Loss of Quality in the Platinum Editions?

[Big Disney Fan]

Wow! That's a pretty big post. Maybe you should've broken it up into smaller pieces, so as not to take up so much space.

[Escapay]

Wow! That's a pretty big post. Maybe you should've broken it up into smaller pieces, so as not to take up so much space.

I would, but that would have made it multiple posts and why bother saying little in ten posts if you can say a lot in just one? Do you take chapters out of books and cut them to smaller sizes to make them easier to read?

And technically breaking it up into smaller pieces and posts would take up more space. Having it in one large post has the benefit of only one signature, one avatar to load, and one post. Doing three or four just to make it easier for others to read yields a string of posts that will just as easily be read in one.

Escapay

[BambiFan87]

Here Here!!! I say!

[2099net]

Well Escapay, this is getting off topic, but in reply to your <strike>rant</strike> statement, I'll say this.

I work for a internet publisher, who's main site is http://www.crash.net - a UK based motorsport news site. We also have an internet radio station which plays music and has motorsport news and interviews every 20 mins.

The problem is, more than 80% of our readers don't know this. But look at the site: There's a big "Radio" clicker at the top of the page, the home page has a panel labeled "Crash.Net Radio Archive" and if you click on a news story there's a panel below the article listing "Related Radio Audio". Both panels have a number of links that open up the Radio pop-up.

Yet when we speak to people, even people who say visit the site every day for the latest news, 8 or 9 times out of ten they seem surprised when we mention the radio.



Now I'm not saying our site is the best designed site in the world. I worked extensively on the current design, but not all my ideas were implemented. Also we've actually upped the "Radio" content, it was more subtle and less in-your-face before.

But, the fact is people are so used to tuning out of internet advertisments, they have trained themselves to focus on specific areas of a webpage, and effectively ignore the rest. And there seems to be nothing we can do to stop it. Ultimate Disney seems to have the same problem. All we can do is mention the other pages more in our posts and link back to them I guess.

Now that's over, I'll post my thoughts on the status of the forum. Personally, I do feel as if I've pretty much said everything I want to say about most films. The fact that all the animated classics are out on DVD is undoubtably a factor of this, because I have seen them all (bar Make Mine Music) and expressed my views. I haven't seen many-live action films.

But other things are also contributing. I actually have Brother Bear 2 unviewed, and I've not even viewed by Cars yet. I'm actually going through an anti-Disney phase (if thats the right wording) at the moment, and I'm actually choosing to watch more documentaries (either proper documentries like my BBC World War II Collection or substantial documentries on DVDs.) I'm sure this too will pass and things will be back to normal again though.

Also this past year of Cars and POTC2 "worshipping" haven't done much to inspire me to post to be honest, neither film really exciting me.

I'm spending more time in Off-Topic these days. But I still enjoy visiting the forums - all of them.

Edit

Oh another factor is, no matter how you look at it, most Disney DVDs are dumbing down. For a Disney DVD site, its hard to discuss DVDs when they're full of sing-alongs, set-top games and a few bloopers or deleted scenes. The glory days of Atlantis, Tron, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and the Vault Disney's are long gone, with even the Platinums disappointing most.

[Big Disney Fan]

Wow! That's a pretty big post. Maybe you should've broken it up into smaller pieces, so as not to take up so much space.

I would, but that would have made it multiple posts and why bother saying little in ten posts if you can say a lot in just one? Do you take chapters out of books and cut them to smaller sizes to make them easier to read?

And technically breaking it up into smaller pieces and posts would take up more space. Having it in one large post has the benefit of only one signature, one avatar to load, and one post. Doing three or four just to make it easier for others to read yields a string of posts that will just as easily be read in one.

Escapay

Why did you make the whole content white? Also, the chapters in the book are already broken up. That's why they're called chapters!

[Pluto Region1]

....

It's RIDICULOUS and INEXCUSABLE to join this forum and be that ignorant to not realize that the nice little banners and links at the top of the page to go a lot of other helpful pages that can get you a DVD answer in a hurry without posting a thread and wondering after two hours if someone will finally answer it. How many times have we seen "What's the (insert Disney movie) DVD like?" or "Hi, can anyone tell me the Platinum schedule?". IT'S JUST PLAIN LAZY to not look for the answer yourself before asking the question! Turn over your UD membership card, and you'll get it after you've perused every single page on this site, appreciate it and Luke for all the hard work that he and reviewers have put into it, and learn how to do a goddamn search!

