I almost didn't come back to this thread. Then I realised it had been very busy and began to read from my last post.
I'm a veteran, and I think I'm about 100 posts off being a Pooh-Bah. Haven't checked, because I don't really care. As, I hope, most of you will realise, the board is a community to me, as it is to many others. Not the only one I live in, but one which has given me a great deal of pleasure over the past ten months. The number of posts is interesting in a mild sort of way, but as has been pointed out above, conveys nothing except the individual's endurance. The real rankings on the board are intellectual and are conferred by other members out of respect, not by the Board software based on a given number of posts.
For those who are new and unaware, I have been travelling in the States recently and have met a number of members of this forum. Without exception, you were nice and generous people, and I enjoyed meeting you immensely. The thing that astonished me was how like your board personas most of you are. I think that most of us who have met others from the board feel pretty much the same way. And I think that I can generalise from the sample I have met and say that this will be the norm. I can't see any reason to come on to the Board and pretend to be someone you're not.
There has recently been a reasonably large number of new people joining the Board and actually posting. I see this as nothing but good. That's what the forum is for. I've often wondered where the rest of the 2,600 people who have signed up are. Some are attracted in the first instance by language but become more interested in the chit-chat. Others only post on language topics. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion.
As several posts above this one have pointed out, the Board is different things to different people. Some people are only mildly interested in language, but are very much interested in other people. I need hardly point out Ithaca, New York, to the old-timers as an example of what can happen!
At the moment I have severely restricted (by my standards) access to the Internet. Therefore, I have not even opened the Q&A folder for three months, and there are 3,000 posts there which I am going to have to face up to sooner or later. Every time I come to AWADtalk I look at the url longingly, but have to move on - I&A, Wordplay and Miscellany are all I can manage. Those who don't know me may well believe that CapK is a lightweight not interested in language. The truth is that CapK is a lightweight who IS interested in language but who is short of time.
The point of this, yes. Okay, if people who have been on the Board for a fair while don't like what some of the newer members have to say, do what I do and ignore those posts. This, I might add, is something I don't do very often. Don't criticise them personally on the Board or slag them off in PMs.
And remember, expression and emotion in writing is not necessarily interpreted the way that face-to-face communication is. Be careful. Because I'm inclined to believe that most of the supposed negativity that occurs is actually just a failure of communication. I've been astounded from time-to-time by how what I've written has been picked up by its recipients! But it's MY fault, not theirs!
Enough, already.
