> Brunnen-"never give up, never surrender"G

My comments here should actually fall as replies to several other posts in this thread, but I decided to gather them up into one post.

Reading through this thread, I have seen quite a few points that I agree with, and I wanted to expand on a couple of them.

First of all, I have noticed that over time, the number of posts to the Forum has been increasing at a rapid pace. This is to be expected, as Rinkworks as a whole becomes more popular. I think this leads to the problem in a lot of ways; the sheer bulk of the Forum makes it harder for Sam to trim (I imagine) and harder for those who like the higher quality conversations to reply to the "lamer" posts and gently inform people that their behaviour is not acceptable. "Not acceptable" is not quite the phrase I want there, but I can't quite bring to mind what I do want to say. I hope you understand what I am getting at.

The major problem with bulk, I think, is that it makes the Forum too hard to read. Those who would normally post the most interesting replies simply do not have the time to read every post and find the ones worth replying to. I think that there are quite a number of these, but when people read (to quote Iss) 20% of what is posted (at best, I think) then a lot of good stuff goes unread, especially if people preferentially read the posts written by names they know -- a new poster with very good ideas can very easily be overlooked, not replied to, and drift away rather than being fed intellectually and sticking around.

Another thing: There was some talk about whether wit and charm were prerequisite to posting here. I agree with those who have said that these qualities are not required, but I think the problem is that we are asking the wrong question. Wit and charm are nice, but they are far less important than depth, and I don't think that it is too much to ask that people post shallow threads less often. I do realize that not every conversation should be deep, but we could certainly do with less of the other stuff. I also realize that asking for deeper content would restrict the posts from younger Forum readers, but I know for a fact that it would not eliminate them entirely. I have seen some of the youngest posters come up with very deep stuff on occasion. I just think that those posters should be encouraged to think more carefully about what they plan to post and try not to post as often.

I also do not want to imply that it is only the younger readers who post shallow and meaningless posts. I am quite guilty of this myself, and I will often question the worth of something I have posted once it is too late.

I have read every post to this Forum since November 1, 2000, and quite a number from before that date, and I find that in doing so, I see a great number of potentially interesting threads that get no replies. Many times, I want to reply to them myself, but I find that I do not have the energy or the interest by the time I have read everything else on the Forum. On several occasions, I have gotten around to typing up a reply to something only to realize halfway through that I am too tired to even finish the train of thought, and deleting my work. I am already considering doing that with this post, as several of my thoughts on the subject have been cut off already.

A big part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of the people who have good things to say are the older (and usually more mature as a result) people, and because of that, they tend to have responsibilites in life that preclude regular and thorough Forum reading and posting. As a result, those with less maturity tend to take over. This particular problem is one that I can't see a solution to, short of the less mature people wising up and posting less often and more carefully -- but this would require maturity, which is most of the problem in the first place.

I've had enough of being derailed in mid-thought. I hope some of this stuff is useful to someone.

Oh, one last thing that I just remembered: I don't have a problem with people misspelling the odd word or having trouble with some of the finer points of grammar (how could I take exception to it, when I am guilty of it myself), but I think that I am not being unreasonable in thinking that everyone who posts here has a solid enough grasp of the language to use correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar the majority of the time. I can understand some failings in this area from people who know English only as a second language (for example, I gladly overlook the occasional spelling and grammatical errors in posts by Andrea and Fuzzpilz) but the youngest regulars here are generally no younger than age twelve, and have generally all been educated to a level at which they should be able to follow the basic rules of the language. All I'm really asking here is that people take some time in typing their posts and take the chance to read what they have written when the Preview page comes up. Even something as simple as capitalization makes a big difference in the readability of a post, and if people don't want to put the effort into writing, I don't see why anyone should be bothered to read and reply.

Don Monkey