CAMELOT FANTASIES

affirmative lady emma.

the great baron britbox has a winning formula going. I wish him much success.

the only issue I see their is their extra clickishness which can make the newcomers a bit shy.

and they really don't care for the chat.

general august made a post at their frontier chat bar and 5 days later somebody responded to it. naturally it was baron who was considerate enough to go there and say hello back to general august.

they tend to be overly clickish at the tennis discussion place and not active enough at an important place like the chat section.

now on the plus side, extreme clickishness also means a tightly knit group which can keep a forum going. at any rate baron is doing a good job of making it happen there.

I have learned that it is far easier for folks to get comfortable at the chat area than at the tennis discussion place right from get go.

and at vast majority of the forums, its the chat sections that drive growth.

people want to relax and they don't really want to talk tennis 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

you can do both at chat sections in a relaxed way.

Different people use forums for different purposes, herc. Not necessarily everyone who joins will go into chitchat especially given that it's a tennis forum first. So best not to expect the same from everyone. For example, my nature is very different and it's a bit rare for me to actually greet every new comer on any forum and get into chitchats with them in order to make them comfortable. That's why I don't own a forum and don't want to be a moderator etc. What baron does I can't do it. It's his forum and his going to care about these posters and he'll make sure all the new comers are greeted well and that makes sense. So bottom line everyone has different priority and we should just let people be and not expect the same from everyone because that's what we like. That would be imposing our own likings onto others. 

Also, once people get comfortable talking tennis with the other posters, only after that they get into chitchat - a lot of the cases in fact. I don't believe it's the other way. I've definitely never done that. I talked tennis first, got familiar with the posters, and their views before I engaged myself chitchatting with them. TF was a bit different because I already knew a few posters but mind you, I wasn't comfortable browsing around as much because I didn't expressed my tennis view as much there. Had I done the other way, I probably wouldn't have left who knows. I am sure people who are a bit shy type would be far more comfortable making general tennis related posts at first than anything else. Because I am sure they wouldn't want to draw as much attention initially because chitchatting and relaxing means being open and sharing personal information at times. So anyway, that's my 2 cents on that.