RTFT!!!

[Piknik]

MN Towers, save our sanity, please.

There must be some way of pinning a message at the top of talk boards (or even better individual threads) along the lines of:

Please use the 'read all' function to see the latest post from OP before contributing.

My personal addition to that would be:

Failure to do so, means that people who have bothered to follow the thread properly have to wade through endless, out of date and irrelevant advice and comments. Also, whilst you're at it, no need to 'quote all' if you are responding to the original message or general thrust of the thread. If you repeatedly offend, we will internally amend your username to incude the letters RTFT at the end, and will, after three violations, ban you from Talk for at least a week...

But even just the one line would be better than nothing.

PLEASE

I agree, it’s ridiculous when OP provides relevant information after the first couple of posts but you end up with 18 pages of people giving irrelevant advice because they’ve not read it.

Thanks @Piknik - this is a common frustration for sure but we think your moderation solution might be a bit harsh 😀(or not). We'll have a chat about this and report back.

Why not also tell OPs to include all relevant info in first post and not drip feed important things?

I would not bother with threads if I was told to RTFT. Most of them have too much irrelevant nonsense and derailing. If the OP is asking for advice and people are good enough to spend their time giving a response, then what's wrong with that? Otherwise they won't bother.

Today in a thread a poster said she had to be at work on Monday at 8am.
The second or third poster said ‘do you work’?
Also can MN remove the option to quote the first post , often quite long , and the reply is one line. We know they are replying to the first post ffs.

I'm with you OP.

I've actually long been meaning to request a special board for "people who read the full thread" where the additional rules are:
you read all OP's posts,
you scan the rest of the posts at the very least, if not read them all,
OPs commit to reading their OP before posting, for obvious typos and making sure they've included relevant info like age of children.

Any indication you've not read OP's posts gets your posts deleted.

What did you understand the OP on this thread to be asking people to do?

You don’t have to read the whole thread. Even without premium, there is an option to open “read all” of the original poster’s comments. Even reading the last two or three will give you an inkling of how things have progressed and stop you wasting time giving thoughts based on the original post when things could’ve moved on considerably.

Saying you can’t be bothered to read the thread suggests that you are one of those people that read the opening post, comment and move on. Whilst this is your right, It’s not helpful to anyone. Not helpful to the original poster whose circumstances have changed and not helpful to anyone on the thread who has to now wade through your irrelevant answer.

And in addition to situations moving quite quickly, sometimes posters do drip feed, because information they hadn’t felt was relevant suddenly feels more relevant, Or perhaps it took a lot for them to write the opening post and they weren’t quite ready to share everything.

Some drip feeds can be annoying, But actually, it’s often because the OP is starting to get clarity and confidence in sharing more relevant facts.

Anyway… Only five posts in and there’s already somebody who would benefit from a pinned message suggesting that they at least read OP’s latest comments

Meh, MN is a free online chat forum open to all. Even if you tried to enforce this, some people's "reading" doesn't necessarily include "digesting and comprehending". Even if people thought they'd read the thread you'd still get people asking questions that have been covered and chiming in with stupid irrelevant comments because many people don't read properly. I think it's just part and parcel of being open to anyone.

@IglesiasPiggl so MN shouldn’t even try? It drives people insane, wastes people’s time and all I’m suggesting is a sticky. Some people don’t even know you can “read all” of OPs posts and even if you stop 50% of people in their tracks, that’s an improvement.

threads would be one much more valuable. The poster who didn’t read the op’s latest update might actually have the best advice!

It can be annoying sometimes but it's part and parcel of posting on a chat forum.

If I find it's winding me up too much I just take a break.

RTFT ceased to be a reasonable command when MNHQ introduced the reply and quote functions. Those two functions legitimise the idea that you can have whatever little sub-conversations you like within a thread, which in turn begins to legitimise the idea that the whole thing is so fractured you can treat MN just as if it were Twitter.

What makes you think people would read a pinned notice?

I think this is a more realistic approach - we can't control what other people post, only our own exposure to it. There are many things that annoy me on MN, a personal break from being here always helps!

As part of this, can you stop requiring people to log in to be able to use the read all OP posts function?

If a thread fills up with people who haven't read OP's updates then I usually ignore all those posts and just use 'read all' myself as the OP will usually only respond to people who have RTFT.

That's one way of taking control of the situation yourself OP.

Failing to RTFT may drive some people insane, but maybe others are being driven insane by other posters ordering them about, and now ordering MN admin about!
I haven't read all of your other posts on this thread because I want to respond to this particular point. I really don't think that is an outrageous thing to do. We disagree but that's OK on a public forum.

It’s not hard to read all of op posts if don’t want to read 79/150/500 etc replies

Harsh moderation will drive people away.and I for one am certainly not going to let another poster tell me what to do This is an internet chat forum, praps best to take a break if it winds you up

I agree that expecting people to always RTFT isn’t reasonable. But if everyone would just read all of the OPs posts before responding it’d be a great improvement on many serious threads. If someone is going to be ‘good enough’ to spend time giving the OP advice then surely it’s worth ensuring they’ve got all the available info before doing so? Tbh people who can’t do that don’t really seem to be trying to help, just like the sound of their own ‘voice’.

Yawn.

Way back in the dark ages of late 80s bitnet and bulletin boards there were people not reading the thread/OP and people screaming “RTFT”.

I suspect the solution will coincide with the extinction of humanity.

I rarely wade through the whole of a long thread unless it’s gripping. Which happens about once every five years.

Just the last couple of pages will do to see which way the wind has blown.

But I do use ‘see all’ quite a lot.

I genuinely can’t understand the thinking behind people who post a basic response like ‘yeah he needs to go, end it and block OP’ to the OP’s initial post when a thread has had like 500 plus comments.
Even if they don’t know the option to read all the OP responses existed do they really think they are adding anything of value or that wouldn’t have already been said (multiple times).

I’ve not read any comments because I’m far too busy and important but even so, my opinion is very worthy and I’m going to put it here anyway for you all to read.

😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

It’s like walking up to a group of people at a party and butting in, saying something then walking off. Pointless.