I’m spending too long reading posts on the forum after a day at school.
This thread is intended to suggest serious and silly ways of reducing the amount of posts, the length of posts, the amount of posts people read, etc.
Serious:
=> Make more BIG topics: BIG identifying LDs topic, BIG moaning corner, BIG success stroies corner
=> Make me cut out a certain section, such as the Lucidity Intro.
Silly:
=> Scare away any newbies with a flood of ILDs, such as TTMILD (through the mirror ILD), MILD (madness ILD! yes I know M is taken, that’s the point)
=> Use so much in my posts that nobody can bear to read them any more
=> Use l0t5 of 1337 sp34|<, innit? Again, scaring away newbies (or at least those who can write intelligibly)
=> Put me into a dark padded room with no internet access
OK, firstly, what’s this about the BIG topics? I’m finding that because people aren’t going along with the idea of a BIG WILD topic, we now have loads of tiny little threads, either repeating the same informatin over and over or with no new information. (A partial list is in the yellow box here) I want to have useful links about WILD on the wikibook, and I don’t want to add tens of tiny little topics, or decide on a one-by-one basis whether each thread is “worth” getting a link.
About quoting - I think everybody should, within limits, post however it’s comfortable for them. OK, when the post they’re talking about is four lines long and the last post on the thread, they shouldn’t include it, but otherwise it’s a messy case. Besides, you can always just skip over it - that’s why it’s clearly in its own box with a lighter background, etc.
I definately agree with the posting in the right area thing - the main problem is the large amount of first LDs or semi-LDs posted in Intro and/or Quest instead of the Dream Diary section. I personally am not interested in reading people’s dreams.
I like the idea about a few more BIG topics. But don’t make too many of them. And there’s the problem of the BIG topics becoming HUGE topics, like the HUGE WILD. No one want’s to read trough them if they become that big, atleast not me.
=> Invent a technique that gives everyone LD’s fast. Problem solved
Part of the fun is in the journey and the choices… but yes, that would cause a huge reduction in my reading time! Nevertheless, I’ll put it under “Silly” for now.
What if the whole paragraph is relevant to the reply? If you are reading a new reply but read the main post 3days ago, then quoting the whole paragraph is useful. If they only post a piece of the paragraph you may end up having to scroll back up and read half the original post to catch up with the replies.
Posting in the right place… well i think most people should really agree there.
And as for the big topics we have MORE than enough already IMO. When it comes down to it the big topics get extremely messy when you’re on “the big * topic #3” they actually put me off. The “big” topics i think should be left for the helpful things like meanings of words etc.
I personally don’t see any other topics that would benifit from being big topics. All in all i think the forum is fine as is.
The only “redundant” BIG topic is probably Lucid Living, which hasn’t had posts in ages, and MILD, because questions on it are so rare.
What I’m talking about is the huge amount of threads along the lines of “I tried WILD, I did this, I got this, am I close, what should I do next, and any other tips?” It’s reasonable to have a few of these, but there are so many!
Big topics serve the clarity of the forum.Apart from that nothing good about them since its really hard to move around in them.
If i was to ask the question about lets say WILD id feel tortured having to read all previous posts in case answer is allready there.But thats the way it is.No pain no gain:)
More big topics will not be any good for a forum informativeness and freshness.I guess thats more important.
One more thing- its a FORUM where you come to read and post.Activities that consume time you`re freely deciding to sacrifice for a sake of your knowledge.It must take time.Normal thing.Its like getting anoyed that articles in magazines are too long.If its interesting for you then it matters not…even more so- the longer the better.
I think the key to save a little time would be members themselves taking care of how they title the thread.Thats very time consuming if you need to read 2-3 first posts to see if it interest you at all, cuz topic is "help" for example.
B-But… I love the lucid living topic! I’m really interested in it. I guess you’re right though that it hasn’t been getting much action lately though Maybe I’ll go over there and stir up some conversation…
Jarod, I like your idea. Let’s invent a technique that always induces lucid dreams. Not really because it would lessen the amount of posts, but because that would reduce a lot of LD-work on my part Yes, I’m lazy.
Overall though I agree with Jack. This is a forum; reading posts is one of the many Ways of the forum
PLEASE title your threads in a way that shows what it is all about. I know sometimes it can be hard or even impossible, but subject lines like “I am wondering…” don’t seem like one even tried to.
in my posts that nobody can bear to read them any more
Maybe I’ll go over there and stir up some conversation…
Yes, I’m lazy.