Me, intimidating??!!
Oh dear, I know that being a moderator means I have do unpleasant things occasionally, like getting threads back on topic, deleting spam posts, and PMing 'suggestions' to posters who need to learn the basics of forum discussion. But I hope members realize that I am patient, have a sense of humor, and am definitely not perfect myself. If I remember correctly, my first post was on a thread called "Does anyone else have a sister as stupid as this?"
where I related my experience of seeing the FotR movie with my extended family - not a particularly learned topic.
Since I, like the other administrators and moderators, am here in my spare time, just like all other members, my main purpose for coming is to enjoy myself. I'm delighted to see so many of you thinking on this thread about ways to improve discussions and encourage many to participate. I was away, travelling, when it began, so it's taken me a few days upon returning to catch up. As I see it, the Novices and Newcomers forum gives those who are intimidated by the Books forum lots of leeway for posting less seriously, with just their opinions or feelings to express. There was very little going on there for quite awhile in recent months, so I'm happy to see more posting.
I agree with what has been said about new discussion of old topics. Several years ago, when I began moderating, the forum had a policy of discouraging new threads and asking people to use the existing ones. That was in part because of the forum software! Now that we have this nice nifty base, we have much more leeway, and our policy has changed. If there has been no recent discussion of a topic, you are welcome to open a new thread. If you missed seeing a thread that is still active, we will simply merge the two (yes, that's something we can do easily now, though it used to be very difficult with the old software). If you are unsure of yourself, just PM me or whichever moderator is in charge of that particular forum section, and we will be happy to answer your questions.
Suggestions are always welcome, and we do consider them and have adopted those we feel will be helpful in the past. We would like to keep things as simple as possible, though, so for now, let's concentrate on reviving 'newbie' discussions before we think of creating an additional forum section.