Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
I feel it is often more important to review the first few pages as they are the ones that are more likely to be on topic
D&D General Poll: Should a poster be expected to read (or at least skim) all posts before posting in a thread?
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I usually just read the first page or two, then skim through the rest looking for red warning text from the moderators.
pming
Legend
Hiya!
I usually just read the first 3'ish pages unless it's really interesting. This one, for example, not that interesting...kinda interesting, but not "read every page" level of interesting. So...I read the first 3 pages, then jumped to here, page 6, to give my 2¢.
I think that if a person reads the initial post, maybe even the first page, then jumps in and says "Didn't real all 18 pages...so... to the OP: (insert post)", that's not only fine, it's a GOOD THING!
I'd say that a good amount of the time, someone "new" popping in to directly address the OP brings people back on track. Not always, but enough that I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
I usually just read the first 3'ish pages unless it's really interesting. This one, for example, not that interesting...kinda interesting, but not "read every page" level of interesting. So...I read the first 3 pages, then jumped to here, page 6, to give my 2¢.
I think that if a person reads the initial post, maybe even the first page, then jumps in and says "Didn't real all 18 pages...so... to the OP: (insert post)", that's not only fine, it's a GOOD THING!
I'd say that a good amount of the time, someone "new" popping in to directly address the OP brings people back on track. Not always, but enough that I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
That's all well & good if someone is responding to the OP, but often someone jumps in responding to post four hundred and seven on page 42 without appearing to have so much as skimmed page 42 to get a idea of how the discussion has evolved
Hex08
Hero
Heck no. Some discussions become really long and are far to time consuming to dive into, especially when they wander off topic.
It reminds me of that time back in 18-aught-nine when my neighbor Chuck would walk into a conversation and just start talking about stuff we moved on from. Now Chuck, whose real name was Higgins, would have a hard time focusing on the conversation so would often miss points that were made previously. We never did figure out why he was called Chuck. I think it started with his aunt calling him Chuck after receiving a blow to the head. You see, his aunt was a bit clumsy so would fall down the stairs leading up to their apartment quite frequently. You would think it was this clumsiness that caused her to hit her head but it wasn't. The neighbor kids would play games of stickball outside and one time little Charlie Parker, who was also known as Chuck, hit a fly ball on to the apartment roof which killed one of old lady Murphy's pigeons. Well, this really upset old lady Murphy so she threw the ball right back at the kids but since she was near blind her aim was off and it hit Higgins', or Chuck as we now call him, aunt in the head. I think that's when she started calling him Chuck. So Chuck was easily bored by conversations that just went on and on so his attention would wander. He would get this far off look in his eyes, you could tell he was thinking about something but he looked so deep in thought you just didn't want to interrupt. So as not to interfere with Chuck's thoughts we would just keep talking, usually about something unrelated to the original conversation and not even be aware we moved on or why. Sometimes we were not even sure what that original conversation was. When Chuck finally snapped out of it and started back in he would usually address the original topic. To be honest, by this point we had no idea what Chuck was talking about but he would wax poetic in such a way that we didn't want to stop him. Sometimes he would even talk about something unrelated. Like the time he first told us he thought Mary Sue who lived over on 4th Ave was the prettiest thing he ever saw. This was a bit odd because none of us knew a Mary Sue and 4th Ave was part if the financial district at the time so no one actually lived there. Now today that area of town is mostly abandoned. Once the fire of '42 broke out most of the businesses there left and never came back. It was a real sad state of affairs, especially when Mr. McDonnell lost his job and abandoned his family in shame. But either way, Chuck was a real good talker so we would just let him say what he had to say,.
