… of posts from newbies, consisting of–at most–one sentence, with no vital information being provided, and with no actual question being asked?
Some of these very recent posts consist of only a few random words that don’t even constitute a sentence.
Are we being pranked with nonsense posts?
Mr. VDC , These vague and annoying posts are the result of a poorly conceived idea of linking people from the ’ Carcomplaints ’ web site to here . It was meant to increase traffic for the advertisers. All I have seen so far it makes more busy work for the esteemed Carolyn and I think it has caused some of the regulars to decide to sort their sock drawer instead of visiting here.
I hope that this is the only reason for the apparent departure of some of the long-time forum members, like “mountainbike”. I hope that his health issues haven’t become more serious.
Yeah, I know I come and go here depending on how busy work and kids are, but it seems like we haven’t seen “the_same_mountainbike” here for a while.
About all we can do if we want to remain active is to ask leading questions to try to get more information. Even vehicle age and miles are leading questions for the really vague posts. I try to remember that if we are here to educate people about their cars, we may have to start with coaching on how to write relevant posts. Even before CarComplaints we used to get those vague questions. We just get more of them now.
Agree! Many half-baked posts apparently,made while driving. Posters don’t read instructions to provide car make and mileage.
From what I can see, 90% of the posters never come back to add any information. Probably never come back to look at any replies.
We’re sitting ducks, victims of drive-by posters.
CSA 
I think they are expecting an immediate reply, on the lines of “hit your headlights switch twice and turn the wipers on, and that will fix your problem”, When they don’t see an immediate answer like that, they give up and move on.
Perhaps we just need a standard reply: put a dead chicken in your trunk and drive for 10 miles and your problem will be solved.
I never heard the dead chicken in the trunk, Is that more widespread? Closest I ever got was put a tiger in your tank, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB5ROD4CGG8
Take off on an old phrase we had in engineering: wave a dead chicken over it.
Did you study in a country with voodoo practices?
No, New England. Just a joke someone started…
Or dump out the bag of troubleshooting bones and read 'em. They never lie 
Foretelling the future is always a black art. Our ancestors killed a sheep and spread the entrails on the ground and the tribal head looked at them and forecast the future.
I recently attended an economic conference and the key note speaker, after referring to the above told the audience “today it still takes GUTS to forecast the future”!
Most of those posters have not made their first visit to this message board, there is no “last seen” time/date shown in there profile.
It is easy enough to ignore the nonsense posts, if each ghost-post has 6 replies this might give someone the false sense of success.
Back when Esso (the earlier name of Exxon) first began advertising that they “put a tiger in your tank”, the local Shell station put up a large sign stating, “We specialize in removing tiger hair from your fuel tank”. I think you have to give that station owner credit for some creativity.
Isn’t Salem in New England? You know the witch trials. I didn’t sort my sock drawer, just emptied it into a garbage bag to start over. Much easier that way, like changing computers instead of cleaning the files up. But mainly I’m just trying to avoid a sheetrock and wiring project.