Forum Observation

It goes in spurts, with new topics creating a temporary flurry of activity that usually tapers off fairly quickly.  There are other long running threads that generate a post or two every so often.

In post #1, 'mreg376' wrote:

" But after you're here, the day-to-day discourse is pretty sparse.  Is that normal for this forum ? "

Uncle Bernie comments:

Yes it is normal, and it is good that it's that way. All the prominent, important  "movers and shakers and doers and builders" of the Apple-1 and Apple II world are lurking here, and unlike other forums on other platforms there is not much "junk traffic" which only steals your time and money (the latter applies only if you are on a metered connection).

I had subscriptions to some other Apple / Atari / MAME related forums and the traffic there is too intense for me, I just don't have the time (and bandwidth) to catch up with all the clutter there, and cancelled all of these subscriptions.

Hope Applefritter stays the way it is, and I'd think Tom Owad agrees ;-)

- Uncle Bernie

Other than this place, it seems Facebook are the most active areas of chitter chatter.

mreg376 wrote:

You're giving much more thought to this than I ever intended.  I was merely observing that participation seems to hit valleys at times.

I suspect you might have been tricked into replying to a fake comment from a spam bot.

1. The user herrylau's apparent question was constructed of generic fill-in-the-blank phrases like "what do you mean by [title of thread]?" but otherwise doesn't discuss any topics relevant to the whole forum.
2. The user herrylau had just registered on the forum.  It's unlikely for genuinely-interested users to join a brand new forum just to post a vague question that doesn't discuss the topics other than a copy-paste of the thread title.
3. The provocative post included an irrelevant link to an offsite gaming platform, as if the comment was just a pretext for spam.
4. The user account for herrylau has now been disabled, which is uncommon for a new user...unless they already violated policies immediately after joining...such as  spamming?

The "harrylau" account was indeed a spammer.