The DBR Bulletin Board mods are going to try something new. With the growth in traffic over the years, sometimes really great posts get lost just due to the numbers competing for readers' attentions. We want to find the diamonds in the rough, so to speak, and highlight them. Here's how we want to go about doing this.

First, the mods will create a new thread each month with the title "DBR's Best Posts of (Month)". It will be a closed thread, so only the mods will be able to add posts to it. The intent is NOT to create a thread with a bunch of different discussions. Instead, we want to use these threads to direct readers to exceptional posts in already existing threads. If you just want to read, the thread will have copies of the posts we've chosen to highlight. If you want to respond, we'll have links to the thread the post came from, and you are free to follow the link and post within the thread.

Second, throughout the course of the month, we'll add posts to the new thread that we want to highlight. Here's where we need your help, though. If this highlighting thing is going to work, we'll need the help of DBR readers to bring good posts to our attention. So, we ask you to use the "report post" feature (the little whistle icon you see at the bottom of each post) to bring good posts to our attention as well as the bad ones you've been doing so far. Reporting posts like this allows you to send a note to all of the mods explaining why you think a post should be brought to our attention. If we agree the post is highlight worthy, we'll add a link to it in the "Best Posts" thread. (By the way, we also encourage you to use the commenting feature to provide your own positive feedback directly to the poster.)

So, what kind of posts are we looking for? Posts that add thoughtful, meaningful content to a discussion. Posts that stand out from the rest because of the way the writer sums up a discussion and persuasively advocates his or her position. Posts that are really funny. Posts that brings real, on-topic news. Please, no posts that can't stand on their own or just include a link to an interesting article. And one other point - abuses of the system will draw warnings and citations. Posts that are added to the thread will be done at a mod's discretion. No whining if we don't agree with your recommendation.

We hope that this provides a way to show what the mods already know - that despite a lot of noise, there are still plenty of really great posts on these boards.