Searching for a group and finding your IQ dropping

[Dina Lerret]

As some of y'all may have gathered, I got interested in one of the
shiny "IT" fandoms of the moment, Supernatural.  I've enjoyed the SPN
community comments on LiveJournal but *loathe* the limited system
which LJ allows for notification of new replies to threads not started
by myself.  It makes keeping up with a discussion arduous, at best,
and LJ only allows 25 'event' (e.g. thread update) notifications.
It's rather like LJ tossing a small bandaid to someone with a limb
severed--obviously, not enough.

So, I speck out the largest SPN mailing list I find on Yahoogroups via
a directory search and come across
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/Supernatural_on_The_WB/  which has
over a thousand members.  I'm thinking 'cool'; with that many folk,
there's gotta be some good discussions.  Then I read what's posted and
the fact it seems only a handful of folk are posting, even though
*thousands* of messages are being generated per month, and the post
content is frequently cringe-worthy.  Though, I did have my doubts,
based on the group's mainpage presentation, that I may be dealing with
teenagers or at least those with a questionable view on
'professionalism', in the sense of administration purposes.

However, the kicker was when I read this SPN mailing list response to
a gal going no-mail because she was having surgery, for real:
[[
WOW!!!! Somebody on this list has a brain to have tumour in!!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Of course everything will be saved, we have multiple freaks here for
that, And seriously PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE get better. Much fast
recovery and no ill effects.
]]

{blink, blink}

Suffice it to say, I placed that group on no-mail because I could
understand why only a small handful were posting and recycling the
same thoughts, which weren't all that inspiring to begin with and many
were entirely comprised with having absolutely no relevance to SPN.
It's no wonder that group was a cesspool of stagnant thought.

{sigh}

Dina