It's the beam/speech thing that makes this community so welcoming, sure there are in-jokes in the speech, but if you are here long enough, you get to learn these in-jokes. It also evolves over time as another newb takes up the mantle to welcome other newer newbs and more community in jokes are added. the 
gods, Carl and hyper intelligent shade of blue are all part of the tradition, the newer the newb, the younger the community in joke is!
Actually it mainly seems to be there for people to inflate their post count without actually providing anything of value to the thread.
It used to be that the first person who actually had something useful to say would give the welcome beam but now people are fighting to give the beam as if that somehow makes them part of the community. It doesn't. When I used to use the beam it was almost always after answering the question. Hell I probably
still have the highest beam count even though I haven't done it for years because of the sheer number of times I was the first person to answer a newbies questions or solve their problems. I gave up on the beaming when it became less about saying welcome to the new guy and more about trying to be the first to give the beam.
If you notice the people who actually have been here the longest don't even bother with the beam let alone the speech. Some say it's cynicism but I suspect it's more the fact that it's a joke that has been said once too often and has now become old and boring.
The welcome speech is about two years past it's best before date. Someone should just take it out back and dispose of it. It's started to smell.
The beam is fine with me as long as it's realised what the point of the beam actually is. It's not for self aggrandisement. If you have nothing to say except welcome, you probably shouldn't be posting at all (Except possibly on threads like this one where no actual question was asked).
Anyway getting back to fastcasters and his original post, welcome to the community. Ignore the bickering. Let's face it, there are worse things that finding that people are arguing over the best way to try to make new people comfortable when they first join
