Today I posted a reply to the "Great Albums You Just Gotta Hear" topic under "General Audio Discussion." Strangely, no matter what I did the forum would always accept my post as an edit of my previous post rather than as a new posting. The down side is the topic does not get an updated posting date so it won't show as containing a new post unless the curious actually enter the topic to see for themselves. I'm a regular on several forums, many with the same appearance as this one, and I've never experienced this phenomenon before.

Is there something odd about how this forum is configured?

This is a setting in pHpBB and is intended to keep users from unnecessarily bumping posts just to keep them on top or, in some cases, simply to pad their post counts.

I see. Is that a rampant problem in the 'Mart' universe?

Speaking in particular of the US side, I'd think it could use all the posts it can get. I'm attempting to generate traffic in a thread about interesting music and foster camaraderie and sharing of tastes but it will be danged difficult to get anything off the ground when readers scan the topic headers and don't see any updates. They simply won't look. The method may make sense if the topic seeks to solicit responses for a poster's personal gain, but I'd suggest a re-evaluation for other cases. You can clearly see I'm not trying to pad my post count, which is all the way up to 17 now, the same as yours.

I submit this is not the chilling effect you want.

One could always start a thread on cables.......they always seem to gain steam.

I don't mind tweaking the behaviour on USAM but I can't find the option to to do.