Are you posting less or more now?

and ESPECIALLYthe Stilly pancake tosser fella's thread.... HA!

Yer a brave man .. I know you dont like people heaping praise on you, so I wont. But I'd admire anyone who is so passionate about something they're willing to work so hard and spend so much on it - I just dont have that kind of fire. And thats true even without the relentless complaining / disgruntlement you get from dissatisfied users coming into the equation -- and a lot of the dissatisfaction is well-reasoned and understandable, for sure, even if there's also a lot that is entirely not - but either way I'd just reach the "oh **** it" point pretty damn quickly!

Somewhat less. Too much going on at work. Actually, I shouldn't be here right now.

I had stopped posting for ages. Just came onto this site for the first time in many months to start posting again... and realised it's all new. To be honest, I've been looking for a couple of hours and still not been able to find what I am looking for! So I think this may be my last post, lol. I used to stick to the trivia and words games section, as I am a lovatts crossword fan... but I have no idea how to do anything on here bar the questions and discussions 'sections'. All quite more complex IMO.

I read some of advice on how to shorten the topics to get more on one page, so I went through and voted down (feel bad about doing that) a whole lot of topics. It did work, but I have to admit; I like the old way better as I am not computer savvy in any way. But you work with what you have. To that point, what is the format (whatever term) to use to embed urls so you don't have to paste the entire url address for your source in a post?

I am opposed to the Ignore function. It demeans those who have recourse to it and especially if they claim to be liberal. Ignore use is the action of bigots. Died in the wool bigots and big girl's blouses to boot.

Nobody would be allowed to sit in a civilised discussion group if they ignored any of the other participants. They are perfectly free to join other discussion groups of course but they have disqualified themselves from that one where they use the Ignore function to blot out matters they don't wish to have to account for. They are saying that they are not interested in discussions they can't control. All militant lefties are control freaks which explains why all my experience of Ignore is from lefties.

In actual fact, those who are not being ignored by someone who is ignoring some people are being insulted. "I like you because you agree with me " is what they are saying. Or "I like you because when you disagree with me I can easily shoot you down."

Ignore should go if A2K is a discussion vehicle. If it isn't a discussion vehicle then that's another matter. I have nothing to say in that case.

I love A2K and most of it's people. I've tried hard to learn how to use the new format with some success.

BBB

Less, I guess. It seems that there are fewer questions coming in (with the exception of 18 chemistry homework questions in 18 separate threads) from newbies and they become lost on page 2 or 3 very quickly.

It also seems 'clubbier' than previously, with folks only talking to folks they like (or railing against those they don't) and generally being much less welcoming than before. We've lost some regulars, some have returned after a long hiatus (Stilly and Husker come to mind) but it doesn't seem like new folks come, explore, and decide to stick around. Maybe I'm imagining it, but do we have any new 'regulars' since the change to the new format?

I noticed the exact same thing. You nailed it. Somehow the trend on here seems be less welcoming and less inviting for the regs to my eyes. It's analagous to what happens in an urban environment when they put a highway through it. The neighborhood feel has been altered and damaged.

But why is that? I don't think it is due to the new format. Or is it?

I find that my hair is thinning since the onset of the new a2k.

Part of it may be that threads instantly get voted down by those not interested in the topic. I'm not sure if the defaults have changed, but a new person coming in asking a question and then having it collapsed from view won't feel very welcome.

We also used to go out of our way of saying hello and "Welcome to A2K" to almost every new poster. I don't see much of that any more.

As to less inviting to the regulars, I don't know that that is the case. It seems from C_Jane's poll is that it's about evenly split between those regulars who like the new format better and those who don't. If those who don't are the same one's who are here less in general and the same ones who were welcoming to the newbies then, yes, it's related.

There is one difference re newbies - it's hard to tell easily if people are new members of the site, or if you didn't know/notice the person before.

I've recently seen posters welcome other posters who've been on A2K for years but weren't prolific posters.

There are some posters who made a regular point of welcoming new posters (Phoenix comes to mind) on the old A2K. I also like to welcome new posters as I notice them. Now the only way to know for sure people are new is if they start their post with something along the lines of "hey, I'm new, this is my question".

I think it's easier to bring someone into a community if they're welcomed/greeted/acknowledged. It's a bit sink or swim now (in terms of community development).

Folks with one-off questions who don't return? Robert and Nick are probably the only ones who know the details on that.

What kind of community do they want? more questions/more discussions?

Hi Mrsgreen,

On the homepage, in the left column, there's a box called "search tags". If you type in lovatt there, you'll see several tags appear with lovatts in them. Just click the main one ("lovatts"), and you'll get dozens of threads on lovatts, including about a dozen that were posted to the last week.

Way I see it there's an advantage and a disadvantage compared to the old site for someone who really likes lovatts crosswords...

Advantage: by typing in "lovatts" in the tag search box, you can go straight to a list of threads about lovatts specifically, rather than first having to search through a general games & trivia forum.

Disadvantage: these word game threads are impopular among the general forum population, so they get voted down a lot. The result is that in the standard view, if you go to that list of threads tagged "lovatts", a lot of them wont appear directly. Instead it'll say "Below viewing threshold (view)", and you have to click on "view" for each first to make them appear. That must be really annoying.

You can change this though - click on your name at the top right of your screen to go to your profile, click "Edit preferences", and under "Topic preferences", where it says "Minimum topic votes", switch to "no minimum". Then from then on, they should all just always appear straight away.

When you reply, there's this bunch of buttons above the field you type in, saying "B" and "i" etcetera. There's one that says "URL". When you want to insert a link, click on that button, and this will appear:



After the first "url", type = and then paste in the link. In between the [url] and [/url], you can type in the words that you want people to be able to click on to go to the link. Like this:



That will then appear as such:

My favourite search engine is Google

boat loads of respect to you and company for your efforts here

Google

Practice.

I've not been able to figure that out either.

I thought the same thing about myself but then I found the hair on my ass.....

odd that, I finding more hair on my toes.