kind of ironic a thread about lack of activity on the forum creating such interest.
Oddly, as I remember it far from stirring the forums up in a positive way Kent contributed greatly to a somewhat poisonous atmosphere. Lots found him offensive, plain and simple as far as I could see from the conversations that took place in PM and elsewhere, were a little pissed off he'd not been banned sooner. Trouble was he couldn't take criticism, resorting to personal abuse all too often when he'd run out of actual argument, such as those arguments were to begin with. Often that would spill over into other threads to the point the whole forum was infected by it and other regs just stopped posting cos they were sick of bloody seeing it.
It's my feeling the CA forum was hived off from the Cafe in the first place to try and contain that kinda thing a little more, parking the kind of controversial threads he delighted in starting, sometimes by way of simple trolling for a reaction in my view off somewhere by themselves. I highly doubt a mod here would ever confirm that, if true, but that's my take it on it anyways, so no, no amnesty for Mr Kent thanks. Ta.
I think all the reasons posted in this thread add to the demise of interest in the forums and no single factor can be wholly attributed to it,
One other thing that I think never helped was the regurgitating rather than reinventing of old topics. You know the sort of thing. When a subject was posted up, by a newbie to the forums, that had been, or something very similar had been, posted on before. A link to that topic would be thrown up by a long standing member to a time long past where something similar had been discussed along with saying "This topic has been done before ad nauseum" People putting these topics want them to be discussed in the here and now by the people in the here and now. Not by the heroes of swing from the ages of swinging magnificence a long time gone.
Like Neil I find it so hard to post at length in forum and I wonder why? Surely practice should make perfect but in the case of forum It seems the reverse is true.
For me I stopped posting because I looked through the posts and it was either a topic which had been discussed numerous times before and wasn't heading anywhere different at the time I looked, or it was descending into mod-bating/a full blown cyber fist-fight.
I guess familiarity's bred boredom as well as contempt.
Very simple answer for me is that if people are flirting, having a genuine giggle, or just plain enjoying themselves I'll jump in with both feet. If they're having a pop at anyone I'll switch off and go make a brew and I suspect it's the same for a lot of others.
But hey, I've posted on this, so maybe there's hope for me yet. :-D
:rotflmao:
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