[Hammer]

Newbies, hodads and pros are all welcome to participate, whether it's asking questions about something they don't currently know, or offering advice to others. Although I seriously doubt that the main board will ever be considered newbie friendly, the Newbie forum will be, and that's the whole point of having a separate forum. If you look at GFY, their newbie forum does quite well and is nothing like the main forum and it doesn't seem like newbies are afraid to post there.

The choice is to keep Oprano small and cliquish or help Jim (Gonzo) make it bigger and better. Running newbies off to other boards seems counter productive in that effort, especially considering that most of the potential advertisers like newbies.