Nigel, I have never said anything otherwise, and agree 100% with you, but it only reinforces the apples and pears point.

Brian and Peter, I made no qualitative comparisons one way or the other, just a simple point about numbers of posts and a possible explanation in the differences in allowed posting policy, nothing more. It is so obvious that the Technote policy is less user friendly it is not even worth making the point anymore. I too hope that things can change, but it looks most unlikely now and we must adapt to a new scenario.

Where I agree with Gunnar is that it was not a case of the management unilaterally changing the rules, but of certain players abusing the system and forcing the management's hand. The qualitative judgements about how the hand was changed have been dealt with in depth elsewhere and hardly need repeating.

However with freedom comes responsibility. Here we appear to have a free for all, where it seems quite acceptable to simply repeat other peoples replies while putting your own name to them, something that is hardly an incentive to the accurate answering of questions.