Inuvik (Oct 15/04) - Bulletin boards: like newspapers and community rolling channels on the television, they can be a valuable source of information on what's happening around town.

However, when the amount of information is greater than the amount of space available, not only can your average bulletin board become uncontrollably cluttered, but the hanging techniques employed by space-seekers can get downright nasty.

Take this instance spotted by Carrie Young, Inuvik's defacto expert on bulletin board etiquette -- she wrote a letter to the Drum earlier this year about her consternation with the thoughtless posting methods of signs around town.

"I went to hang a notice and there was a sign stuck right over a candidate's head," she said of one of the many posters for the coming vote for town council. "I mean there's an election coming. Why would somebody do this?"

Perhaps it was a political statement, I suggested.

"(The sign) was the most unpolitical thing you could imagine, something like 'come and get your food hampers here,'" replied Young, a bit dismayed.

So what would Young do in a case where space was limited and she just had to hang a notice?

"Well, I move stuff around, making room for everything," she said.

She said each sign did not need four thumbtacks of its own and that those resources -- precious on most bulletin boards -- could be shared by competing signs.

Fair enough.

Over at Rexall Drugs, arguably the most read bulletin board in Inuvik, store manager Hiba Mortada says there is a 30-day policy for notices posted there.

"First we have to approve the notice and then we date it," she said. "Then it can hang for a month, unless it's some government notice that needs to stay up longer."

So a policy of some kind exists regulating one bulletin board in town. That's comforting.

But, as everybody knows, one can have all the rules in the world and they, as well as common courtesy, are going to be violated eventually by some maniacal space hog looking to flog his/her album collection, or what-have-you.

At the coffee shop in town -- always a good place to gauge public opinion on the topics of the day -- people had much to say about bulletin board etiquette -- or lack thereof -- in town.

"It sucks," said one fellow over his afternoon coffee. "In Nelson, B.C., where I used to live, bulletin boards were strictly regulated because of this kind of thing."

Another man offered this grandiose observation.

"I think the state of Inuvik's bulletin boards today reflects the ills of society as a whole."

With eyebrows slightly raised, this coffee shop philosopher's friend added, "Don't you mean the hole that is society?"

Uh, there is such a thing as ingesting too much caffeine and these two jokers had obviously reached their limit.

Moving on to another table, I posed this question: How about making space on a cluttered bulletin board for another notice. What do you do then?

"You can remove anything that looks read," was the response. "If it looks read, take it down."

And there lays the root of the problem: people just make up the rules as they go along. Maybe that caffeine-laced philosopher is right.