Yep, I agree with all the praise for your modding style, Marie. You do a great job of being friendly, and when necessary, putting out any fires with a brief comment, not a lecture.
Happily, MB's more toxic days seem to have passed, but I'd like to return to the topic of passivity that someone mentioned. I feel passivity is more damaging to MB than any lingering toxicity. I'm sure newcomers turn away because they get impatient with the lack of action/response they see. This is most noticeable in the threads dedicated to music; they seem to shrivel and die like unwatered plants in a garden and this happens much more so than in the past. Maybe that's because of reduced membership numbers.
There's one thread that I see as a kind of barometer of MB's health because it operates on a simple principle of short exchanges about music: a rec, a one-line reaction, a rec, a reaction and so on. That's surely the core dynamic of MB, and while the thread ran here for years, it has since flatlined, indicating that the MB patient does indeed have some health issues:-
Mini-Review The Song Above You:
https://www.musicbanter.com/general-...e-you-225.html
Lastly, have we done all the metaphors for MB yet? We've had the sinking ship, the clubhouse with just a few old newspapers lying around and now the patient in the ICU, but I bet there are some metaphors we've missed. Any suggestions?