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The CD poster community is a very small part of the entire FIRST community, but surprisingly a large amount of the whole community rely on it for information to help their own team. If we can't figure out what's causing all these frustrations within the forum, this place will no longer be a useful place to the community as a whole.
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Ken, I think this is the basis of the main question of this thread. Every year, Chiefdelphi grows. As such, a larger and larger percentage of people involved in FIRST become involved with Chiefdelphi.com in one way or another. If not by posting directly, by getting help from a team who found an answer to a problem right here. Since I joined in 2002, I have noticed dramatic increases in the number of threads and users from year to year. From the Internet Wayback Machine:
Early 2002:
Registered Members:
492
Total Threads:
855 | Total Posts:
8,130 | Total Views: 168,749
0-posters: 185 | Active Members: 261 | Inactive Members: 231
Present:
Threads:
23,818, Posts:
261,076, Members:
7,159
We have roughly 32 times more posts in 27 times more threads and 14 times more members, all within a mere 2 and a half years. That's beyond incredible growth. I think in some ways the first few hundred members miss the days when it was only a few hundred members. Smaller communities tend to bond better, get to know each other better, etc. It was easier to know everyone, recognize a name, and sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of posts. Now the community has exploded in numbers, and it would seem, like FIRST itself, is experiencing some growing pains. Older members wish for the old days, while newer members wish to express newer viewpoints on how things are/should be. Looks like the classic clash of the old and the new- like parents and kids on what good music is.
I'll say I'm in favor of chit-chat, because it does give the community (no matter how big it gets) a place to keep everything that doesn't belong in the technical/informational portion of the site. Of course, there are plenty of off-topic and needless threads and posts even within the generally more useful (in a technical sense) sections, but chit-chat gives it all a place to come together, and obtain information about other community members and things which wouldn't otherwise fit in any other category, like a catch-all for random posts.