Well there is certainly one lyin' cheatin' egg suckin' dawg on the Top Ten. You can choose to ignore it, but I won't!

personally i could care less about a top ten or a five star,i entered this site to talk about the outdoors,kill some time,maybe gather some useful info. give me a helpful tip or answer that is what i am here for.five stars does not make you credible. recently in the gundog photo contest matouse3, a five star member racked up about five hundred votes, to bad about four hundred and fifty of those votes were made up.this is not reality television it is an outdoor web site and the users should keep it that way.

I think the present points system is a farce. It has to be causing more problems for the site than it's worth. I'd suggest that F&S have monthly draws to give away merchandise. Members would need to have so many posts THAT MONTH to get into the draw. That way once the village idiot gets enough to make the draw, we won't hear from him again till next month. After a couple of fruitless months that's usually the end of those guys. Any winner would be out of the draws for the rest of the calendar year. The monthly draw would protect F&S's need to log hits but still cut down on (but not eliminate) the ballot box stuffing point mongers.

A spell checker is a must. Only the crumby forums don't have them. I rarely use spell checkers on forums but to not have one looks cheap and shabby. Forget the smileys. Leaving them off gives the site some maturity.

A private messanger option with very limited memory capacity would be a lifesaver. It would eliminate a lot of the chit-chat in the answers section. It would also be a safe way to exchange personal information. As it sits now, I can't contact any member without giving my address to the world. I won't do that - and NO ONE SHOULD. Very bad idea.

I AM DEFINITELY NOT IN FAVOR OF ADDING AN EDIT OPTION TO POSTS AND THREADS. I have seen this work VERY badly in other forums. Someone will post some BS or abusive comment and then make it disappear. Or a debate will ensue over a particular topic only to have the topic changed in midstream or disappear altogether. Huh? What are they talking about? If you submit it, it's there unchanged until the moderators decide to toss it in the trash.

People who create multiple false identities should be booted off. Period. This practice reflects very poorly on the credibility of the site and the point system in particular. Too easy for people to create point-accumulating debates with (or, more commonly, praise for) themselves. Frankly, I find it alarming that moderators would make excuses for this behavior. It is unacceptable (not to mention psychotic). But it does accumulate hits. Hopefully, that's not all F&S is after.

I've never filled out the paperwork for the free stuff and really don't care about them.I do spend a lot of time on the message section it is kind of embarassing looking at the message board and your name is the only one there in the area's I have knowledge in.I would like to see a edit on the answers that you could go back and correct errors on the post after the hit the board,it would make us seem a little more literate.I enjoy answering questions from the people that need help.I'm not going to tell the editors how to design their system.I just enjoy the peace and quiet and everybody playing by the rules.There are some that need find a different place to air there displeasure of others,I don't expect anything but i dislike a cheat "if he will lie he will steal" As grandpa would say "he's a egg sucking dog" lets hunt and fish and agree to disagree and be man enough to walk away before it gets to the point it was yesterday and before.One reason the answers is hit so much is its available and current make the two the same points and get rid of the top ten open up that side of the page for the message board and make a social site where you can blog with another hunter like a twitter.anybody listening.Have a good day everyone

I started because the points - but continue because it like to see everyone take on things.

Ditch the points if there messing with quality of postings.

where do I fill out the free stuff paperwork outlaw?
WAM.. ignorance and ignore are two seperate entities, but I thought you wanted skymiles?

mr.grouse..killing time WOW this is like a drug, I got on here to jeer the guy whom wrote about leavin ghis brass after he shot a deer on public land..neve looked back, meeting some great folk and WOW learing about some crazy stuff not just hunt/fish, but good ol fashioned jokes and arm pullin mess with you cuz you needed a punch in arm ya know!
spell checkll , well that guy who made it for billygates, well what can you say,, its $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ bank..

oh and pictures,, well I think it should be mandatory, esp. with your ugly face..look at mine, I be UGLY,,, I aint got no aliby! ugly, but my little one she's cute..
oh and if you look deep into the barn picture with 7pter.. the poker chips are always on the table and ready for you to lose your money! PEACE.

Anyone in favor of scrapping the point system should check out the "Answers" section of "outdoorlife.com". Their first page contains four days of questions. I suspect the volume of traffic is so low because their point-scoring system has been disabled due to some technical difficulty.
I don't question the motives of other members in posting answers on our site, but I think the point system has a lot to do with its popularity. Maybe some people just like to see their numbers going up.

I thought you gave them to me!!!

Ontario is on the mark with the edit statement.

The only messy thing I see is the "word of mouth" that gets some of the new people here. They think that with many posts, they get free stuff. They see the 5-star members and want to get there as quickly as possible, regardless of the intelligence, logic, or general usefulness of their posts.

I really tried to control myself, and listen more, when I joined. I feel I know a bit about a few subjects, and in real life, have the respect of my peers in the fields of firearms and computers (a mixed bag, I know). Since several of them know I am here, it's something I don't want to lose.

It took me a long time to work my way to "5 star professional", and I do chuckle at (several here now) who post tons on everything as they go 3, then 4, then 5 stars in a week.

I did learn to search, and I think some emphasis should be placed on that.

Maybe a limit on how many a week you could post, up to a certain level? That would hold back on the floods.