Not that I usually make a habit of posting twice in a row, but I think this is worthy. Here I'll post a reply I made last night in the One Ring forum in regards to a complaint about the announcement on chat threads. This pretty much covers what I feel about spam and how quickly or slowly a thread travels. <BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>"As far as the adopters go, we exist to help the new folk make it through the existing cliques and enjoy their TORC experience, not create new ones as you've implied. I was overjoyed to hear that I had been accepted as an adopter, but not because I'd have my own happy little group of lemmings. I heartily enjoy this site and want to do everything I can to help other newer folk enjoy it just as much. If you'll notice, most if not all adopter's conversation threads also include an "all welcome" type phrase. Mine is called "A Conversation Thread for Stormy's Adoptees Et Al." I made it quite plain that others who are non-adoptees are more than welcome in the main adoption thread and the conversation thread alike. Several well-respected posters have popped their heads in there to help the n00bs in my family feel more at home, seeing more names they'll see around the boards. They also pop in just to have a bit of fun, which I very much doubt the mods are in a hurry to stop. <BR><BR>It's not so much a problem when a thread moves fast, the problem comes when the reason for the speed of the thread comes from the quality of posts. My conversation thread moves at a decent speed, but not a page out of the fifty plus that are there consists entirely of one or two line posts. Be the topic of the forum "off topic" or not, Jon's and Ted's purpose was not to create a chatroom. They started a message board, and they pay out of their pocket for the site's bandwidth. An excess of one or two line posts uses that bandwidth at a rate that is unfair to the site administrators, and I think out of respect for them we should consider that. <BR><BR>When Lock-Bearer, IE, SJ, or any of the other mods try to do their job and monitor the site the and the way it is being used, I do not think it is fair to berate them for it. It was not until people began making sideways comments about fair or unfair treatment that one of the mods came into the MNT thread, and I think that says something. Every forum has undergone renovation at some point, and Talk should be no different simply because it is an "off-topic" forum. Sadly a good friend of mine was recently a casualty of spammy posting, even when he tried time and time again to tell the people posting in his thread to straighten up. The admins' and mods' intent is to keep things like that from happening again, so people do not get hurt. <BR><BR>I would not presume to say that what happens in the MNT thread or my own thread or any other conversation thread is less valuable than anything else that goes on anywhere on this website. People meet, talk, and enjoy each others' company here, and that is one of the things that has kept me here for just over a year now. But when it deteriorates to a chatroom atmosphere, simply put it is in violation of the effort Jon and Ted and the mods put into this site. That is what the mods are trying to prevent, and it is their job to do so."<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>If you want to read what others have said (There are only nine posts so far, it's very short at this point), you can find the thread in its entirety <a href='http://www.tolkienonline.com/thewhitecouncil/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=77208' target=_blank>here</a>.