...The devs should remember, Offtopic isn't for them, its for the community. They have their own internal forums, and the whole rest of the forums to remain clean. But offtopic should still be a place to have aimless, but incredibly interesting discussion that go off in fun directions, debates, and places for Jummy to do random book reviews, stories from his past, and how lawyers in the south dress. Those threads are what made the forum a great place, and those are what we need. Offtopic is not meant to be for the devs, but instead a place for the community to hang out, drink a beer, and have fun. Sorry to say, but IRC is most definitely NOT the answer.
Well of course I agree with that brilliant analysis *blush*
I know I come on for the friends, I don't come onto the forum just to read stuff from other people that I have no connection. i actually care about you guys. I wanted to know what your first words for in that recent thread, it's not just about the validity of the posts, but also how entertaining they are to us. Fuzzy Bunny's old vehicle manuals had really no bearing on anything at all, but by god they were a joy to read. I liked when flyguy posted his spanish paper with requests for people to help him with it, I like that people can do things like that and discuss it. It's like getting together daily with your group of friends and talking about whatever comes to mind. I just want to be able to talk like we're at a bar, discussing whatever it may be, girls, tanks, recent changes to airplane manufactures, it doesn't matter. I just hope we can maintain that, that's what made FF so special.
Abso-effing-lutely. The problem of "What is spam?" is similar to "What is porn?", to which US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun delved the depths of jurisprudential thought and came up with , "I don't know how to define it, but I know when I see it". And that's about as good as you can get it.
I think part of the problem of lowered quality of Off Top has been ennui brought on by the slow falling away of long-time good-quality posters. That means folks just don't have the emotional, yes, the emotional energy to engage. If we can adapt and adjust, and go for quality over quantity in both threads and posts, we'll do fine. Now that doesn't mean every post need be a work of art. Some of the most hilarious posts are perfect one word-ers. Just no more inane "i like pie" post, or an every-day record of the state of your bowel health.
So what I propose is, everybody go a little light on the throttle, both posters AND mods, until we find our equilibrium. It will happen. Meanwhile, where the HELL did all these threads come from? Do we really need 20-some new threads a day? I don't think so.
