Re: spotlights:
As for being impossibly long: I am probably only 5 or so pages from reading *all* of the spotlighted quotes. (I took a break from CD for a while...
)
The "good" quotes can remind us of what FIRST stands for and why we're here.
But, even the funny/"bad" ones can brighten someone's day (namely, mine
) as they see some engineer/programming joke pop up. Sure, there are some that would totally require clicking the "view thread" link to see, but even the silly comments can bring up some interesting threads.
Technical difficulty aside from upgrading, do they really annoy people that much? If you
really hate them, you can use Adblock Plus to block the "spotlight" table element.
As a programmer, I totally understand the desire to retire the feature if it requires more work for an upgrade. So, I totally support removing the feature if it's too much work to upgrade.
That said, if they're removed, would saving an archive of all of those quotes in a *.csv or *.txt file should be pretty straightforward? (I forget if it was disclosed how those spotlights are maintained/stored, but I have this odd feeling it's in an XML, CSV, or text file.) If they could be archived for future readers, that would be totally awesome.