Post #72747 by Swanky on Mon, Jan 26, 2004 9:31 PM

It just seems to me that this board is going through a stage.

On one hand, us old timers have talked a lot of things to death already.

On another hand, there are a lot of people coming here every day. They are getting what appears to them as harsh treatment.

This board is a lot more civilized than most, thanks in large part to the users. But every day we are getting new people who may not get the spirit we have been working in for the past years, and eventually there will be problems that have to be addressed.

You gotta try something and the trick is making the cure not worse than the disease. Medicine can taste bad at first, but it can be great in the big picture.

My advice, make as much of it as invisible as possible. Maybe make everyone log in at the beginning and go through their Private Messages first, and if they have strayed off topic or something, they will be made aware of that right then and they can fix it and keep it private that way. Or if they have a PM, it goes there first, otherwise to the boards. Then if a topic dies because they were pointed in the right direction, they know why and no one else needs to bother.

PLUS! A locked topic will always get read! You wanna know what happened. And then that gets people's nose into it that would not have been before. It points out all the blemishes. I say, no more locked topics. Delete or edit them. Leave what's good.