I hope you were busy with too much work!
>> I was away for a few months (busy), and just started posting again. It appears to me we're getting fewer, less frequent posts these days. True?
Actually, we hit a slump a few weeks ago, and posting now seems to be resurgent from what it's been over the late summer.
I am not certain about the correlation, but I made the decision to shut down both of the political discussion sections around Sept. 11 (I had created a secondary political section called "Birds of a Feather" a few weeks earlier.) I made a judgement call that the tenor of the political discussions that were happening was too hostile, the bad feelings had been spilling over into the rest of the board, and that these sections could not be redeemed. See
this thread for further pontification.
Anyway, immediately after I shut down those sections, posting in the regular contracting related sections picked up.
>> I wonder if we've picked up any new folks since this Board got better positioned in Google searches.
Uhm, yeah, recently.
See this. ("showing the computer club how fast it runs...") And
this. He was the only new member we've had in months.
If that is an example of opening this forum up to the general public, I say restrict the forum.
I still say that most people take a look around, go "bleaagh", and leave. I think there's a very strong clique factor here between most regulars and old timers that makes this board fairly inaccessible to new people. I have invited several people to come here and post questions and they hang around for their question and then leave.
I also think that Yuku (and the old Ezboard) itself dissuades new people from joining. You have to basically create this MSN like "universal" system wide Yuku login to post here. Yes, I know that many people here own "local" user IDs. Still, it seems more cumbersome to me than most forums, where you create a new user specifically for that one board. My point is, to someone who comes to one particular message board and is interested, Yuku registration probably looks like a huge bunch of bullcrap.
And to be honest, I probably do my part to drive out people that don't like the way things are run here. Each such encounter here tends to turn into a train wreck. I don't know why that is. I haven't banned anyone for years. (I have closed off one or two members temporarily who was rampaging with ill will.)
