captain_jeeves, hey mate. Very interesting question in deed. I was really asking myself the same question. Apart from deriving a lot of useful information and learning effect I'd describe pprune as the ZAHIR as I just finished the book of Paulo Coelho.
Here is the quote: "According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of Zahir comes from the Islamic tradition and has thought to have arisen at some point of the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. Its something which once we have come into contact with it, gradually occupies our our very thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or madness." Paulo Coelho.
There are not that many interesting and appealing threads as i wished to be but nothing is impossible as Toyota said once.
In other words its an addiction I agree and also has got a physiologic effect of sharing the emotions. Another very important aspect of pprune is using it for publicity. In some parts of the world like in the ME there's no effective exchange of the information between the upper and lower levels of company and its only natural that nepotism does find a flourishing ground and people just keep lying to each and every one in order to secure their positions numbing the whole efficiency, therefore publishing the relevant info here provides very much needed transparency. Transparency is enormously important for the improvement of any outfit as it brings up the problems to the surface in order to be solved hopefully.
Cheers.
Last edited by popay; 30th July 2006 at 20:35.