Can we have some sort of 'warning' for people who repeatedly post without reading all of OP's posts?

I agree it’s annoying but no, I don’t agree it should be policed. What next, disciplining people for spelling mistakes or leaving out apostrophes?

As much as I agree that all of the annoying things are annoying, as an adult I really don't want to be 'nannied' in that sort of way.

There will always be annoying things on chat forums and as users, it's up to us to either politely state our annoyance or just scroll past.

Did anyone read this reply from MNHQ on another thread today? Here's the relevant part posted at 11.50am....

We've already responded to several hundred reports this morning - it's been incredibly busy and we're doing our best to get through them all as quickly as we can.

I really don't think they need the extra stress just because someone's quoting the opening post, or not reading all the OP's replies.

People quite rightly complain that racist/homophobic/transphobic etc posts can be left up far too long, but it'll only get worse if MNHQ are busy dealing with petty stuff.

Exactly.

People also need to understand that even when they put a lot of emotions into a thread, the poster of it might not be for real as well.

You can't police this stuff.

@MJconfessions I don't think you have been on many extremely long threads where this happens. Posters writing "cancel the cheque" many times after the poster has posted that they have cancelled the cheque is very frustrating to read.

@HyggeTygge I have also asked this of MN before.

It does on iPhone

I think the bigger issue is the culture here of pedantry. If posters were not so inclined to correct or argue with other posters, no one would bat an eyelid at this.

Honestly, I don’t agree with you. This doesn’t really bother me and it isn’t likely MN could ever enforce this.

Ultimately it’s an online forum, you can’t police every post. Some people just look at a title and respond based on that. Other people are responding to other posters. Some just aren’t tech savvy or are genuinely confused or have noticed something across OP posts that doesn’t make sense hence referencing to older posts. I don’t imagine getting staff to check every post that gets reported is completely on topic to the last OP update, would be worthwhile to enforce.

I think the spirit of the website is to foster discussion so I’m not sure how warning or suspending people as you want them to
would support that. It would likely do their reputation more harm than good.

I think if anything MN, needs to make it more easy to spot the OP’s responses like Reddit for example, and give the ability to collapse responses that are low value. And possibly remove the thread post limit so “filling up threads” isn’t an issue.

It's not necessarily about drip feeds/ missing info from the op. Its just as likely to be that the situation has changed/ moved on and therefore the advice needed has also changed.

Thank you. The worst is when it's the very next post. Everyone on a thread should have read the first post, it doesn't need to be repeated and it's very easy to find

You seem very defensive about banning posters for simply missing one tiny detail in an OP.

They clearly didn’t read it properly - I’m talking about very obvious things here.

But you seem very defensive about this.

How do you know they didn’t read it vs read it but missed the age?

OPs who drip feed important information are to blame for a lot of this.

Using the talk app doesn't give you the option to read all op posts!

This is why I use the browser and not the app.

If the OP put all relevant info in the opening post it would be more helpful. Yabu.

If an OP sets out the detail of a situation and asks a straight question it is not unreasonable to answer it without reading all the replies.

That's an example where not having even cursorily skimmed the thread can be extremely annoying - it's really not reasonable to weigh in with an answer to the OP (especially if you quote the whole thing) on a thread which already has more than a dozen or so posts. If the question has been clearly put then anyone with an ounce of common sense will realise it'll have already been answered and that the discussion will have moved on.

Same way as MNHQ enforce anything!

It is extremely annoying when you get the first paragraph saying something like “my 6 year old daughter wants a pony” and the first response asks how old the child is.

Exactly this. People who drip feed or leave out very important things from the OP are to blame for most of it.

Except often the OP may not realise that further information might be asked for during the course of the discussion. They might think they've covered the situation, but of course she knows all the background and we don't.
Not to mention that often the real life situation develops during the lifetime of the thread, especially if it's a long one.

How would you enforce this? And don’t posters who accidentally post on the wrong thread usually apologise and have their post wothdrawn?

Parliamentary debates have fewer rules…

Yes very annoying especially quoting the OP post.

I think you're assuming that the majority of MN posters have the basic skills to recognise this but obviously not. A warning will make no difference to them.
You can't fix stupid!

I don’t think posters should have posts removed or be suspended because

• the OP does a 10pg long drip feed
• the poster did read all the OP’s posts but certain pushy posters think that another poster can’t possibly have the opinion they have if only they’d read all the posts
• it discriminates against posters with difficulties in taking in 99%+ of all details on the first read.
• I agree with the pp that MN is not a job but a form of social media and like any IRL convo there will always be people missing a bit of the convo and going “sorry come again?” Or joining late and saying “oh I missed that” that’s how socialising goes.

Oh it was a very long running thread with a complex situation which developed in many complicated ways for weeks but every day someone would just read the OP and suggest that they cancel the cheque as if this was some new insight.

Whilst it is irritating, the argument could be that the OP should include all the info in the OP, rather than dripping feeding.