Escapay

Yes, I agree but I suspect the obvious 2 reasons for this are 1) people are just posting innocent questions basically because they are new forum members and this is their way of interacting, or testing the waters to see if this place is going to be nice and friendly or bite their head off, and 2) human nature and no time to look things up on their own. (Oh and because they are new they are trying to increase their posts!)

Personally I spent a lot of time looking at Luke's web pages full of info on Platinum series releases, the Treasures series' descriptions and all that and only reluctantly joined the forum in order to ask a question that couldn't be answered after reading all the reviews etc. My motivations were alot different then probably most people who have free time and like to hang out in forums. but after finding such a wonderful group of people, freely willing to sit down and compose many paragraphs to answer my questions, I really saw the value in this community. I wish I had the time to read all the great topics you guys have covered in depth like film quality restoration issue (one of these days I will tackle that Cinderella over-restored thread) and all the others....

Yeah, I agree a lot of those one-liner posts are useless but are we going to start being rude to people and scare them off or what? I mean, we don't want to do that - I would say count to 3 and if you're still steaming, let someone with more patience provide the no-brainer link to the part of UD that shows them what the platinum release schedule is, or what have you.

As for the drop off in posts, I would suspect that some drop off in the forums is a seasonal thing. Recall that many of the forum members are still going to school (this is my first post since before TLM was released - due to school/work conflicts). Also I've taken a look at my own website visitations just recently and it's dropping off now, same as it did at this same time last year.

Also, remember things are cyclical - this is a fairly young forum (having only been around since - 2004?) and people get burned out on things and people's life interests can change over time - so there is going to be a fair amount of turn-over as people just loose interest. I think this is something that we need to accept as a possibility. I've never been a long-term member of a forum before, but assuming it is not that much different than other types of fan-scenes, I can tell you that having been involved in music scenes and covered them as a journalist, that music scenes are cyclical and people get burned out as they get older and move on. So I would suspect that this can and will happen with internet forums.

[ichabod]

I vote for Escapay for president!

But I'm glad you had your outburst as it shows I'm not alone. Over the past few months the amount of times I've come to UD and within seconds gone , well i've lost count.

I've nearly typed some rather ranty replies to some people, in fact I have had some small outbursts recently.

There does tend to be an increase in 'newbie posts' which are guilty of all the things you mention, but I can forgive newbies to a certain extenet, but its when people who have been here for a while do it that gets my goat! There seems to be a lot of members currently here who couldn't give an a*** about contributing to discussion or being a valued memeber, and seem to be here only for the reason of getting a high post count and being irritating, I won't name names, but let's face it we all know who they are anyway. I'm sick of people posting just to say 'I have this DVD, it's good', or sometimes not even going into that much depth in their posts. And seem to revel in posting in every thread even if they don't have anything to contribute. Also I get the feeling that some of these members don't even read the thread they're typing in. The amount of times I've almost shouted at the screen when someone types, 'I never saw this TV show, was it good', when three posts above 9 members have given their thoughts on it and there's a link to Luke's review I just want to scream 'WHY! OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES FOR GOD'S SAKE YOU WASTE OF SPACE!'

Also another newbie trait, which really winds me up, which actually is now carrying on for some who have been around for a few months is double, triple and in some cases quadruple posting. The amount of times I seen something like this:

IloveDisney
I just got my DVD of The Little Mermaid.....(summary of thoughts)

SpaceWaster
Ye, I got that lst week

SpaceWaster
Did anyone else get it, its gud its better than the other dvd this one is gud

SpaceWaster
oh i forgot that sebstienen the crab is funny does anyone else think hes funny?

SpaceWaster
Does anyone remember the TV series

SpaceWaster
I wish disney would let that come on dvd

Ichabod
'WHY! PUT IT ALL IN ONE POST THEN GO AWAY YOU WASTE OF SPACE!'

or something like that!


On the matter of drop off in quality in posts, Netty pretty much summarised my thoughts, I've been here since 2003 and I've pretty much said everything once. But I don't mind revisiting my thought are discussing whether my opinions have changed or remained the same, but I find that the chance for intelligent discussion is rarely seen. Sometimes days have gone between me posting.

I mean clicking on the General Discussion section right now at this moment in time, so many of the threads are pure druel. Nothing that can truely be discussed and quite frankly most of which I don't even think deserves a reply. And the threads which are actually interesting seem to be killed by the annoying one line posts that have already been discussed.

