old glorious days'. Of course, our conversation is all on remembering people, moments, situations when we were *living* on-line, doing it knowing that we were doing something new, discovering an unexplored world, marking our personal milestones in our communication skills and in this technological age.
We were simply teenagers playing with complicated toys and we felt the world in our hands (or, we thought that the world was an external modem and a noisy analog phone line).

Ah, the good old glorious days.

We were making our rules, since there were no rules before us. We were a superior elite who could afford the incredibly huge (scaled on a teenager's economic capabilities) phone bills; we started new businesses, took new steps in the Italian technological progress.

We got tons and tons of newbies that wanted to play the big game by setting their own rules.

Days ago I met a guy that I always nicknamed "Stupid Jack". I remember days in which my moderation involved kicking out that looser (often more times a day) from whatever forum/msg board/BBS he got in...
He was pointless. He was absolutely 100% noise and 0% signal in every message/mail/post/whatever he wrote.

Then the tons of newbies grew, grew, grew.

Newbies became moderators and started to set their rules; old people started to surrender to the Internet age and to the newbie tide.

Newbies became 'old', experienced people and started to fight against their newbies, so the circle closed and restarted.

And closed and restarted.

And...

...well, I'm not *that* old... :)

That guy, "Stupid Jack" was just complaining about a msg. forum on his own newspaper website (yes, he *does* a little-big newsprint business), crowded by kids that lost every possible knowledge of our beautiful language.

Ah, those glorious old days when correctly declinating Italian verbs was a matter of honour.

Years ago, I met a girl. The fifth or sixth one to buy a modem and go online. Now she's married and has a 5-years-old-kid, well introduced to online communication and e-mail.
What will be the world when this kid will complain about newbies in his favourite message forum? What will be *his* online days of glory.

(Please, don't answer "42").

Ah, the next, coming soon, days of glory.

-----------------------------------------

Newbies are always a 'problem'. In this forum, in your favourite University, at work, in your sports team, in the Army...
The new generation always leads a different jargon, different ways to communicate, different habits and different rules.
There's nothing to do: we can choose between integration or isolation. Of course I'm not talking of integration on the same scale as it would be between different cultures, but that's the idea.
Newbies on RW are the same as Italian emigrants coming to the USA in the Thirties. Different people, different culture, different language, ...
Americans from the Thirties helped my grandpa and my grandma to integrate into a different culture and lifestyle.
Now, on the same line but on our smaller scale we can choose wheter to educate newcomers to our standards, trying to preserve these ones, or to let them do what they want, merging our and their standards (so downgrading the whole thing from our point of view); the other line is to close the door and become an exclusive club, with its own rules to get in. However, I don't think this last option will be the choice of Sam's.
We're the oldies, the grey-hair people that should educate and act as an example for the generation to come.

Cheers to everyone,

Andrea Pasqualini,
Milan, Italy.

P.S.
Brunnen-G: I think that you're offending my superior brain, that you're limiting the freedom of speech of every person here and that you should shut up. Now, let me see that dirty hammer you were talking about; I'll wait at the Milan Malpensa airport, please don't be late. Hugs! :D