> > Er, has anybody else noticed that Bourne
> already got responses from a few people, and
> posted a followup about what his point was,
> thus making it unnecessary to keep posting
> answers? I thought it was an interesting point,
> too, if anybody wants to read it.
>
> I think I may have posted my answer after he
> had already posted his follow-up, but that's a
> consequence of using the Recent Messages
> page to read and respond to forum
> messages.
>
> Besides, some people just can't help
> participating in a poll, disirregardless of
> whether the pollster still needs the data or not.

Meh. I guess I just don't find these sort of threads interesting then. I might think differently if people responded with something a bit more detailed, because then you'd get to learn something about the person, but to me there just isn't any point in generating a list of random movie names or cities, which is what these threads have effectively been. I could get an atlas and look at the index if all I wanted to do was see a list of place names. I'm tempted to post a question like "Name a colour!", except that I just know it would get 20 replies.

Both Howard's and Bourne's posts had the potential to get lots of really diverse, fascinating answers and generate a lot of interesting discussion. But without the context of why people chose what they did, what they think of that, or any other type of conversation about their choice, it just seems to me that such threads don't add anything of use or interest, either about the person or the thing they've chosen.

I suppose you can reply "why should they have to?" You can take your choice of answers:

a. Because lists are lists, and forum posts are forum posts, and I feel like there ought to be a visible difference.
b. Because I'm interested in people, and it is a minor annoyance to me when people come that close to telling me something about their personality or interests, and then don't.
c. Because I take this too seriously and ought to shut up and just not read those threads.

Brunnen-"so! Everybody name a colour!"G