The thing that most rinkies have in common is an appreciation for humor, I'd guess. Most of the content on the site can be classified as humor, aside from the games and puzzles-which suggests a certain intellectual side to the readers as well. Aside from that, I don't see one underlying trait bringing us together, or one difference tearing us apart. It's not debating lifestyles or a lack of tolerance that's hurting us. I think the situation could best be helped by being more strict about what we post, and putting more thought into what we say.

I can get away with saying that because I'm the official two year lurker. I enjoy reading intelligent posts more than writing them, and only chime in if I think I have something vaguely worthwhile to say. I feel like I should be contributing more after reading BG's post, however. The problem that plagues so many message forums is that standards become lax as to what qualifies as a pointless post, and people don't bother throwing a pearl of wisdom out into the cacophony of rambling threads.

That's still not rinkworks' problem. This certainly isn't a chat room conversation immortalized in threads yet. But more could certainly be done to improve it. I'm going to try an experiment myself-see if I can get around this week to posting just one really good thread people would want to read, comment upon, or chuckle about.

And that's not going to be another complaint or analysis of the forum. We've all hopefully had our wakeup calls, and we're just going to try to do what we can to improve the content of what we'll be reading.

Mark"Brevity-still have to work on that."N