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ToughDiamond
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05 May 2023, 3:56 pm

Trueno wrote:
Posts which contain just a link or a youtube video. If they can’t even be bothered to add a comment then I can’t be bothered to read it.

Yes that often puts me off too. But although it smacks of poster idleness - after all, the reader has to do all the work while the poster just sits there - I don't necessarily feel that the poster is lazy. I'm often just too busy to click the URL. Some of those links take the reader to long videos, and long videos aren't the best way to engage me with a subject. Text is easier for me, because I can scan through it more quickly, and obviously if the text is brief then it's quicker to get to the gist of the thing.

It's easier when the poster writes something themselves, so that I can quickly figure out what they're talking about. The other thing I don't like about link-only posts is that the poster doesn't reveal their own opinion on the content they're referring me to. If the content is the kind of thing that seems likely to start an argument, I begin to suspect trolling.

In common with many people, I'm also often put off by long posts, especially when they're not very coherent or when they're presented as a long "wall of text" that's hard to read.

Another problem for me is when there seems to be a "bait and switch" thing going on, i.e. a thread is given a title that seems to refer to a general ASD topic, but the first post is a long story about (for example) the poster's personal experiences, and they're only loosely related to the title. It's not that I think it's always a deliberate con trick to get my attention. It's just that the title gets me thinking about the subject, and just when I'm ready to say something about it, the first post tells me my work isn't wanted.



MatchboxVagabond
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05 May 2023, 4:12 pm

Fenn wrote:
Why do some posts on Wrongplanet get no replies and others get many?

Is there some unwritten rule of how to write a post that will get replies or comments?

Is this one of those social skills I just will never really figure out?


TBH, this is a lot like fishing. Use the best bait you can get, and you may still find that you don't get any bites or the bites you get have to be thrown back.

But, give people that are reading a break where you can. Just tell us what you want ahead of time. If we know we can't be helpful, you haven't wasted our time. As we read, that information helps know what to look for. The more to the point the post is, the more likely people will read it. The more people read it, the more likely somebody will have a substantive point they want to make. And the more people make those sorts of substantive points, the more chance there is for a conversation.

But, posting new threads is still fishing. Even the most interesting, best worded thread may receive 0 responses and sometimes we just have to be OK that we made the effort.