"Stop that, it's SILLY!"

[Violet]

What is this, seriously? Trying to get a license to be as silly as you want?

A poll on what the people of the forum think of silliness. I am often silly, and if people really dislike it I can tone it down. But I recognize I'm not the only silly person (only perhaps the silliest?) and therefore I inquired it of a broader topic?

Since when would I need a license to be silly?

We have silly topics, and serious ones. It's easy to figure out which ones are which. We can crack a joke, most of us are good humored, but derail a post with fluff and that gets annoying.

It wouldn't make sense to be silly in a thread about someone's mother dying I'm gauging the overall effect of silliness to the forum That primarily being wether it makes the forum a fun place to visit, though there are other nuances as noted

I don't hate all emoticons, just when they are overused.

You must hate my posts then

In the end, it's common sense. Be yourself. I don't think it ultimately affects the forum unless you're breaking the rules.

I think that the amount of silliness has a large effect on a forum, actually. If you have a forum where there is no silliness (ie: designed for scientists and the like)... the posts will likely be very mature, but the overall feel of the forum won't be "fun". Whereas if you have a forum with a lot of silliness... you may have 'fun' but the posts tend to suffer a drop in maturity level.

These change what kind of members you get, and what kind of environment you are looking for. So the broader sense of what I'm doing here is gauging what kind of environment the people here like. I rather expect mostly option 2s, but the other options are also there

If it's about gaining popularity? Well, it's kinda easy to tell and usually gets annoying.

Who actively tries to gain popularity here? Do we have some kind of politician or the like? Raise your hand if you are silly for the purposes of gaining popularity!

But really and seriously... I don't believe anyone here does this

Edit: Oh, and as an aside... can we increase the emoticons allowed in a post to 12-15 from 10? I would find it useful on my longer posts or when quoting people who used an emoticon : S it's no fun to have to go through and worry about where my tone will be lost by the removal of an emoticon and change to a text-face : S