> This morning I was thinking about how large the forum is. I recalled Kaz! mentioning that he had downloaded the entire forum onto his hard drive and that it was something like 98 megabytes in size. I'm sure it's grown since then.

Yep, that'd be me. As I write this, I'm downloading the whole thing *again* so that I can give you an accurate reading, as of post number 29123 (It's the last one on the recent messages page at the time that I write this). It takes a bit of time.....

> So sometimes it is hard to tell which messages are "original" messages and which ones are responses.

Well, I find that it's fairly easy. I always look at the top of the page for a link to the previous post. If there isn't a link, it's the start of the thread, and, most of the time, if the subject is different then the one above then the post may lead to a thread on somethink else completely. It seems to actually be a fairly commen occurance on this forum.

>I'm just curious what the actual ratio [of originators to responders] is. Not that I want to spend all my waking hours tallying it up...I'll leave that to the likes of Kaz! (:oP)

You task me....and I would actually have figured it out for you (because that's sort of the thing that I do) if Sam hadn't already done so. Thank you Sam for saving me a whole ton-o-time!

>Are you the type of person who tends to think of and post original, thread-starting messages, or are you more the type who tends to respond to what others have said? Or do you do both?

Well, it really depends for me. If I see a post that I really want to respond to, I'll respond to it. (whether or not I actually post my response is a bit more iffy). If I feel that I have something new that I want to post, then I will start my own thread -- and you can be sure that if I start my own thread the post will be really, REALLY long. Just my style I guess. Heck, even when I respond my input is of a moderatly large length....

I'd also post a new thread if I was asked to do something elsewhere (or if the asking was just sort of hinted). For example, the IMG2 interview between Sam and Vicki that I transcibed the night after I heard that someone couldn't hear it. I forget who that was though....

> Of course, strict definitions like these really aren't accurate. The way threads on this message forum have a tendency to evolve or dissolve from one topic into another, a "response" post can actually become the start of a huge new thread, even though it wasn't intended as anything but a reply.

Yep, I find that topics change quite quickly from one thing to another. That's why I use the recent messages page more then page 1; I can catch interesting (and sometimes mislabeled) topics that I would otherwise have missed. Well, that and the fact that I can say that I've read every single message on the forum recently (I'm still working on some of the older ones)

Gri"going for 'longest forum thread ever' new record!"shny

Heh. Somehow, I doubt that a post like this'll do that....the longest thread, if memory serves, is that original box one. I think it's over 200 posts long (or was it 400?) and it still grows from time to time.

-Ka"Stupid MS-WebpageDL....It's been getting a lot of errors....Erm...I'll reply to my own post once the thing actually downloads."z!