[Janice D. Soderling]

With respect, Tim, I don't think it is silly at all.

A goal of all our forums is to encourage participation from underrepresented groups, in this case, female. Why? Because this gives diversity and helps keep the forums from being boring. A poem about knitting needles, if it is well-crafted and has some depth, can be quite as compelling as a poem about a hunting dog or growing grain. (Note, I am NOT disparaging poems about either subject. Best to make that clear.)

I am not calling for representation at the expense of quality, of course. Quality has precedence over quantity, but I acknowledge that poor quality poems sometimes appear at all the forums. It is to be expected that they appear but not that they garner unwarranted praise.

Thanks, Michael, for taking the time to pull up statistics.