Post #556646 by woofmutt on Tue, Sep 28, 2010 12:32 PM

Wow, that sure proves...Nothing.

But it makes a good sound bite, and that's why I'm voting for GROG (and yes on Initiative 492713).

Numbers of posts and where the posts are made mean nothing. Content does.

I could rack up another 150 posts today in the general and art forums by just adding "Great work!" "Nice!""Cool!" "ME LIKEY!!!" "LOL!!!""HA!" or "RAONTFLMAO!!!" to a bunch of threads. They wouldn't be Bilge posts but neither would they add one iota of useful content to Tiki Central.

I am a major advocate of Tiki Central ideally being filled with useful content and being done so in an orderly manner. But there's something that trumps the ideal of contributing useful content: Community.

Tiki Central is a surprisingly unusual Internet site in that there's an actual community here of people who have varying levels of interest in each others lives. An interest in Tiki is what brought us all here but I seriously doubt it's been the well thought out quasi intellectual discussions of Tiki that have kept the core TCers coming back. I think the main draw is the day to day interaction which consist largely of posts which are frequently just pointless joking or have very little useful contentt.

For example, I actually don't give a rat's ass what people made for dinner last night nor do I want to see pictures of it. (Pictures of well prepared dinners just makes me jealous while I am eating my usual pimento spread and crackers from a Vietnam era OD C-rations can.) While I don't think people posting pictures of their dinners adds a single bit of useful Tiki content to Tiki Central I know that it definitely adds to the sense of community.

Bilge also adds to the sense of community. Probably more so than most of the Tiki topic forums because not everyone feels they have something significant to contribute to a "serious" thread but everyone knows they can add pert near anything they want to Bilge.

(But I do wish that those who have Bilge type content to add to Tiki Central would figure out that it belongs in
Bilge so that the Tiki forms will remain relevant and searchable.)

A search for posts made by me would yield a result like one of the above screen captures. If it were possible to do a similar search of my actual day to day life I think you'd find that pert near everything I say or do during the day has little actual "value" and is void of meaningful content. I would guess that's the case for most average Joes and Janes. What I think that proves is...Nothing. Well, I guess it kinda shows that we're living our lives and apparently enjoying ourselves while doing so.