Alistair! I love you so much for promoting my thread!
—Ryan
P.S. You'll respond with something like: I was not in fact - indeed - promoting the thread to which you claim ownership; but rather, I was referencing it in an attempt to make a point of comparison in regards to another user's accusations about the verbosity of my messages ... blah blah blah blah ... but - in any case, in any topic? maybe? thread? whatever one might call it in this time - indeed, yes I am glad to "promote" your thread however small this audience might, in fact, in truth, be.
I have not the sligthest idea what all this rubbish is supposed to mean, if anything at all - and I care less.
If it pleases you or anyone else to determine in advance what my, or anyone else's, response to anything might be, then so be it.
As to the notion of "promoting" your thread or anyone else, this, too is entirely foreign to my intent, since I labour under the unfortunate delusion that threads on this and other fora are to be responded to with as much intelligence as any given respondent can muster, rather than to be "promoted" as you write here.
I make no suggstions as to who may or may not "claim" "ownership" of this thread; my view is a far simpoler one - which is that you started it and, I hope, sought intelligent responses to what you started, rather than that you sought to establish and "promote" "ownership" thereof for whatever reason or none.
A persual of the posts to which one may assume you to refer will surely clarify that no one has specifically accused anyone else of "verbosity", despite the fact that "verbosity" has been mentioned; it dos seem that no hard and fast conclusion has been drawn from any such references to "verbosity", but then since "verbosity" was not the subject of the thread concerned, this is presumably no great problem or surprise.
Your affection - at least in terms of your perception of my having "promoted", rather than merely attempted to respond to, "your" thread - would appear to be misplaced and I reiterate that I regard this thread less as "yours" in any proprietorial sense than as something which you have chosen to instigate for what I would hope to be sound and valid reasons.
I am sorry to disappopint you to the extent to which my response here is not, verbatim, what you stated in advance that it would be...
Best,
Alistair