Wednesday, August 8, 2007

How many does it take?

How many forum members does it take to change a light bulb?

1 to change the light bulb.

1 to post that the light bulb has been changed.

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.

27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.

53 to flame the spell checkers.

6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ... another 6 to condemn those 6 as anal-retentive.

2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp".

15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct.

156 to email the participant's ISPs complaining that they are in violation of their "acceptable use policy".


109 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum.

203 to demand that cross posting to hardware forum, off-topic forum, and lightbulb forum about changing light bulbs be stopped.

111 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum.

306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty.

27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs.

14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URLs.

27 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group.

33 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too".

12 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy.

19 to quote the "Me too's" to say "Me three".

4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.

44 to ask what is a "FAQ"?

4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"

143 to say "do a search on 'light bulbs' before posting questions about light bulbs".

1 new forum member to respond to the original post 6 months from now and to start it all over again.


*This is one of those "Author Unknown" funnies full of timeless truths that circulates around the internet, and pops back up from time to time. While I would have loved to thought this up myself, I didn't write it, and send kudos to whoever did.