This is one reason that I started the Live Action discussion threads, not only because for some reason Live action seems to be viewed as the invalid, poor, cripled sibling of Disney animation by the majority of people here whose awareness of Disney does not stretch beyond "Flounder is yellow " and also they are so seldom discussed and it would give some variety, but even that seems to be failing miserably. Some of my threads like the Honey I Shrunk the Kids thread literally got 5 or 6 replies, whereas a discussion thread about whether Ariel would have looked better with blonde hair goes on for 9 pages and it makes me think, why should I bother? Clearly anything deeper than memorising the lyrics to the second verse of 'Part of Your World' is lost on most who pass through here. And I've found myself bumping them up in desperation to read something of value.

So Yes I do feel quality has dropped off in posts and pray it will improve soon.

And I didn't put my rant in white, cos I don't care who I offend!

[Flanger-Hanger]

IMO the best reent thread that was posted was the "Cinderella restoration has gone to far" The reason why it was so great because everyone on the thread wrote nothing but paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions and debated there own persoal opinions.

The most amazing thing about the fourm was you actually got to learn something interseting, like how technicolor does not reproduce the colour photographed or how restoration technology works. I found this information far more interseting than, "Mickey Donald, and Goofy can be sence in such and such and blah blah blah".

I'm very greatful to you ichabod because of your live action discussions. Even if I don't post anything (because I haven't seen all those movies and I find it unneccassary to tell that to everyone on the threads) I still find them very entertaining and informative and I am looking forward to your next topic

[darth_deetoo]

To be honest, I find some of the comments above complaining about some of the posts to be unfriendly, rude and distasteful.

We all have our own reason's for visiting forums. A good, lively discussion on aspects of a film or DVD can be an enlightening and welcome read. That said, why shouldn't fans be able to come here just to share their love of Disney, and discuss their latest purchase, or what they thought of said DVD.

By it's very nature, a Disney forum is going to attract a lot of younger posters too, and so it's perhaps unreasonable to expect never to see posts of the 'I just got Little Mermaid and it's cool!' variety.

You just need to count to ten, take a deep breath and ignore these posts if they aren't to your taste. I only really look at posts which catch my eye and gain my interest. The vast majority of posts remain unopened by me. I just don't really understand the mentality of jumping up and down and having a rant just because posts something that you don't like.

[Lars Vermundsberget]

I agree - I usually trust that the thread titles describe what the particular thread is about, so most of them "stay unopened" by me as well.

[Escapay]

To be honest, I find some of the comments above complaining about some of the posts to be unfriendly, rude and distasteful.

Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. But that's what a rant usually is. An outburst of feelings that's sure to offend some and people who read them should at least understand the ranter's frame of mind. Rants aren't meant to be friendly or in good taste. They're gonna be harsh, they're gonna be mean, they're gonna be a flood of angriness directed at no one in particular except a person's keyboard. Which is why I put mine in white. If people don't want to read a rant, they won't have to. But for those that wish to, it's their call, it's their own fault if they highlight it all and read it and then think, "Well, he's just being a little angry bastard." I'm not sorry I wrote it. I'm just sorry that people are taking it the wrong way.

We all have our own reason's for visiting forums. A good, lively discussion on aspects of a film or DVD can be an enlightening and welcome read. That said, why shouldn't fans be able to come here just to share their love of Disney, and discuss their latest purchase, or what they thought of said DVD.

I'm not saying fans shouldn't visit UD, I'm merely saying they shouldn't restrict themselves to one-liners. I *want* them to post opinions, and I simply feel they'll get much further in a discussion if they offer more beyond a singular non-descript line that offers a mere "I love this movie". That's nice and all, but I might as well go in a 45-page thread gushing about The Little Mermaid just to put one-liner posts that say "I hate this movie" or "Ariel sucks". Just as one-line posts praising a film don't bring much to a conversation, one-line posts against a film don't bring much either. When I say I dislike The Lion King, I don't leave it at an "It sucks because I don't like it." I make sure people understand why I don't like it, I cite various reasons and such that explain "This movie isn't good, in my opinion, because..."

Escapay

[reyquila]

IMO, we should quit posting and let only the enlightened ones to say:
"blah, blah, blah, I hate sequels (obviously they haven't bought even one) I hate Eisner (although he was smart enough to get to a CEO position and earn millions), why do you buy all the movies and show them off (because everyone is entitled to buy whatever he/she wants to), blah, blah, I want quality posting, quality I said!!!"

