Honorable, schmonorable (I haven't made that joke in, uh, a long time), there's a thread specifically made to get you to 50 posts without annoying any but the most annoyable people on the planet.
Well, I think the so-called "honorable" way is a defensible approach, although I wouldn't use the term "honorable" myself. Allow me to justify myself (I make no justifications for other people, least of all Mr./Ms./Mx. sixinchsub, whom I hope will excuse my posting in this thread):
1) I am not in any particular rush to access the locked audio content. At the rate I am posting on this forum, I will have unlocked the content in about a month or two, in all likelihood. In the meantime, there are lots of unlistened shows in the WFMU archive that will keep me busy, in addition to already listened shows to which I may decide to return to should the mood strike me.
That said, I do not judge anybody for being in a rush to access the audio content or wanting to utilize the post burning thread. It is, after all, officially sanctioned by Tom--who can argue with that?
2) I like this website. I don't personally regard it is an obstacle that exists to be gamed merely for the extraction of goodies. That said, I think people are more than entitled to regard it in whatever way they want, and with all of the additional means of electronic self-expression these days (twitter, facebook, reddit, etc.), I say, more power to people's deciding for themselves what internet sites they wish to engage with.
I don't know
exactly what factors led to the steep decline in this forum's popularity, it having happened before I joined, although I don't think it would be hard to piece together a persuasive theory. But having stumbled across the forum late, and wishing it
would experience a healthy renaissance among FOTs, I am making a self-conscious effort to try to maximize the value I put into it, and this entails not utilizing the post-burning thread. When posts to that thread constituted a small fraction of activity on this site (as they once appeared to do), that was one thing. But when burning posts is a much more visible and popular utilization of this site than, say, talking with Mike about books or discussing one's favorite calls from the show, I do wonder how this encourages people to engage with this forum in an interesting, community-building way.
I don't want to seem sanctimonious or judgmental in this thread, and I definitely don't want to give the impression that I have The Answer for how to revitalize this site as a resource for FOTs. Are my posts on this site turning FOTs away more than they are making them want to engage? It's totally possible! I'm not that great at the internet! Nevertheless, I think it's OK to be "principled" about this--even if the stakes are ridiculously small and nobody else really cares.
