Ricky wrote:
Is it true that Bert@# got banned?

No. Your assertion appears to come out of thin air - or perhaps your
wishful thinking?

I haven't noticed he or Max for a while.

Believe it or not, they probably "left" for the same reason many others
left. That reason being: if there is almost no audience, there is no reason
to expend the effort to post.

It's like a whole, new, wonderful world here!
May it last...please!

I think you are making big mistakes in your assumptions. Even if one
assumes that previous highly ego-centric posters don't return, if posters
do return there are bound to be more of the same class of posters. In fact
the distribution of all psycological classes should be expected to return
to previous levels, actually. That's the nature of human psychological
diversity. The outliers can't be banned from unmoderated Usenet groups.