Someone whispered in my ear, "What's this Spirit of the Board thing that you Old Hands are always on about?"

Well, first the facts, according to the Sainted Anu: "On this occasion [the sixth anniversary of AWAD], we at Wordsmith World Headquarters present a bulletin board.. where you can absorb words, discuss your favorite ones, powwow with fellow linguaphiles, help each other in sleuthing mystery themes, ask questions about etymologies, chitchat about puzzles, wordplay, crosswords and anything else that you can imagine."

And we have done all of that, and gone beyond that to become a group of individuals (who are Anything You Like Except Unanimous*) who love all of these aspects of words, who become enthusiatic and grandiose in writing about words, and who enjoy nothing more that a good "glory about words"¹, and who have come to realize that with the English language there is no One Way. (And we know that it is when differing opinions shift from being about words to being personal attacks that we have gotten into trouble.²)

And this Spirit is exemplified by an unbelievable variety of threads, such as "time on my hands" and "abceghilnoprtuy" and "brick outhouse bertha".

And the Great and Powerful Anu has chosen to remain behind the curtain and leave us to stand or fall on our own -- and we have continually fallen, always picking ourselves up again.

And this Spirit has never been about censorship, although the Gutter Police have always hung about in the effort to keep things somewhat wholesome, because we never know who's lurking.³ (But we know that we've had some teenage members.)

And we have fought the Good Fights: eschewing religious and political discussions because we know where they inevitably lead [flame wars], coming down hard on commercialism because that is strictly Anu's purview, and promoting diversity°.

*this is the origin of the term ayleur, which we couldn't agree to use universally and which some look down on even more than they do YART, which at least has had several good glories about it.

¹per the immortal phrase of Max Quordlepleen

²this has been true right from the start, and it seems we have to struggle with it constantly to bring people slowly to the recognition that things CAN be different to the usual 'flame mode' that exists at many a BBS.

³personal aside: I think this wholesomeness issue is the one which could bring Anu to intervene here.

°unfortunately, we've taken some criticism on this because of the other Good Fights -- the Spirit ain't perfect.

-joe (just the facts) friday