I think this place is a great resource, but I just hate to see its value in that regard diluted or ignored by careless users that neither take the time to post in an even remotely relevant section nor reference the vast pool of information already here. Yes, that's just a fact of message board life, but on the other side of the equation, mods that don't move off-topic posts to their proper location compound the issue. When they do, a "MOVED: blah blah blah" placeholder might serve well as a public reminder to others that such enforcement is in place and to post in a relevent section rather than a private message to the offender (if one is even sent?) explaining things.
"A place for everything and everything in its place" would be a fine starting point.

Let's not forget the seemingly random pruning of old posts. Topics with good information can vanish after a few weeks, but random stuff can persist for months or even years, and the search results pull up plenty of long-gone topics.

Sticky topics don't get used very effectively either. Would be nice to have a sticky FAQ-type post at the top of many of the sections that both clarifies the purpose of the section and covers some of the more routine things that come up. The tires section has a good one, though locking them down so they are read-only is probably a good idea. Submit potential additions to them to the moderator of the respective section.

Not that I think it'll happen, but I would genuinely offer my help with any of these things if it would be accepted. I may be gruff around here, but part of it comes from frustration. I'd be far less prone to it if I could pitch in.

If anyone in charge has a formal issue with my virtual moderator activity, by all means let me know and I'll butt out, but so far it's been tolerated fairly well that I can tell.

Brent

How can you not like a guy who quotes Mary Poppins?

When a thread is moved, the originator of the thread is notified. On average, I see maybe one post in the wrong forum per day, that's not bad for a site with this much traffic.

The moderators aren't online 24/7, so sometimes it takes a while until someone notices something in the wrong place. By then Brent, you have jumped all over someone with your usual flair. Maybe if you would just chill the fuck out, and be helpful, instead of insultful, to people who are new here, none of this would be an issue.

Posts are not pruned randomly, they are pruned usually to 60 days in the non-important forums. However, since the move to a dedicated server that can handle the load, I haven't pruned much of anything. The General forum still has posts from April in it.

Ian,

Just curious. What are the traffic statistics for this site? How many unique users per day?

-dp

Unique ? It's the same 30 people here every day.

About 1.5M page views per month.
In the top 50,000 web sites in the world.

Analog doesn't track unique visitors.

Linky no worky

Worky now.

Since Ian just told him like it is, maybe Brent finally will "Chill the fuck out." For the sake of all the newbies, let's hope so.

But I like when Brent posts the links when he does a search for someone.

I have actually grown very fond of reading Brent's responses. He's always there, lurking behind the corner in the shadows...waiting for those newbies to mess up. He is the XOC equivalent to that guy with the stapler in "Office Space"....yeah...OK

-dp