I open this by saying I am NOT a moderator, just in case anybody figured I was.

There have been a lot of people complaining lately about "useless" non-tech related posting, and people achieving tech god and moderator status by posting word association, "Indeeeeeeeeeed", and other such stuff to pump up their post counts.

One thing not everybody realizes, is no matter how many posts you get, this is not how you become a moderator. Moderators are (inthe final decision) promoted at the approval of DriverGuy and the other moderators.

With regards to the titles achieved (Advanced Tech, Tech God, etc.) what people have to realize is that these titles are entirely cosmetic and meaningless. It has been suggested a few times that some way be put in place to regulate which posts add to your total, how much they are worth, etc., but this is impractical at best, so the best way to approach it is to simply realize, a lot of tech gods are tech gods because they talk a lot.

That's just the way this site is.

But you know what?

Tech Gods don't get any special benefits over New Members. They don't get valet parking at Hooters, although some of them claim to. They don't get their membership costs at Windrivers waived--oh wait a minute, they do, but so do you. Basically, all they get are some shiny stars.

If you really want shiny stars too, you can hang out in the tech lounge. If you post it, they will come.

I'll be the first to admit that maybe one in five of my posts has been an attempt to help someone technically. I used to feel guilty about this. Until I saw the moderators participating in and encouraging the Word Association thread. Hey, if the site owner doesn't care what counts towards the titles, then why does anybody else?

Well, if nothing else, here's one more post for me...

Peace everybody! <IMG SRC="smilies/cool.gif" border="0">