Please let everyone post its mind, their feelings, their photos and their thoughts!!! In fact, I'll create a thread: Post a photo of your slipcovers!!!

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Please let everyone post its mind, their feelings, their photos and their thoughts!!! In fact, I'll create a thread: Post a photo of your slipcovers!!!

Yeah - it's a good thing that our discussions are organized as different threads, and that we don't have to read and post in all of them.

[darth_deetoo]

Escapay, I agree with the sentiment of some of what you say, but I think you are way off base with some of your other comments. For one thing, I think it's out of place to use bad language on a Disney forum. Everyone has a right to post whatever they want on a forum, within the boundaries of good taste. If you are simply going to come on here and vent your feelings against them, whether in a moment of anger, or not - it is not in the spirit of the forum and it has no place. It is wrong of you to come on and criticise people for posting comments that don't fit in with your own personal worldview, and your comments just leave a sour taste I'm afraid.

[reyquila]

Escapay, I agree with the sentiment of some of what you say, but I think you are way off base with some of your other comments. For one thing, I think it's out of place to use bad language on a Disney forum. Everyone has a right to post whatever they want on a forum, within the boundaries of good taste. If you are simply going to come on here and vent your feelings against them, whether in a moment of anger, or not - it is not in the spirit of the forum and it has no place. It is wrong of you to come on and criticise people for posting comments that don't fit in with your own personal worldview, and your comments just leave a sour taste I'm afraid.

Not on me!!! I'm always happy!!!

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Ah, democracy! It's typical and probably good that "public debate" itself becomes a subject of debate.

I guess it's justifiable to think that there are certain types of discussions that bring our insight and knowledge forward, while others may seem more or less "pointless" to some. But as long as it stays pretty much within what's considered "good taste", we'll just have to live with it. There's no need to read and post in every single thread.

At any given time there's got to be a number of kids who are happy that they just got their first Disney DVD.

[Matt]

Escapay, I agree with the sentiment of some of what you say, but I think you are way off base with some of your other comments. For one thing, I think it's out of place to use bad language on a Disney forum. Everyone has a right to post whatever they want on a forum, within the boundaries of good taste. If you are simply going to come on here and vent your feelings against them, whether in a moment of anger, or not - it is not in the spirit of the forum and it has no place. It is wrong of you to come on and criticise people for posting comments that don't fit in with your own personal worldview, and your comments just leave a sour taste I'm afraid.

Ignore it! That's what I do. It's not worth it on here.

Just think, you don't have to look at the person in front of you, they are online lol.
Cause if I did see a few of these members in the streets I would punch them in the face.
However, if I do see some on the streets I would hug them.
So you gotta take the good and the bad in everything.
I tried to make peace on here but on this forum... cause they just jump down your back for being nice.

So you can't win. I just come on now and view the good stuff on here about the up coming movies and move on.

I hope this helps.

[Escapay]

Escapay, I agree with the sentiment of some of what you say, but I think you are way off base with some of your other comments.

To each his own, we'll agree to disagree on my comments.

For one thing, I think it's out of place to use bad language on a Disney forum. Everyone has a right to post whatever they want on a forum, within the boundaries of good taste.

I don't use bad language (s-words, f-word, b-word). However, if words like (in white: goddamn and bastard ) are considered bad language, then it'll only offend those who empower those words to believe them to be bad language. But I won't censor myself just because it's a Disney board. We're an intelligent and mature group here, we shouldn't cower at a word. They're just words. Those that are afraid to use them empower the words and make them stronger. Those that don't use them because they see no reason to weaken the words. And on occassion, people will use a word like (in white: goddamn and bastard ) in a fit of anger. People can't censor anger.

It's amazing that people will allow Maleficent to say hell, or for live-action movies to have some slight traces of damn or s.o.b., but when a regular joe comes in and posts an opinion, a hissy fit is thrown just because he says "goddamn search".

If you are simply going to come on here and vent your feelings against them, whether in a moment of anger, or not - it is not in the spirit of the forum and it has no place.

I don't. I contribute regularly to discussions, and rants are few and far between from me and usually only focus on people not finding the main site and slipcovers. By now people should know that any opinion I have about slipcovers will be harsh.

