I'm wondering about this chicken-egg problem: did our wonderful game master start those threads having chosen his role – or were they born from the chaos of silliness and found the master to sculpt and shape them as they went on?

>>923
What would be objective criteria to measure quality of a board?

Surely, a good grammar of its inhabitants (or even a courtesy of holding "Shift" for a moment and pressing "." key occasionally) makes posts more readable.

Perhaps following the example of radio operators and avoiding religion, politics, sex, business and ethnicity would make conversations mostly inoffensive. But where is the fun in that? Ham operators estimate each others sound quality and talk about weather and antennas... a bit of small talk if they know each other personally. It's a balance between dull politeness and dull offensiveness. I wouldn't expect a level of wit comparable to, say, Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett from an average board-goer. The mindset that strives for "fun on the go", that chooses a quick pun, an offensive jab over a well-thought response, a smirk over a smile is at least partly to blame on the media that constantly regurgitate these topics.

How important are some board's traditions? Reading archives can be really fun, but would an attempt of emulating the fragmentary brilliance of past to be entertaining? Certainly, some aspects are important for keeping things comfortable for both new and old users.

But if "SAoVQ went to shit", yet the majority of its occupants are happy and rolling with it... did it really? Or did you outgrow it, did you lose the sense of belonging there? Though it might be merely a single unfortunate link that attracted some curious posters.