<Why remove folks? Like it is sometimes said...watching is participating. >

Yep. I have several groups which I always read but never post in.

I'm thinking of it as being like a sport. The tribe members are the sports team. The readers are the viewers. Anyone, whether or not they are a member of that tribe or even of tribe in general, can make a bookmark/saved place in their browser for any tribe to visit and read whenever they want.

Tribe itself has a lovely bookmark function on it's own that will allow anyone who is a member to bookmark any tribe or person to check in with later. For instance, I will often bookmark moderators or people I have PMed but do not have on my friend's list. It's very convenient. I also bookmark spammers, LOL, and today saw that three of the spammers have been unsubscribed. Yay!

There are many uses for such a tool. If you are a new moderator to an older tribe, you might want to know right away who the people are that post the most. That's a good thing. Who are the discussion leaders/posters? Also, if you notice someone has NOT posted in awhile who used to post, is everything ok? Have they left tribe? Or taking a break? Have they gone to another tribe for most of their activity? What could be done to bring them back to that specific tribe to start posting again? (member of individual tribe retention).

I realize it's my opinion only, but I prefer to know who the players of the sports team are. You know what I mean? There aren't 1800 people posting in Politics. I don't think there are even 40 people that post regularly. Obviously moderators are free to set whatever rules they want. If they want only members that participate all the time, they should have a tool to identify who actually participates. There is no other way to figure it out, other than to make a list of names and check them off as each person posts, while reading all the posts in the tribe for the past month. Uh, and good luck with that one! LOL!

You, skooter, have a good mind and often have interesting things to say, so I would want you to participate in a tribe. Don't just join it because someone invited you or three of your best friends are in it or it's where the popular kids hang out or the most recent trend is currently happening.

I think it would reflect each tribe's personality much better too. You'd KNOW who was participating, because the moderator might say "participate once a week at least, if you can, and more than just a 'me too' statement".

I'd rather join an active tribe with 15 members participating, than join a dead tribe with 1500 members.

My old little tribe, I would invite people and tell them "don't just join, post something too". And they did! If they joined, they did indeed post. And there was much activity.

"Why remove folks? Like it is sometimes said...watching is participating. "

--It's a power trip. Now that provoking people into an TOU violation by stalking them is no longer a viable "tool", the cyber nutcases are demanding other tools that they can use to gain a sense of power over other members. One in particular keeps demanding all kinds of tools be created to suit these whims.

Tribe.net, we don't need more tools. We need system stability.

Thank you.