And the spirit of the forum is to post and discuss, agree and disagree, about a variety of topics. I'm simply posting an opinion about the general attitude I've noticed in what people post. I don't criticize the poster, I criticize what I see in posts. There's a difference.

It is wrong of you to come on and criticise people for posting comments that don't fit in with your own personal worldview, and your comments just leave a sour taste I'm afraid.

And yet you are criticizing my comments because they don't fit your "personal worldview" of what the forum should be.

Again, I put the post in white for a reason. People can choose to ignore it (as Matt wisely said), or they can throw my caution to the wind and highlight it and see what it says. If people are offended by what I said, it's their fault for reading it. Curiosity kills.

I'm about thisclose to just chucking that post, it's causing more trouble for me than it's worth. But I won't, because it's been said, and it still holds true. I'm sick and tired of having to scan threads and see if there's something worth talking about. The only reason I read every thread and not skip any over is because I like to believe that just as I'd read a thread by someone, they'll show the same courtesy and read one by me. I'm not expecting every member to read every thread just out of common courtesy, but I do. And that's why I complained about the substance of posts. I've been wasting my time reading threads hoping to find something worth really commenting on, and it's few and far between these days on General Discussion. Most of the time, I find myself just re-directing new threads to old ones, providing links, or answering an easy-to-find-the-answer-if-one-would-search-the-main-pages question.

For the longest time, I'd start my forum reading from the bottom up. Start in Feedback, go to Disney Movie Club, then Trade, etc. I liked to save General Discussion for last, because of the DVD news and press releases and review-reminders that were there. But now, whenever I find no more new topics in Off-Topic to discuss, I find myself dreading to going to General Discussion. It's just not the same anymore. I'll check the usual threads (Review Feedback, certain press releases), but beyond that I'm always sighing and reading thread after thread wondering why I even bother anymore. It'll be the same things over and over again, and I can do with a change of pace.

In the meantime, after this entire opinion-about-the-forum debacle, I've decided to limit my GD time to simply the Review Feedback thread, the Ultimate DVD thread, and DVD press releases. It's not worth my time to check every thread out of common courtesy anymore. I'm tired. Just plain tired. Every so often, if I see a new thread started by someone I *know* can start a serious discussion, I'll check it out. But otherwise, I'll be off in Off-Topic.

Escapay

[Wonderlicious]

Double bill post from Wondy tonight...

On the decreasing quality of Disney DVDs:
I think somewhere in the middle of last year, the effort put into Disney DVDs was starting to blatantly drop. Almost ll of the Platinums seemed to get a 2 disc DVD released around the same time with them that was similar in quality (for example, Aladdin got Mulan). Then, it appears as though Cinderella was getting two 2 disc DVDs released with it...until it was revealed that Tarzan and The Emperor's New Groove (which had lots of bonuses already around as well) were actually one disc releases. And this trend has followed. There's also been no Region 1 releases of old live action catalogue titles (it seems as though Region 2 has, but these are mostly DVDs already out in the US), which I'm sure don't take too much time to prepare.

Equally, the platinum editions seem to be given less care as they were even in the days of Snow White and Aladdin. Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp were good DVDs, but considering they were released around a year after the likes of the Aladdin, Mary Poppins, Bambi and Mulan DVDs, the drop in quality is evident. And compare the Cars DVD to The Incredibles' release.

And in all honesty, though, I believe that not many people aside from the die-hards really care. Many people, as I'm sure you know, watch any, let alone all the bonus features (mind you, I don't always get round to watching the bonuses on DVDs ). I think executives are realising this, and therefore, don't see any point putting as much effort in, which is a shame. It's also been making me feel less enthusiastic with the DVD format on the whole as well.

On forum activity:
I think that what Disneykid has said is fairly accurate. A lot of people here seem to be Disney fans, but there are some people who are either casual DVD aficionados or slightly younger people. Whilst The Little Mermaid is my favourite Disney movie, along with Alice in Wonderland and Return to Oz, I've found some of the posts that have been made about the film to be a little lacking. Whilst there were around five million posts in the press release threads, I can't help but think that much of it was just fluff of sorts. And I've been quite annoyed recently of "when is such and such a thing coming out?" threads in the International forum. It's not so much the topic of them, it's the quantity; despite Ichabod starting a thread to put all things in, there still are individual threads popping up, which is a bit of a bummer. And I think that a lot of threads are getting a bit chatty. I was very happy to see an environment thread, as I've started to really think about environmental issues, but a lot of the conversation seemed to stem from the spelling of the title. And I find it rather offensive towards Luke that people forget the review/feature aspect of the site, and then ask random useless questions such as "is there a review for the Sleeping Beauty DVD online at all?", "did anybody buy Cars today from Blocpartybuster?" or "so is Robin Hood: Most Wanted Edition going to feature the movie Robin Hood or the movie Pete's Dragon?".

