^ Banville :laughing: that´s a good invention!
My apologies for this long, on-topic post:-

I´ve only been here for three of MB´s ten years, so I have just 30% nostalgia rights. I can´t lament early members who have moved on, but I have my own list of posters who I wish were still around:-

tore, jackpat, sk, skaligojura, petula07, bloozcruz, vegangelica, blastingas10, chives, and most recently misspoptart and stephen are the ones that come to mind

Shortly after I joined, there was one of MB´s regular, "MB is nothing like it used to be" threads, and I kind of absorbed that idea; that I´d missed out on the golden years of MB. In fact, dipping into some old threads, I found plenty of evidence of the same ephemeral, ping-ponging one-liners that sometimes afflict -or enliven- MB today.

Something I did noticed though, was that there did seem to be a lot more effort made to nurture what tore described as "the health of the MB community". All those "how to" stickies and indexes that Freebase, tore and others set up don´t really have their equivalent today,( with the exception perhaps of Pedestrian´s year of sustained effort and Trollheart´s work with the journals.)

I found one old thread, for example, in which members were allocating between themselves the complete Bowie albums, that they would then review. The dynamic seemed to be, "We should make MB an encyclopedic resource for music lovers." Whether worthy or misguided, my perception is that today, that goal has largely been lost and instead, MB is becoming a kind of alternative Whatzapp or Facebook, with a post/move on/forget mentality.

Well, I´m not making any judgements because MB is, if nothing else, very democratic and inevitably becomes what the majority of contributors want it to be - but I´d be interested to know if anyone else has an overview of MB and can tell me if it has indeed morphed from one creature into another...

What I have learned, every music forum becomes like that sooner or later. At first, when the amount of members is little enough, it can be like you said, but sooner or later it is bound to change.

I won't complain, though. Most of you who contribute to MB are funny and good people, and those ones who are not, won't bother me much. Anyway, I think I quite enjoy this forum as it is.

Skaligojurah! I know he changed his username a bit but that was his old name. Miss that guy. He introduced me to a lot of great music. I wonder whatever happened to him.

Thanks, Taxman. That supports what I read somewhere about how people´s attitudes to forums change with time. Something parallel has happened to e-mail too. I remember when Hotmail first became available and people were writing lengthly, sometimes formal letters to each other. Today, it´s like three one-sentence paragraphs, tops.

Yeah, Skali was really into music and helped me too, Burning Down. Did you ever check out the clip he posted of his own performance? All I remember now is a luminous nose-ring or something !

I have Skali on Fb but don't really talk to him much. He hosted eclectic turntable parties until it got shut down.

Well, if it´s no problem, please pass on my best wishes next time you´re in touch dj.

Ska Lagos Jew. Dude picked a brawl with me almost constantly.

My Ska Legos Jews was Bungalow. I took comfort that he got himself banned. Boo didn't like him either, which in a strange way made us allies. (sidenote: Boo said and done things that I thought he should not have said and done. I feel awkward bring mentioning Boo.)

We all do. Good heart; tortured mind.

You truly don't know wtf you're talking about