Personal experience and years of people-watching demonstrate to me that even people who SAY they don't pay attention to charismatic people do in fact just that. They just beat themselves up for it later...
But there is an important distinction: we might want to LISTEN to the charismatic person. We might not have the gumption to CONVERSE with them. Shy people on the other hand, we might be comfortable about conversing with...but we would have to notice they are there in the first place.
But perhaps looking at this in terms of people isn't the best analogy anyway...or the most complete. When someone is looking for a MB to hang out at, what is the FIRST thing that gets them
interested? Assuming for the moment they are already HERE, whether because a friend suggested us or whatever. They start looking around at threads, and seeing who is talking about what...and if it looks appealing at all.
Things that seem TO ME to be appealing, in no particular order:
1) Humor
2) Complete sentences
3) Respect between posters (lack of screaming/name calling)
4) Comfort level between posters (cozy but not familiar to the point of being exclusionary)
5) Interesting topics (what they are is pure taste, so really this is a way of saying...
6) Wide variety of topics
7) Wide variety of voices
Note that attitude towards new people is not present on the list, because one would have to do a LOT of reading to find a spot where any evidence of it can be gleaned...by which time 1-7 above would be pretty well established one way or the other.
The trick is not to make EVERY thread of ours look good with respect to the above list (or your eqivalent). That's not possible without severe moderation. The trick is to make ENOUGH of our threads up to snuff for people who may or may not know us.
The flip side of the list--things that are going to make me LESS likely to stick around:
1) Netspeak
2) Dittoism
3) Jerks
4) Whining, whether bonafide or not, as compared to honestly asking for help
5) Too narrow a range of topics, EVEN IF IT'S SOMETHING I LIKE. I get bored easily, sorry.
It's a shorter list because it takes less time to annoy me into leaving than it takes to convince me to stay. For that reason, I think we SHOULD attempt to avoid these in EVERY thread, and some are explicitly forbidden by the Charter towards that end.