Sorry guys, but when I saw this thread start up a while back, I figured it would fizzle out quickly and be nothing for me to be concerned about. I NEVER expected it to go this far so I pretty much just ignored it. Now, 8,375 replies later and this thread is becoming a serious concern for the server.
Quite honestly, I really can't see the sense of having a thread that really is composed of nothing more than people stating the reply count within it. Not only is this extremely wasteful of the disk space on my server, but each and every time this thread gets viewed by ANYONE, the database needs to access it to provide a post count, calculate the page count, and set it up so that the viewer can view ANY post within the thread. That is extremely work intensive for a server. I have been monitoring the server load statistics, and lately they have been climbing to levels that are twice what has normally been shown for this site. Quite frankly, I believe that THIS thread may be contributing substantially to that high work load level I am seeing.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have to be the custodian of the server and be mindful of what is reasonable and prudent to allow for utilization of those resources. I really want people to have fun here, but THIS kind of fun is actually quite dangerous to the health of my server. Please forgive me, but I really have no choice but to end this thread NOW. And quite likely I will later delete it to clear the space being taken up on my hard drive, not to mention the problems it will STILL be causing, even when closed, every time one of the search engine spiders accesses it or it is viewed by a member. So for a short time it will remain here, just to keep down the number of emails and PMs asking where this thread went. But it WILL have to go bye-bye...
Sorry........