Are you posting less or more now?

You've always had the option to disable the signatures if you don't like to see them. Check your preferences!

hamburger and I talked about that on the phone tonight - I think he'll be checking those preferences

I like sig lines ... I bet I'm not the only one. Anyway, again you can choose for yourself whether you want the sig lines to appear. Go to your profile (click your name on the top right of your screen to get there), click Edit preferences, and where it says "Show signatures", switch it to "No". Presto, you wont see any more sig lines on the site!

Oh sorry - hadnt seen the posts on this page yet...

But you can certainly be discouraged from posting because of it.

I do understand the theory of "more efficient navigation", but thumbs ups & downs are used by posters for all sorts of reasons.:
I've seen one of my favourite (not necessarily political) threads down-graded very suddenly after certain posters had a political spat on another thread. (Damn that US election!) If I post to that thread again it will probably vanish from view. Nothing happening there any more.
I've seen very favourable ratings for threads where posters have received sympathy of others (for very good reasons) because of difficult personal circumstances.
I've seen unfavorable ratings because of the unpopularity of particular posters - regardless of what their new thread might be about. It might even have been an interesting thread!
I think some posters would receive multiple thumbs-ups if they posted a thread about waking up in the morning & making a cup of coffee! It all depends on how many online buddies one has, I guess ....

What I'm trying to say is I don't blame anyone in the least if they become discouraged about having their threads down-graded for reasons that make no sense to them. Particularly someone like Letty, who has one of the most viewed threads on this site (though you wouldn't know that from the rating system.)

The thing is, the more thumbs-downs any thread receives, the less viable it becomes. Just a few folk, looking for navigational ease (or revenge!) can make a potentially very interesting thread vanish from sight!

Hopefully, somewhere down the track, in a newer version of A2K, a more "poster supportive" version of navigating the site can be found? I really hope so.

But in answer to the question: Are you posting more or less now? I'm definitely posting less. (I don't know, maybe this will change later on... ) Why? because it's hard to have a good conversation (of interests to me) involving more than a handful of people on any "fringe" topic. My fringe topic or that of other posters. It is much harder to achieve that these days than on the "Old" A2K.

Less. Things are scattered. I had frequented a couple of forums, where I could easily see what was new. Now I've got to bounce around to the various "synonyms" to find new posts in my areas of interest.

Mame, I still havn't managed to navigate the new system. I admit that I have yet to make an adequate effort, even with the help of Osso and others.

You're back, JL! Did the blank bits disappear?

It's a thread that quite a small group of posters have been posting to very frequently (for a long time), hence the very high post and view counts -- but that is apparently not of interest to most other people, hence the low rating as it gets voted down by people whenever it pops up again.

I havent doublechecked it, but I would guess that all threads that get a great number of posts by a small number of people (making it appear at the top of the new posts list all the time even though it has a small interested audience), have a low thumbs-rating. See all the word game threads, for example, it's the same with those.

One thing I like about this new format is that I am exposed to more variety than I was sticking to one topic on the old format. (I could have went to other subjects but didn't..) I went to the link in Letty's poems, I liked both of them they both put me in mind of both fall and harvest time and parables of Jesus in Matthew 5 with a twist of modern added to it.

I have tried writing both poems and short stories in the past, but I am really not educated enough for it turn out anything other than amateurish and sort of simple minded. It frustrated me so I gave it up.

Not that it makes too much of a difference (maybe it does depending on who you are) but I should have said, Matthew 13, Matthew 5 is the sermon on the mount.

For the record, Letty's poem now stands at a rating of 7 (seven).

as if I give a ****. Letty is a bimbo as is Helen.

I have not been on here for ages...
Part of it is because of personal problems and our move, but I have to admit, that I don't miss a2k as much as I probably would have, were it still the old design.

Disgusted by the tag issues.

The problem with those threads that currently have a small number of posters but are really great threads is that I don't believe the newbies coming in are likely to ever see them and once they are voted down, there is no way to regenerate interest among anybody else. I know that newbies have an automatic default set to 5 collapsed posts so an offensive post that five or more people voted down would not be visible to the newbie. Wouldn't that be the same case for collapsed threads?

It is likely few newbies would know to change those settings until they had been here for quite some time so the newbies would not see those great threads that 5 or more had voted down due to lack of interest. Or even if they do, that big fat zero would likely be a turnoff for those who don't want to take the time to check out every single thread.

The voting system and how it is so difficult to attract members to a thread remain my only real gripes at this point. And those were sufficient annoyances to merit my no vote.

I sure appreciate having A2K in this format than in no format at all, though. And like others appreciate Robert and others who have given so much of themselves to make it available to the rest of us.

Where did they go? I've been looking for other websites like old A2K, but haven't found one yet.

It was unique.

Fox, my understanding is that No Minimum is the default preference related to seeing voted down posts.... in other words, newbies see the posts, unless they have chosen in the Preferences to have what others collapse do that for them too.

Craven told me the default for newbies was set at low (5) related to voted down posts. This was in a discussion as to whether newbies would be repulsed by some of the more offensive posts, and he said that if five or more voted down that post that the newbie would then not see it.

I don't know if the default for threads is also set at 5 for newbies or not though.