It reminds me of that time back in 18-aught-nine when my neighbor Chuck would walk into a conversation and just start talking about stuff we moved on from. Now Chuck, whose real name was Higgins, would have a hard time focusing on the conversation so would often miss points that were made previously. We never did figure out why he was called Chuck. I think it started with his aunt calling him Chuck after receiving a blow to the head. You see, his aunt was a bit clumsy so would fall down the stairs leading up to their apartment quite frequently. You would think it was this clumsiness that caused her to hit her head but it wasn't. The neighbor kids would play games of stickball outside and one time little Charlie Parker, who was also known as Chuck, hit a fly ball on to the apartment roof which killed one of old lady Murphy's pigeons. Well, this really upset old lady Murphy so she threw the ball right back at the kids but since she was near blind her aim was off and it hit Higgins', or Chuck as we now call him, aunt in the head. I think that's when she started calling him Chuck. So Chuck was easily bored by conversations that just went on and on so his attention would wander. He would get this far off look in his eyes, you could tell he was thinking about something but he looked so deep in thought you just didn't want to interrupt. So as not to interfere with Chuck's thoughts we would just keep talking, usually about something unrelated to the original conversation and not even be aware we moved on or why. Sometimes we were not even sure what that original conversation was. When Chuck finally snapped out of it and started back in he would usually address the original topic. To be honest, by this point we had no idea what Chuck was talking about but he would wax poetic in such a way that we didn't want to stop him. Sometimes he would even talk about something unrelated. Like the time he first told us he thought Mary Sue who lived over on 4th Ave was the prettiest thing he ever saw. This was a bit odd because none of us knew a Mary Sue and 4th Ave was part if the financial district at the time so no one actually lived there. Now today that area of town is mostly abandoned. Once the fire of '42 broke out most of the businesses there left and never came back. It was a real sad state of affairs, especially when Mr. McDonnell lost his job and abandoned his family in shame. But either way, Chuck was a real good talker so we would just let him say what he had to say,.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
I voted yes, just after reading the first post, then I read the first page and half of the second, thought a bit about angels and pinheads, read some pay on third and fourth pages and come here to post... That's ADHD in action...
But yeah, I think it's reasonable to expect some reading of the thread before posting, but the key word is some. First post, first and second page and some 10 000 feet view of the remaining is usually more than enough.
But yeah, I think it's reasonable to expect some reading of the thread before posting, but the key word is some. First post, first and second page and some 10 000 feet view of the remaining is usually more than enough.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Absolutely not. I've seen plenty of interesting threads where they began literally three or four hours earlier, and already have hundreds of posts, most of which are non-trivial length. It's simply not practical to ask absolutely every person who wants to participate to read every single post at that point.
If the thread is still young (say, no more than 100 posts), or moving particularly slowly (e.g. it's been around a week and hasn't hit 200 posts yet), then I could see an argument for "hey, you can take the time to keep up."
I mean, consider this very thread. It now has over 5 full pages of responses, despite being less than 24 hours old. That means I'd have to read over 100 posts, many of which are multiple paragraphs, just to be allowed to participate. And this isn't even a fast-moving thread. If I had had to read every single prior post before I were allowed to post, I would just not participate. That's exactly the opposite of the point of a forum.
Edit:
As others have said, if I could have more fine gradation than a binary, it would be "is thread short? then read the whole thing, that's just courteous; is thread long? read first page, and the most recent full page, to get a sense of where things are at." That's still at least 40 posts to read, but it gives you an idea of where things started and where they're at now.
If the thread is still young (say, no more than 100 posts), or moving particularly slowly (e.g. it's been around a week and hasn't hit 200 posts yet), then I could see an argument for "hey, you can take the time to keep up."
I mean, consider this very thread. It now has over 5 full pages of responses, despite being less than 24 hours old. That means I'd have to read over 100 posts, many of which are multiple paragraphs, just to be allowed to participate. And this isn't even a fast-moving thread. If I had had to read every single prior post before I were allowed to post, I would just not participate. That's exactly the opposite of the point of a forum.
Edit:
As others have said, if I could have more fine gradation than a binary, it would be "is thread short? then read the whole thing, that's just courteous; is thread long? read first page, and the most recent full page, to get a sense of where things are at." That's still at least 40 posts to read, but it gives you an idea of where things started and where they're at now.
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