[Robert]

Hi John. You make a good point but there is a trade off between "Just the facts, Ma'am" and idle chatter or, what I like to call, community building posts. Originally, the community building posts where removed by myself or the moderators, to keep only relevant posts in the thread, but this caused great angst and uproar within the community. More recently, I've asked the moderators not to delete such posts but try and guide the discussion back to the original topic. The thank you button was added to reduce the 'Thanks for a great post' posts and that has helped some.

I'll give the post of the week some thought and see what I come up with. Sorting a forum by thread rating would have a similar affect, but I don't think enough threads are rated or enough members know they can sort this way, for it to be useful. It does make sense to remove idle-chat posts from the more serious-minded forums after a couple of days.

--Robert