Belligerentyouth
I'm not sure if I mean that admonishments are in jest. Yours, for instance, didn't seem to be that way. What I meant was, I think, that I hope we do not take admonishments personally, nor mean them that way (on the rare occasions that we make them). Being serious is fine - and sometimes necessary - but one can be serious without being grave, or touchy.
As for the other issue, you may be right - perhaps the insider jokes are intimidating to some. Perhaps on most threads most responses are less than germane. But what would you have us do? To 'control' our postings, even if only through acts of self-control, would also seem to undermine the spirit of this board. Notice that, apart from the flatulential yells of YART from time to time
, newcomers aren't rebuked for posting (no matter how obvious the question may seem), are usually welcomed for joining in, and usually also find at least one or two serious responses to their queries. I'd suggest this is already a great deal better than almost any other internet forum I've seen. To try to make it even more newbie-friendly, as it were, would, IMO, be twisting the tourniquet of etiquette too tight - we have, I suspect, lost some marvellous contributors to objections of this sort before, and I would be loath to see it happen again.
Yours & c
The Dishonourable Warrior for Sunshine
