ya just gotta be able to let it all roll of ur shoulder on your way to glory. its the only way to survive if u dont wanna be part of the hivemind. gotta be able to roll with silly bans or ppl puttin words in ur mouth or whatever cause it wil prob happen on most forums. with time ya do realize what members are more ikely to twist words tho so it becomes more expected

Never thought I'd see a three page debate on a forum about whether said forum should be responding to people in the Intro board before.

Not sure why the introductions board even exists if the pack mentality is that it's not worth responding to people there.

How on earth could anyone come away from this thread thinking that was the consensus?

Nobody is saying that at all.
I think most people would like to see how that person handles themselves in the forum proper before seeing if they're worth bothering with.

I mean why bother responding to someone who says they want to talk about music in their introduction thread and yet they log off after just making that one post without even posting on the forum itself.

Do what you say you came here to do and I'll acknowledge you.

Is it not reasonable to think that the person doesn't come back because they received very little to no sort of welcome in the introduction thread?

Not that I'm arguing that there aren't utterly worthless accounts made daily, this thread has just seemed to be extremely anti-newcomer for no reason really for the past month or so and it doesn't make the site seem all that welcoming.

No one has the balls to post a controversial opinion about somebody like butthead and I have done in the past, so the thread kind of teeters back and forth between being an irrational love-fest or a completely unrelated debate.

Um I beg to differ. I've been infracted because of this thread.

:clap::clap::clap:


post about liking other ppl: "god, this thread is such a gross lovefest'

post about disliking others: you are baitin others, ban or infraction or both

have conversation: "this thread sucks and lost its purpose"


theres no way to win against the hivemind, complaints will always follow

I used to make it my business to go into the intro thread, look at any posts that had 0 replies and reply to them. I found after a while that it was hard to find different things to say, and you certainly don't want a stock reply as above --- "Welcome [insert possible new forum member name here] hope you enjoy your time here, see you out there" repeated nine times. So I did my best to engage with everyone I could and most times my responses were good, though occasionally ignored.

I found in the end though that a) why should it be left up to me and b) I had not the time, with my huge workload, to keep welcoming people who might not give a toss. So I stopped. Sometimes now I will make welcoming posts, but then a lot of the intros are so generic you wonder are the posters legit?

That works both ways of course. You can post an intro thread but nobody's keeping you there. You don't have to wait there (checking your watch, tapping your foot, twiddling your thumbs) until someone says Hi, and it it doesn't happen you eff off in a huff. I mean, really: nothing's stopping any newbie from walking around and seeing the place, joining in threads, even starting them. It's not like there are levels you can't progress on from till you get a reply in your intro. It's not even a requirement.

I never made one. I just set up store in my journal and worked away. It's nice to get a welcome, sure, but people aren't puppets or machines. They have their own minds and they can choose to explore if they want without the validation some seem to think they need. It's not like it's a game or Second Life or something: you're not in the intro thread till you win the big purple key by having a wizard say welcome. You're free to leave at any time and go wandering. That's what a forum should be all about, no?

And then you get the people in this thread rambling about how you can't just barge in to a community like this and everyone gets upset and several pages are wasted debating the topic. Quite a conundrum we have here! Are new members supposed to be apprehensive or are they supposed to jump right in?

I don't believe anyone has ever snapped at someone for barging in, unless they were talking **** or trolling. Most members WANT new members to contribute, though preferably to decent topics and not "what's your fav biscuit" or whatever. Still, any contribution is good.

Name one time someone has been slapped down, wrongly, for simply joining in a thread. Are you seriously telling me that you believe that someone here believes that a member should be excluded from threads purely on the basis that they are new?

Actually, tell me in the morning: time for bed!