Any one on two wheels is a friend

You see, traditionally, forum etiquette would frown upon this ^^^^ sort of off-topic private conversation in someone elses thread. The irony of this thread being about whether or not it is going to the dogs is not lost on me. Yeah, it's just traditional etiquette, and its all a lot more informal here, but it came about for good reasons. LFGSS really does feel like the private playground of about 20-30 members. Can you not keep general chat to general chat threads?

Bah, fuck it. Maybe my suggestions would just turn this place into BikeRadar, and there is a good reason I never read that.

Should I paint my bike green or some sort of buscuit? If biscuit, which is your favourite type?

The problem is if people stop posting because they share your view we have, by definition, no way of knowing. You are right there is a small group of hard-core posters and part of the 'real life' stuff spills over on to threads. But, as you, say, the price you pay for stopping that might well be to turn LFGSS in to Bike Radar. I suspect there is quite an even split among lurkers between those who actually hang around because of the banter and the off topic stuff and those who find it annoying. But until they speak up we will never know.