HOW TO START A NEW TOPIC (as of 4/13/04)

I don't think there should be a time limit on nor should it matter how long it takes. There will NEVER be an "emergency" new topic.

If we can set aside our differences for a moment, my original percpetion of this was on target. It's being seen by some as the "Farenheit 451" of web-sites. You have what?, three or four people determining the format, structure, and path of discussions....this is not Jr. high school. I think you are trying to make a good product, but remember what you are producing...a web-site that is condusive to free flow of thoughts and ideas, not a razor wire fence to package organize and categorize acceptable and unacceptable ways of thinking in the minds of a few.
Please take this as constructive criticism.

Look at the Netscape message boards...one of the top five most active/popular message boards is (you guessed it) EvC...and it's been there for over 3 years. They dropped board monitors over two years ago...and since then;1)Things go waaay off topic and naturally come back on topic eventually.
2)Trolls are taken care of by the posters by ignoring them.
3)There is occasional foul and disgusting language and
proposals...posters take care of it by ignoring it.
4)New posters aren't intimidated by a monitor with warnings and a
death key.From what I've seen, boards with NO control provide just as good a service (it even seems better) as boards with relentless authoritative controls....what do they call it?..."topic control measures"?

I wasn't proposing they operate the same way...they don't have to be polar opposites either though.