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Originally Posted by VANDOO
... OPINIONS ON WHICH WAY IS BEST NEW POST OR ADD TO OLD POST IF AVAILABLE???
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It comes down to a personal judgement call; my personal philosophy is very much like your own, if a considered post is relevant and contributory to the material in an existing thread, it is best to keep it together by adding to the existing thread. But, starting a new thread is always an option. When necessary, the moderators have the tools to split threads and move posts.
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Originally Posted by fspic
...Then it disappeared as it became uneconomical to support by sponsors... The site had new rules by the owner to calm member disputes. There were other changes and that place lost its character and membership.
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I fully sympathize, fspic, and have had some similar experiences over the years that have led to my largely withdrawing from forums participation. It is interesting how each forum community develops its own personality and mores; probably a minority of these actually come from the operators. If a site is generating revenue by renting participant's eyeballs out to advertisers, then mild flame wars can really increase page views, and thus revenue - as long as, as you have observed, it does not kill the community. Here, flame wars are viewed purely a disruptive influence, wasting database storage space and bandwidth. If someone here feels their thread has been hijacked, they are well advised to privately raise their concern with a moderator, as publicly posting a personal criticism of another member does lead to a period of unplanned vacation for contemplation. Harsh and mildly unreasonable, perhaps, but it keeps discussions on topic and reduces unjustly bruised feelings.
The moderators regularly receive suggestions that 'someone' needs to create organized index and recommended threads stickies. Good ideas, but pretty much entailing endless janitorial work in the Aegean stable. So we are left with search and Google, which actually work pretty well. If a member does wish to lay out a detailed illustrated classification, I continue to offer assistance in presenting such material on the non-forum ('static') indexed pages on the site.