Questions about the board belong in the “About This Message Board” forum.
Hi, Dee!
On this board, we have +20,000 posters. I don’t have the numbers on me, but let’s say 50 threads get started here per day. If we had them all in one giant forum, there’d be no way you could keep up with all the posts. A fresh thread might immediately be relegated to the second or third page if we had everything in one forum.
Keep in mind that some people might not care for complaining threads. Lots of folks here avoid the Pit for that very reason. Some folks like debates. Some like to talk about movies or books. Why should they have to sift through dozens of threads to find the ones they want? It’s simply easier to keep things in separate categories. It works well here.
There are a dozen or so admins and moderators who have the job of running this site. They run it very well, efficiently and consistently. And given that we have over +20K members, there’s no way you could have posters and mods and admins working together and have the same result.
Who would decide which posters get to help manage the site? Do we all help? If so, that means the trolls and sockpuppets we have here (quite often) would be able to cause as much havoc as they want and still carry the same amount of weight as a more respectable poster who has no malignant intentions in mind.
Oh, upon re-reading, I see you might not have meant posters. I’m not sure what you mean by “founders”; care to elaborate?
They are easy on the eye. Brighter colors would distract and thus detract from the posts, and it’s the content of the post that matters more than the board’s aesthetics.
So far as I can tell, the only qualifications for this board are a name and an e-mail address and cooperation with the user agreement. The rules? Don’t be a jerk. Proper spelling and grammar are nice. But you needn’t hold a degree or have proper lineage or anything hoity-toity like that.
Hi dee! and welcome to the Straight Dope. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here.
The reason we have so many categories is generally because there is heavy traffic on this board, and it’s makes life easier on us if divy up the topics. This forum (General Questions) is for dealing with questions with factual answers.
Some folk prefer to chat. That’s more MPSIMS (Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share). For “What’s your favorite” type discussion we have IMHO.
Cafe Society is a relative newcomer. This deals with art, literature, cooking, the humanities… And if you want to rant and be be generally pissy, go to BBQ Pit.
It makes it easier to find exactly what your looking for.
This thread, for example, best belongs in “About This Message Board” (ATMB), and I reckon it’ll be moved along there shortly.
Don’t let all the categories confuse you. Lurk around a bit and you’ll get the feel for it. see here.
As for the colors, you’re not the only one who doesn’t like them.
As close to a deity Cecil is, he can’t run the board by himself.
A bunch of stand-up guys and gals do that. If you go to the home page, you’ll notice names of various moderators besides the forum names. Learn them and love them.
Well, Audrey beat me to most of the points, but, um, that “see here” link should actually follow the next sentence, as it discusses the board’s colors.
Given how meaty your posts tend to be, tom, I’d stick with a single color. The time it would take to code the rainbow effect means we’d only see one or two posts from you a year.
