There's nothing wrong with chat and banter.
It's not chat and banter that's putting people off visiting the forums.
It's the mundane, repetitive "so & so just sent me a text", "xyz's
cooking my tea", "abc's coming round tomorrow, and next weekend and
probably a week on Thursday too"... No sh1t?! You've been seeing 'em
for months, you'd never guess they might be popping round your house! Fancy that!
The old "If you don't like it, don't read it" isn't that effective as
there's no escape from it. On other social networking sites, you can
block the user's newsfeed from your page or stop "following" them etc.
I frequently block people from my pages as I simply don't need to hear
that their baby's just puked/pooed/burped/smiled/laughed/etc every single damned time it happens!
When I first started seeing a BM member, I made mention of the fact that he'd sent me flowers the day after our first date in the "happy" thread. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with the occasional post like that. The problem arises, in my opinion, when it's constant.
I would personally dislike these forums if they were strictly "bike-related only" posts, because I don't yet ride and would be unable to contribute most of the time.
But if they were to be made strictly bike oriented, I wouldn't go around posting that I didn't give a **** and telling everyone "tough luck, I'll post how I like." It's a little concept known as "respect".