> And while I understand what you're saying, I don't think that things are ever going to be perfect. If the community evolves, maybe it should be allowed to do that.. even if it isn't changing in a direction we would have envisioned.

That would be great if RinkWorks were a public service run by volunteers, but it's not. If it changes in a direction that upsets, frustrates, depresses, or otherwise displeases me, thereby becoming enough of an emotional tax to maintain without enough compensating reward, it has to go. I do not think we are at this point. But I don't want it to be heading in that direction.

> As I was typing, a thought came to me. I know that one of the appeals of online journals for a lot of people was that it was *theirs*, so they could write about whatever they wanted without having to worry. Worry about things like.. would people want to read this? will people think it?s stupid? is it worth wasting server space to post this? And in regards to chat, I think that it?s just plain easier having to type something once than explain something multiple times to different people.

I can understand this, but if people are using livejournals to tell their friends about developments in their lives, they can count me out. This model of communication completely reverses what friendship is about, turning it from a giving model to a taking model. "You can be my friend if you come over here and listen to me when I happen to be talking" instead of "I want you to be my friend, so I am making a point to tell you what's going on with me."

I'm not entirely sure why the forum doesn't feel like exactly this kind of corruption of friendship. Possibly this is because, even though I run it, it feels like more neutral territory. (Though I realize I have a biased perspective, I do feel the Site Journal is more analogous to a livejournal than this forum is, because with the admittedly significant exception of forum moderation, we're on equal ground: anybody can start a thread, and my posts appear are not inherently more significant than anybody else's.) A more likely reason: the forum is never really used to broadcast information as personal as what tends to get broadcast in livejournals, perhaps because in the forum there is a greater sense that this is a public medium, not a pseudo-private one that *probably* only friends are reading. Consequently, though I still find out details of the personal lives of the people here through the forum, I've never felt that it is a replacement for personal communication.

> But as for decreased forum participation, I think that getting rid of or greatly minimizing the "RinkWorks elitism" would go far in finding a solution.

You'll need to explain that one to me. Where is the elitism in the forum? I could see this as a complaint about RinkChat. Although I don't see the op system as elitist, I'm open to people making cases about abolishing the op system in the hopes of reinvigorating chat, but I don't know where elitism, real or perceived, comes into play in the forum.