Roll Call and Playing Nice.

Hi everybody.

First of all, we've had the first incident of personal attacks on the blog. This isn't acceptable, has been noticed, and my suggestion is that it not happen again.

I've also had some comments that people are worried about the really prolific posters on the blog getting to all the good ideas first. If you are, you shouldn't worry. There is no problem with covering the same idea that another poster has already discussed, and also no problem with being unaware that they might have covered the same topic. Obviously it is better to be able to say, "This person raised these points, and..." before incorporating them into your discussion. But as the blog goes on, more people are going to be posting more often, so reading the blog regularly can become intimidating.

The flipside is that if you find someone who has written on something you've already approached, it's better to use that as a point to move out from in the debate, rather than just stating that you've already posted on the subject. That scares people off and shuts things down, and if someone's already shy about the blog then they get worried they're doing something wrong unless they're sure it's a new topic for the blog. And as I say, that's going to get harder and harder to check.

Overall Point: Don't worry about it, write about what you want to.

Also, we've had several people join the blog over the last week, which is excellent at the same time as increasing the number of people I can't find. They are:

Pearly

Nifa

Rainman

So if you can contact me on the blog or via email to confirm who you are, that would be great.

- Kevin.