> And as a final note, if my hunch is correct, and I am not welcome here, then please, by all means, say so.

This is not the least bit true. Frankly, I find a lot of your posts to be every bit as interesting as anybody's.

However, your point is taken. The truth is, a lot of us *do* know each other personally, as a lot of us have gotten close enough to fly across the country to visit each other. You're newer here than most and so haven't done that, but it doesn't mean that there's an automatic cold shoulder happening. I've always thought this place has been pretty welcoming of new people, or at least those that know how to spell (and you do). That said, I can well understand that this place can convey the impression of cliquishness. One, because posts *do* get deleted. What people don't realize, though, is that the posts of ancient regulars get deleted approximately as much as those of new people. Two, because there are, amongst the dozens that make up the community, groups of friends who are closer to each other than to the rest. But this is natural, and that doesn't imply that individual groups are unwelcoming toward everybody else. Of course, no community is perfect.

I think your post highlights one aspect of the problem, which is in direct conflict with the other. My current concern is not for the community as a whole but the fragmentation of my "closer" circle of friends. Hey, there are some people here I feel closer to than others. It's not an elitist thing. One, some of you I've known for five or more years, and others of you I've known for less than five months. Two, in a group as crazily diverse as this one -- remember, we've got scooter-loving grandfathers *and* teenage hellraisers -- there are going to be people that some relate to better than others.

I think that a meeting place that succeeds at keeping a broad group of people together loosely almost necessarily makes it less fit for keeping an intimate group of people together closely, and vice versa. It was my hope that RinkChat's main rooms would serve for the former, and private rooms serve for the latter. Except for your post here, which took me by surprise, I had thought that the main rooms were doing their job. And maybe they are, except that the way you interact with people isn't well suited to the structure of this place, just as the way I work isn't suited to the structure of AIM.