Hell, that’s exactly HOW handy got over 17,000! At the time of his banning he was well in the lead, just posting quick one or two liners, having just a tiny bit to do with the thread’s topic, often completely erroneous anyway. Don’t waste your time with research or thoughtful commentary and you can be a post monster too.
Actually, don’t do this, please, it’s really irritating.
I’m always amused when I look at somebody, see it’s a name I don’t really know, then go: Holy frig! Look at that sky-high post count!
It’s like not recognizing the name of your mayor.
Why did **Handy **get banned? I’ve been away for a while, missed that. I’d do a search, but on dial-up bringing up 17,000 posts might take until tuesday.
I don’t know what, specifically, got handy banned. There are so many possibilities that it is hard to pinpoint a single instance that might have done it.
But handy’s last post was on November 25, 2003, and the day before (November 24) this thread was devoted to handy, with plenty of people having unflattering things to say. That thread might be a good place to start.
There was a poster who was banned because he repeatedly dispensed medical advice, often wrong. He was warned to stop it, and specifically there was one warning that said that he would be banned if he did it one more time. Was that Handy?
To be fair, some as-yet-unbanned posters have done this too.
Yes, that’s him, Johnny. Handy was barred from posting in medical threads in GQ, but he did anyway eventually - in a thread about contraception, IIRC - and that’s what got him banned.
There was a short period, back in May of 2004 I think, where I was maintaining 80+ ppd for about a week and a half. I know for sure I posted over 100 times on at least one day, maybe two. It was . . . weird.
Oh, and this is accompanied by several random instances of forgetting about and/or losing interest in the boards for a few months at a time, but most of those were before I was paying for it :p.
Thanks. I thought that was he. IIRC, he behaved himself for a long time after the warning. I thought he might have just had a brainfart.
I’ve been close to a meltdown a couple of times, myself.
I’ve been here a year and a half, and there’s only one poster whose name will cause me to open a thread just to see what s/he has to say.*
As for fitting in, if you want it to happen sooner rather than later, you’ll have to post frequently and have something to say when you do post. If you aren’t by nature a social person with a lot to say, you might find this difficult. OTOH, you may find it easier to be social here than IRL. Either way, once you’ve contributed enough to establish a ‘personality’ here, you’ll feel more like you fit in.
And if that seems like too much work (it did to me), welcome to the relative anonymity of the SDMB Masses. Although we don’t receive the adulation given to the Cool Kids, neither do we automatically attract the vitriol and scorn directed at those who have proven themselves to be lunatics, whiners, or knee-jerk correspondents. I like it here; people respond to what I post rather than to who they think I am.
Like Roger says, be yourself. The rest will come in time.
*and nope, I’m not telling who it is
I am in complete awe of Guin’s post count. It’s… unfathomable. I try and keep my own post count trim, you know. Right? Guys?
After the first few hundred, I pretty much ignored the whole thing. It doesn’t have any significance for me other than all the work time I’ve spent doing something other than…well…work. Whenever I happen to glance at the number, I’m always mildly surprised that it’s that high, but as I said…means little to nothing.
You must believe in QUALITY over QUANITY 
[sup]We won’t count this one.[/sup]
I don’t know that there are any “Cool Kids” anymore. Maybe once upon a time, but that could also be the distortion of time’s lens. Of course there are people with high post counts or interesting personalities that are fairly well known, but not in the sense of a “clique”, where they only deign to speak to one another and all have nice cars and a big allowance. If there ever was that, I think a lot of those personalities have drifted to LiveJournal, where there seems to be a lot more of the mundane.
That’s not what I meant at all. But the sheer numbers of people here mean that not everyone can possibly be one of the well-known personalities, and I was trying to tell Klinty that it’s not at all a bad thing to be unknown.
Ok, fair enough. But the reality is that there are a few people who, for various reasons, are relatively well known by most everyone. But then there are a lot of people who are known to a subset of all Dopers. Star Trek, comic books, politics, movies, music, football (all kinds), trivia, literature, several disciplines of science, etc.: they all have a set of devotees. It may be tough to become well known across the board, but it’s not hard to become well known within a group. And it doesn’t really require being prolific, just having something to add.
Seeing folks posting in threads, when they don’t have 4-digit post counts (or high 3-digit), is a very good thing. We need fresh blood. It’s a good thing. Eventually, some day, I might not be posting here (perish the thought, I know. What I’ll do with that regained six hours a day is anyone’s guess), and I’ll need to pass on my torch to someone.
It feels as if I should have more posts than I do. I think I had at least 4000 posts during the Winter of Our Missed Content.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.