Replying to To Newschoolers, with love

Our community is the sum of all its members.

Read that again. Now, as one of those members to another, you, lets have a talk. I'm going to say some things right now, then I'll read the thoughts you post next.

This site has grown a lot over the years. Despite having over a hundred thousand individual accounts, I'm confident in saying a small fraction of that are users who post regularly. I know a lot of you. You're more familiar to others than you may think.

Call me an old timer, I've been on here long enough that I have to nod in agreement. Be it the start of a long and pissed off summer for most skiers, or just me getting nostalgic, NS has had better times. Quality of this site comes from the quality of its members. Lately, I think that quality has been in rather of a slump, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

NS is a wonderful opportunity. If someone in the ski industry has a idea, a comment, a critique, or some insider scoop on events, they can post it and share it with a large percentage of the freeskiers out there. I challenge anyone to show me a ski forum that moves quicker on any piece of news. That being said, if you enjoy this wonderful machine, help it work. If you think mods and admins laugh their asses off every time we have to delete troll threads, insensitive comments or outright flaming, we dont. Besides being an inconvenience to us and our work, it hurts the value of the site. It really only takes ten threads of trolling or obvious stupidity to make a thousand members go 'dammit, NS sucks nowadays'.

Post better. Theres an intelligent person reading your posts. Some of the most interesting discussions and debates I have ever had have been on NS, but they came only because the members respected each other. Flaming only pisses people off and worsens the site as a whole. Trolling is just annoying as hell - if you really get a kick out of fooling hundreds of people for your private laughs, I have a great website for you to check out. And on that note, NS is NS - it doesnt need to become a freeskiing subsidiary of any other forum or board. It already has its identity, and needs none other. It creates its own content - but only when you contribute positively.

Do good guys. Read that first line again. Summers here, and that means posting goes up. Establish your presence, take up sides on an issue, learn something and post something interesting. I'm not saying lets all live like bunnies, but lets at least get along. Now then, I've said my bit. Over to you.