TherealLogros wrote:
Interesting read @Kaolian.
The main reason for me posting so infrequently is that often I have my reply typed, re-read for typos and then realize that it's just another "I agree" with more words and delete it.
You would be suprised how often people do that. Especially when creating new topics. People overthink how things will be recieved, or develope elaborate what if scenarios related to Karma, and end up talking themselves out of posting entirely. In reality, almost any reply that takes someone longer than 30 seconds to put together in a thread is worthwhile. Threads are paradoxical. They need posts to generate more traffic and they need traffic to create more posts. A thread is a gestalt of many different ideas and posts. Even an agreement post can open paths for further replies, or for people to focus on a section of your reply to respond to.
Its one of the reasons lurkers have so much trouble becoming posters. If you look at posting histories, people either create an account and start posting right away, or make an account and then lurk for years before making that first post in something that sparks their imagination or ire. Other lurkers never make accounts at all. The same doubts affect them. "Will people like what I post?" "will people think my post is dumb?" "what if they rate me down?" etc. The truth though is almost any non spam post in a forum shows movement and activity, and the more of those you have, the more posters will join in.
I suffer from the same tendancy, but not quite for the same reasons. As an admin, there are very few people to rate me down, and very few checks in place to prevent me from inadvertantly hijacking a forum. Particularily for topic creation. I see things I know are interesting and would make good threads from experiance, but too many admin colored name threads seems, at least to my mind, that we are getting in the way of the other posters. It's definitly a balance that one has to figure out.