jefhatfield, I'm not very sure what you mean, your whay to think is a bit confuse but what I understand is the you want to still in focus with only Mac comments or related.
Let me explain you something, what is going on in Macrumors is that, beside Mac topics, this is becoming a comunity, a very good one because new people are accepted. As a comunity we are togather here because we have something in common but as we are learning about each other personality, that lead us to fall in to other levels of comunication=topics. Always around the Mac discussions and sometimes not so Mac related.
The important thing is to wellcome new people, that means not starting a threat that won't be familiar to others like the GoCyrus ralated, at that point I'm agree with you.
What I may not share (if this is the case) is to deny the option or the posibility of getting sometime out of topic.
Face something, many of us have been aroun for some time, how many times are we gonna discuss the same things? (is the G5 coming or not? is the G4 good or bat at this time? are we gonna have new powerbook and when? etc). As a usual visitor some thimes for me is more fun to tease some one that talk about something again and again.
Let me give you a cultural exchange to show you I undertand your view and from where I'm coming from with mine.
Is very common to the people that lives out side of the US, to say that the people of the US are "cold people", and I found something that can contribute to that "image".
A few years ago (1992) I went to Arkansas as an exchange student. What I realice was that every body was nice, funny, etc, but the realtionships didn't go farther. After a few months in high school I realice that is not possible to stablish a deeper kind of relationship with your class mates if you spend just one hour a day with them for only six months, and after a few years that creates a cultural dinamic. The rest of the echange student (9 of them) that where with me (from Germany, Switzwerland, Spain, Panamá and me from Venezuela), have the same school system. We spend 8 years of our life with the same group of 30 people, from primary school to senior year. Of course we learn how to mantaing deper levels of relationship beyond the school related topics.
That is what is going on here, even my example is very subjective, it describes what is going on here, and may be for you looks a bit strange because is not that normal. If you go to a venezuelan forum for example the atmostphere would be so different, at this time every body would know each other personally or in some other level.
We are spending a lot of time here, so is normal to talk about some other things, specially when nothing is really going on at Apple right now.
What we have to mantaing and most of the people do, is to be clear that this is an Apple related site, and I do not think that is gonna be a problem.
Last week I share something about my brother, but it was Apple related because I needed a filter for my internet explorer.
We just have to avoy situations like the GoCyrus cases, and I mean the Therats develop agains him, that is a very bad image for Macrumors.
That is it.
Or what about something like in sierra leon, where militants can take their weapons in and exchange them for a computer? Obviously, if you bring in a piece of heavy artillery then you would be rewarded with a superior computer, namely a mac!
