Leaving. Not Leaving. Whatever.

[markpkessinger]

89. Actually, I appreciate when people announce their departures . . .

. . . particularly if it is someone whose postings I make a point to read. I see it as a courtesy, so folks don't have to wonder whether someone is ill or has died.

As to your assertion about folks developing an "unhealthy relationship with ... a discussion board of mostly anonymous people," my own experience with discussion boards, and in the early days of the internet, with email discussion groups, has led me to believe that when you read what someone writes over an extended period of time, when you read about the things they care passionately and deeply about, as well as about the things they dislike or don't care about, in fact you really do get to know a person rather well, even if the name attached to those writings is just an email handle.

Beginning in about 1989, for a period of close to 10 years, I participated in a email discussion list called The Anglican Mailing List (devoted to matters of Anglican theology, spirituality and liturgy). It consisted of maybe 300-400 members, but about 150 of which were regular correspondents. In due course, many of us had occasion to meet in the flesh. We even organized some intentional reunions (in New York, Washington, DC, Phoenix and a few other locales). Although some folks, as it turned out, looked rather different than I had envisioned them, when it came to their personalities, in not a single instance did I find that their real-time personalities were at all different from their virtual personalities. Even though that list is now defunct, I have remained friends (in BOTH real and virtual time, thank you) with a great many of those folks to this day, and I still see many of them when the occasion permits.

I think it all depends on how you choose to approach a discussion group such as this one. If you approach it as a mere random collection of anonymous screen names, well, that's exactly what it will be. On the other hand, if you approach it as a community, and actually try to begin to understand the real, flesh-and-blood people behind the screen names and their postings, then it can be that, too. But hey, if that's not your thing, that's cool. Your armchair psychoanalysis, not so much.