With a user number of 61, I'm sure you're grand
fathermothered. A six character password is fatally weak. Even though it's hashed before it's stored in the forum's database, it's possible - indeed likely - that every single combination of alphanumeric characters of that length has had its hash computed with multiple algorithms and stored for future use by crackers.
Password compromises are common these days (Yahoo lost a billion user password database to crackers last year). Academic studies of such leaks show that 90+% of passwords in large dumps can be found with very little effort. See, e.g.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/password-cracking.
Look, none of this matters very much at FWF. Members know that anything they post is world readable, so they're generally careful about what they write. In almost all cases, members don't use their real names so it's hard for anyone less than a determined opponent to make use of a compromised password. But even given that FWF doesn't contain public information attributable to one person, it would be foolish to use the same password here as you would on what are clearly sensitive sites, e.g. your online banking login. If you want to use the same short password here on some other low security and low impact site, e.g. the local wagon wheel tips and tricks mailing list
, then it's no big deal.
Nevertheless, everyone needs to understand the risk they run reusing passwords from site to site. If the wagon wheel list gives you up, maybe your direst neighbourhood enemy starts spoofing you at FWF. I'm sure regular readers would figure it out pronto. But if you use that same password - and this includes minor variants like tacking a zero to the front or an exclamation point behind - to do your online banking, or check your credit card balances, or trade stocks, then you're exposing too much.