[smorgusofborg]

I'm not really seeing that difference in requirements. Most of the forums were trivial to find in all sorts of Google searches, allowing thousands of people to create a new unique account, and then get banned for violating the pinned rules about asking a question by one of the <100 users that could be recognized as being a repeated chat mate on the one forum. Many of those obsessives on one forum would never be findable somewhere else where they might not have been an expert.

I find it a bit sad that thousands of people are on FB using their real names and turning person who says stupid things about several different hobbies into a permanent part of their own fairly permanent identity and I don't actually see how it helps anything. But maybe people who don't find it creepy see something I don't.

[ehutch79]

I don't know about you, but Facebook is trying to feed me groups I should join every visit. Huge difference.

Also... google hasn't existed the entire life of the web.