I seriously believe that we need a seperate place for all of the silly off topic stuff, because on the one hand it does tend to cause a lot of clutter, but on the other hand it won’t and shouldn’t totally go away either. I like both, but some people don’t.
This whole thing can be traced back to one topic, complaining about a non model railroading subject, and has mushroomed into something like 40 topics, including this one.
I know that I am guilty of starting one such topic, though I did it in the hope of trying to stop the explosion that has somewhat overrun this forum, as I suspect was the intent of this one. The problem is that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. If we quietly let it run its course, it should die down.
The discontinuance of stars started out as an intelligent discussion of an issue that clearly bothered one person. By the end of the third page, the discussion was pretty much over, and the mockery kicked in. As it reached the end of the fifth page, it had a life of it’s own, and was out of control, and was being driven by one of the people who was at the center of the original issue.
On the ninth page, I reentered the fray, with the hopes of bringing it to a halt. My comments were like throwing gasoline on a fire. By page 15, I had all but stopped railing against it and was starting to play along. Finally I made a comment that struck a nerve and left me in an awkward position, and I stopped posting there.
It felt like forever, I had been having so much fun with the other members, making jokes and reading theirs, that when I stopped, the whole forum felt strange to me. It was like something was missing.
This forum is what we make of it. Some people only want serious information, others only fun, but the reality lies somewhere in between.