To be certain, I was having a little fun at the expense of a frequent poster. But so do many threads, and messing around is not the same thing as an attack. And to make this particular member out as some sort of victim is ludicrous -- just read a bunch of his posts.

Links to particularly good threads are useful. Telling people who are trying to get started to sift through a large collection of links to threads with high noise levels containing many hundreds of posts and no synthesis to guide them beforehand does not (hence the motivation for the parody). Nor does intimidating members who slipped up because they aren't yet used to conventions here.

Those who are most concerned by noise can start by not being a major contributor to it. Complaining about racket on a forum is no different that emailing a discussion list complaining of excessive email. Adding posts with no helpful content to a thread augments the already high noise level. To quote a post that's appeared many, many times here, "pot. kettle. black."

As for myself, I think it's not crazy to have discussions on a discussion forum and the noise is an important part of what makes BF what it is. People who just need the facts should consult the endless supply of reference services.

As the the OP notes, endless whining about repetition is not considered repetition. It's not about what's necessary, it's whipping the n00bs into shape and telling them to find their own dang answers. Get with the program