But let me just say that some of the new members this year have been excellent members so far (and probably will be if they stick around). I don't mean to sound like a favouritist, but people like slave2moonlight, Dottie, numba1lostboy, darth_deetoo, Prince Ali and MichaeLeah have posted some great stuff, and you know, I think many people here who post fluff here may eventually end up maturing a bit. In all honesty, some of my early posts from the first four or five months here seem a bit chatty or brief (not exactly fluffy, as I'm talking mainly about things I know about, but they're not 1000 word essays), but during December 2004, I seemed to stop being such a brief ramble guy, and started to add more substance regularly to my posts. Perhaps the likes of ariel_emo4ever and spoons_of_ursula (made up forum members, by the way) will start posting large essays on A/V quality and the artistic integrity of such-and-such-a-film.

[Pluto Region1]

SpaceWaster
Ye, I got that lst week

SpaceWaster
Did anyone else get it, its gud its better than the other dvd this one is gud

I mean clicking on the General Discussion section right now at this moment in time, so many of the threads are pure druel. Nothing that can truely be discussed and quite frankly most of which I don't even think deserves a reply. And the threads which are actually interesting seem to be killed by the annoying one line posts that have already been discussed.


So Yes I do feel quality has dropped off in posts and pray it will improve soon.

And I didn't put my rant in white, cos I don't care who I offend!

Well now that you bring this up, I have constantly scratched my head over topics that seem to do nothing but wasted UD's bandwidth - What for example is the point of threads like "What did you just Eat" or "What movie did you just watch" or "What DVD did you just buy" or "What are you listening to right now" ???

What is the point of these? When I click to enter the thread I see there are 23 pages of posts saying "I just ate potato chips" or "I just had a bowl of cheerios" or "I just bought XYZ movie" - I mean, these are not discussions - who really cares what movie you just bought. Unless we are discussing the quality or if the movie is any good... but that is not what those threads are even about. They are just "graffiti" threads, like dogs marking territory - the whole purpose is just to say "I bought XYZ" or "I ate XYZ" . Kind of pointless, if you ask me. And who is actually wading through the 23 pages of posts to read what every other UD forum member bought and then finally posting what THEY just bought? To me these posts do nothing but waste bandwidth for Luke... but on the other hand, perhaps they foster some commraderie of sorts, so I've never said anything about this before, but I do think these topics are a waste of precious space. I much more enjoy the debates and discussions about aspect ratios, or restorations on the Platinums or speculations about what might or might not be on the next Treasures series, or speculations on what might go into the vaults. I think these types of topics really highlight and bring out some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking posts that can be found in the forums.

And I will say this in defense of some of the newbies. After having participated in the monumental 70++ page "The Little Mermaid" anticipatory release thread, you've got to feel sorry for someone who's new and wants to know something like whether or not the gift set WILL be available but doesn't have time to read 65 pages of posts - I mean, common! Give 'em a break. I had to spend about 6 hours to read up to page 30 of that thread before I caught up with everyone, and half the thread was just stupid comments being posted like "I can't wait for the movie to come out" or "Only XX days until it comes out, yippee!" etc. I mean, I guess it was just the excitement and everyone was sort of feeding off everyone else and I really enjoyed it too but you can't expect newbies to really read through 30 or 40 pages of thread material to find out - very few people have that kind of time. In general, if you do not come into a thread within the first 3 or 4 pages, you might as well just forget about catching up - it just takes a huge time commitment, ya know? That's where I find myself a lot of the times. I haven't been here in awhile and well, I can't spend 3 hours reading a 16-page thread, and I know you don't want me asking any dumb questions - something that may have been discussed on page 8, so at some point you just cut your losses and just don't post in any threads that require that amount of time to catch up. So that's my rant. Not stating that any of this is anyone's fault - its my own fault for staying away as long as I did but I'm saying just cut some people some slack when they come into a very long thread - don't expect them to read all 40 or so pages - its just not a reasonable expectation.