Refresh, with this heads-up for those who are interested:

The other day, I was searching Google for articles on the web and in newsgroups about the effects of storytelling on the development of the brain and imagination (and vice-versa).

I didn't find exactly what I was looking for (the answer to the question: When to babies first begin to respond to stories in particular rather than just the sound of their caregiver's voice?). But I did discover that there was newsgroup dedicated to storytelling:

Alt.arts.storytelling

Unfortunately, when I checked it out, I discovered that it was a virtual ghost town -- filled with one thread posts, which are mostly sleaze spam ads for porn sites and get-rich-quick schemes.

So I'm organizing a full-scale invasion, and inviting all my storytelling-loving friends to come on over and start on-topic discussions on all the varied facets of storytelling. If we can increase the signal-to-noise ratio over there, the more often it will come up on searches of Google groups, so that even more people will come and join in.

This can only help strengthen the connections between storytellers, and weaken the grip that sleaze spammers have on the Internet... And that's a good thing, right? ;-)