It's heartening to see people making very heavy usage of this forum over the past couple of weeks -- something like 800 new messages have been posted in the last couple of days alone, and that's a phenomenal amount of growth for any forum, Web-based or otherwise. However, it's important to remember that this is a moderated forum, although it tends to be a retroactive thing.

So, here are a couple of requests from the moderator to make his life easier:

First, please don't initiate a different thread for every single point you want to make. Try and concatenate your points into one post, and then make that -- it leads to needless database population and makes things hard to sort later on; it also lets other people reply and follow the discussion without having to track multiple threads at once.

As an accessory idea to this, please try to find suitable threads to add your comments to rather than starting new ones. I realize that there's a certain amount of vanity involved in having your own thread (and it allows you to track responses by e-mail), but this should be an interactive forum and not dependent on having people phone in answers from outside the site.

Second, please don't post tape ads in this forum. If you've got a tape, great. Keep an eye on it to see if someone's asking for one, and then if you see them asking, please follow-up via e-mail. This forum doesn't need to know the gory details of your transaction. If you have a request, then by all means ask away, but please, don't offer to make copies for people. It can get you and me in a significant amount of hot water if the video piracy people ever decide to crack down on the folks who tape TV shows.

Third, if you initiate a new thread, please try to make your titles meaningful. Looking at what's current right now, I see a thread entitled "Just a small criticism... Carter in recovery." This is a good thread title. But I also see thread titles like "Hummm???" That's not particularly useful for people who are simply scanning for something to read. I periodically modify titles when I think they're inapropriate or particularly vague (or if the thread contains spoilers; see below), but I don't have the time or energy to rename every badly named thread.

Fourth -- and this is a complaint I have about the newsgroup, too -- if you missed the episode, PLEASE don't immediately rush over to the board and ask what happened. I will nuke your post as soon as I see it. The reason is that we maintain a very comprehensive set of episode summaries and reviews on this Web site; you can also find the link on the "Ask A Question" page, and after most episodes there's a flood of "what happened?" posts. It's a duplication of effort, and you'll get a more complete answer if you're patient and give it a day or two before the summary and review is posted.

Fifth, please mark spoiler threads appropriately. Try not to introduce them into pre-existing threads, but if you really have to, remember that traditional Usenet spoiler space doesn't apply since most people will be reading your post with a modern Web browser running at high resolution and will be able to see a good chunk of lines. So it's probably better that you just initiate a new thread instead.

I'm sorry to sound such a down note, but I've spent the past hour cleaning up the database, so I'm in kind of a grumpy mood right now. These are not widespread problems, but they're serious enough to stick out in my mind, so I'm addressing them now.

-- Mike Sugimoto (phloem@fumbling.com), February 19, 2000

Answers

Response to Forum Policy Reminder

Yes Mike. We will all be good. Please don't take the site or forum away from us. We'll be good, I promise.....

-- Marjorie (mudge@interlog.com), February 19, 2000.

Response to Forum Policy Reminder

mike--will you tell me where I can go if I am interested in reading "SPOILERS" once in a while? I see them mentioned ofter in comments, but I have no ides where to find them. Also, I was wondering if you would explain to me-- I want to e-mail to some of the people who write in their comments about the script summaries but when I click on their e-mail address it won't allow me to reply. It says something about me not having given the program my address. Is there a simple answer? Thanx for your time. joan

-- joan (joanofarc24@hotmail.com), February 19, 2000.

Response to Forum Policy Reminder

If I may add a request: please read the other posts before making your own to avoid asking the same questions over again. And over and over and over again :D

-- May Archer (archerl@cadvision.com), February 19, 2000.