You can make toast with an iron, but you can't iron with a toaster.

Adam Ostrow and the Mindsay Forum:

The Mindsay Forums and their ability to focus on specific subject matter are a great tool. By categorizing interests and topics they provide for more effective communication, idea sharing and problem solving. Forums can be a real time saver by their nature of eliminating randomness. Well, at least that is the way most web-wide forums I have used operate. Let's put the lens on the Mindsay forum here stilll in its infancy.

Yesterday I went to visit and decided to follow a thread on "Linking Back to Mindsay" to see what sorts of technical advice was available. You can look at it HERE, listed under the Mindsay category described as " Ask questions about the site, post ideas on how we can improve it, or anything else MindSay-related." Excellent, a focus-room on Mindsay-only matters. Wait... no sorry, that's not the case. If you read through the four pages of "discussion" on "linking back to Mindsay" you will find less than one page on the subject, and three pages of chit-chat between two mindsayers.

When I brought this ineffective forum behavior to attention it was suggested that I "hush up" because all forum threads are frayed. Really? Not from my experiences. In fact I have never visited a forum with this 4/1 ratio of "fray" to content.

There is a forum-category called "Watercooler" described as " Random conversation about anything that doesn't fit in the other categories". I would think (and suggest) that if Mindsays are in another forum and decide to chat off the subject, that they move there. If it becomes the generally accepted rule that anyone is allowed to talk about anything in any forum doesn't that defeat the purpose of categorizing?