[Al Skierkiewicz]

Dudes and Dudettes,
I think one of the things we really need to concentrate on is that it takes a lot of courage to write something here. Doing it the first time takes a while to mustard up the intestinal fortitude to open your mouth (figuratively). Believe it or not, it was a couple of months before I started to get the feel of the boards and actually write something. (I think it started as an retort of a clearly wrong statement but that is a story for another day.) A new poster whether they are asking an obvious question or something that was put to bed on a previous post, needs to feel comfortable here. It may be the only way they can think of to get started. If they walked up to your pit and asked that question, you wouldn't send them away to go look somewhere else. You wouldn't berate them for their lack of knowledge of the English language or use of local colloquialisms. The point is, we need to make people feel comfortable and use this board for info and friendship. Let's welcome them in and when they are seasoned users, remind them that there are features like search. Encourage them to make their posts in a manner that everyone can understand and respect. Show them by your example that punctuation is your friend, spell checker should not be an option, and reading your post before submission is a must for self preservation. If they then choose to ignore the gentle hints...