Quote:
Originally Posted by Annah
Ive been to the introductions board, the general support board, the 30s+ board, the 100 board, the atkins board. I post and I get about 300 views and IF i am lucky, I get a response.
It's hard to uplift each other if all we do is read the comments and not participate.
But ill keep on trucking and see what happens
I think you might have more "luck" if you try casting a wider net. For example, as I mentioned earlier clicking on the "new post" site and browsing through the new posts for topics that interest you. Post in those that "speak to" your interests and opinions. Not all the threads will go much further. Some topics peter out very quickly, because people just don't have a lot to say. Others will go on longer, and some will even speak very heated and passionate debates and even arguments (though it tends not to get too crazy, because the mods will shut it down if there's any disrespect or namecalling).
Eventually you get a feel for which topics and areas are the most active, and which tend to peter out quickly either because that's just what some topics do, and/or they've been discussed to death previously and no one has anything new to contribute.
There are some extremely active threads that have lasted for YEARS, and get many daily posts and there are those come and go quickly, or hang around forever but the post rate is very low and slow. I've seen threads resurrected after two years or more.
I've been to quite a few similar social sites with similarly organized forums, and this is just how most of them work. Some threads get tons of responses, some don't. And for all of them, there are usually more lurkers than posters. Many people are too shy to post, and will always be lurkers. Others read so many posts that they can't possibly respond to all of them (I'm one of those members. I had to cut back on the amount of posting I was doing here, because I was sinking up to five hours on this site daily in reading/posting). Even though I'd make up to ten posts a day, I still always read more posts than I responded to, because I wouldn't have had room for anything else.
While you may see 200 views, you don't know how many threads each of those viewers have posted in. Many of those views are from people like me who have browsed all the threads, read 40 to 100 of them, and contributed in three or four or ten.
Some of us are long-winded (I can't help it. I try to be concise and that ends up taking me even longer to write, because then I end up writing my natural way and then going back and editing to take out all the extra stuff. Writing a short post ends up taking me longer than writing these mini books).
I can read much faster than I can post. I also don't have an opinion on everything I've read (or more commonly I have an opinion, but one that's already been expressed by a dozen other folks in the thread already).
The way I search the threads (using the "new post" button to see everything that's been posted since the last time I was here) this site is outrageously active. I can't keep up, and often have to make myself set a time limit so that I don't end up sinking six hours a day into 3FatChicks.
I hate doing that because I feel like I've "missed something" if I don't get to at least browse every new page. I scan each new page from top to bottom for threads I've participated in (yes, I know there's a way to select only the threads I've posted in) and for new posts that I find interesting. I respond to each that "speaks to me." And I can get lost in this for hours and hours.
Whether 3FC seems active or not, depends upon how you use the site. I'm overwhelmed by the amount of activity, because I'm a little bit OCD and want to read (at least the thread title) of every thread. I can't respond to everything (and no one would want me to).