[The Weeping Angel]

Look I know people are busy and I am not having a go at anyone in particular, but what is it with the lack of activity today?

[Carlos The Badger]

WHUT?
It's been as busy as fuck today.
Have a word with your ISP or check sumtink… I don't know…

[The Weeping Angel]

Busy go on view new posts and see how many threads there are

[Carlos The Badger]

¿Que?
Punk thcuu aye shun

[The Weeping Angel]

Go on View new posts and see how many posts there are for today.

[Fozzy]

It's always quieter at weekends.

[Timbo]

Indeed. It's fairly common on internet fora such as this for things to die down at the weekends. People here generally have other things they need or want to do at the weekends, and are less likely to be at their computers. The fact that we are a pretty small community, where the vast majority of posts are made by a small core of posters, makes this more apparent. It isn't anything to be concerned about.

The quality of posts here has remained consistently high over the years I've been a member, I enjoy reading and exchanging thoughts and ideas with pretty much everybody on here.

The fact that quantity is low, but quality is high, is part of what makes this place attractive, and as an admin, makes my job very easy

Also, and most importantly, don't rely on the accuracy of the 'View new posts' feature. I've just been on it myself, and only been shown a few posts made since 11 this morning. A Google reveals many people having odd problems with that feature.

[The Weeping Angel]

What exactly is the problem with View new posts?

[Timbo]

I didn't say there is a problem with it, just that you shouldn't necessarily rely on it. It seems to be a common source of problems. Also remember that it only shows new posts since you last logged in, not all unread posts.

[Kreuzberger]

Well, forgive me. I have been otherwise engaged too for the last week of so and, with the board's blessing, will be gallivanting hither and thither during Easter week.

I can't help wondering though. With English, French, Swedish, German, Spanish and various Gallic tongues being spoken on this forum, the OP might choose to fashion a reasoned argument in one of these languages without reverting to a cocktail of Klingon and the utterances of a dying Magimix, and the responses would be far more forthcoming.

[The Weeping Angel]

I would like to stress that I was not having a go at any one particular person.

[ezinra]

Not sure I fully understand/agree with Mr Brain's complaint, but I think the main problem, if there is one at all, is a lack of activity on the Mailwatching threads. This forum now bulges around the waist, with a heavy concentration of the most active (and, to my eyes, many of the best) posters in the politics and journalism sub-fora. By contrast, the Daily Mail threads are thin and getting thinner. To take one random example, the Lady Bashing thread has had 60 posts in the last year, compared with 230 in 2012, 395 in 2011, 343 in 2010, etc. There have been no updates at all to the Scotland bashing or NHS bashing threads in many months, though the Mail has been poisoning those issues. I think there are several explanations:

— the current government is just as sinister and more powerful than the Mail;
— our regular posters don't read the Mail very often, for the benefit of their sanity;
— the reorganisation of the Mail discussion sub-forum has hidden a lot of the formerly active threads;
— news media are discussed elsewhere, especially on twitter, these days;
— the Mail Online model has become established and there's not much left to analyse apart from "they have no shame";
— the profiles and interests of the main contributors to the forum are quite similar, perhaps deterring new posters by making us appear cliquier than we really are;
— in-house skirmishes are a turn-off;
— real life gets in the way.

Like Kreuzberger, I will be incurring LJB's wrath over the long weekend by doing stuff that doesn't involve sitting at a computer. This will include an hour or so in the company of the Most Persecuted People On Earth (Bishop's Stortford branch), secretly dreaming up ways to ban them from celebrating their funny little death-birth while singing There is a green hill far away and putting a tenner in their kitty.

[Fozzy]

For my part, I'm one of those looking at the Mail's website less than I used to for the sake of my blood pressure. Also, I can't do much to bring the blood pressure down, because I seem to be on the Mail's naughty list now and they rarely post my comments: previously I felt I was doing my puny best to stem the tide occasionally by outrageous conduct such as correcting their facts and filling in the ones they judiciously left out or buried in paragraph 19. So whilst I have a look occasionally, when I only have limited time (e.g. now during my lunch hour) I don't bother.

[Daley Mayle]

I shall be mowing the front lawn and generally tidying the front on Friday.

I shall be mowing the back lawn on Saturday and then off to the Co-op and see if there's anything reduced in the minging cabinet, that's assuming the platoon of the last surviving members of the Nippon Army who could well be hiding out in the extremely overgrown back garden don't get me first. Banzai! Or is it Tora, tora, tora?

[SoulBoy]

For my sins I shall be knocking up a cheeky instrumental hip hop (trip hop is so 1990s darlings) mix then heading out to a couple of night spots on Friday, spending the equivalent of a small banana republic's national debt on records on Saturday and, like dear old David Cameron, staying with the in laws over Easter. A dead tree DM may pass my way but I hope not to spend too much time online. Have a good weekend everybody (apologies to our Caledonian cousins who will be working tomorrow).