How to recruit more partners

I think it is sad when people come to this forum in pain and open themselves desperate to talk to someone about what they are going through, but get no replies. Especially in the case of that big posts. After a couple of days, its usually too late, as they have already given up on checking for replies. (*)

On the other hand, when their post gets a quickly replied, they like it, and sometimes an interesting interaction begins. This way the forum gets better. We get more good willed people making replies and things get more interesting. It's good to interact and feel among friends, isn't it?

Thus is it useful if everyone here to make a little effort in reading to those fresh posts with no replies from your favorite boards, especially if it is the user's 1st post, then see if you have something to say about it so that the original poster is not left there starving.

For long posts, I use a text narrator software that I bought. Free ones are available online, such as in *mod edit* if you wish to try.


(*) If the "last visited" date from user's account does not get updated, then chances are that the replies have never been seen, and the email notification got lost within spam, or when to an abandoned email account created exclusively for that forum account.

Sorry, had to remove the link – even when it goes to a page with free download, we remove links that feature commercial content elsewhere. (For instance if you link to a free chapter with a "buy book" link, or a free book in a commercial online book store, etc.)

The one post – from my experience – is also caused by two issues you don't mention. 1) Some people come to a forum, post, wait 20 minutes, get no response, close page and never return. 2) Some others don't log in to read responses. Forum software logs you out (even if you click "keep me logged in", unfortunately). But you can read without being logged in.

There are two things that we as mods obviously can't change. One of them is wall-of-text posts where the new member does not use paragraphs or even punctuation. Mod team read everything that is posted (you've been warned ) but sometimes it's hard even for us not to get lost in a two-page post without a single page break. And we do not change people's paragraphs, punctuation, spelling, etc. The other problem is people who never respond to others and only post about their own problems. Which is of course fine. But sometimes you end up with very short threads which get no replies at all, creating a series of monologues rather than a dialogue.

Edit: Some subforums simply don't get that many views as well. So if there's one post every three days made (which is the case sometimes), and somebody posts a new thread and gives up on it after two days of checking... well.

Thanks Oliveira for your reply. You are very nice.

For the narrator, just need to search for the words FREE and "Text-to-Speech". No need to download, just copy/paste the text and press the button. The first that appeared for me is not commercial. So I guess it's OK to paste the link: *mod edit- link removed*

The problems you pointed out can be managed with the use of technology. I speak confidently because as a software developer I have always made the most creative solutions. If I was working on it, those are some examples of changes I would have in mind:

1. Add a little warning page before the user starts writing his very first posts, to show him some forum rule reminders and posting suggestions.
2. Small enhancements to the post edition page would make people post much better. For instance the window is too small in height but does not allow resizing. Misses a javascript character counter too.
3. Create a post rating system to incentivate good ones. Such as a 0-5 star system or as simple "Likes". This information will be visible to the poster.
4. Generate weekly statistics for each board/subforum regarding average reply times. Use this information to let the user know his chances of getting a reply and expected waiting time. It can be shown right after the post is submitted. In more active boards, this statistic would be more detailed based on the post size (1-500 chars, 500-2000 chars, 2000+ chars).
5. Allow users to mark some boards as their favorite, then have a page were they can see a resume of everything new that was posted on those boards.

Warning page for new posts could be something like this:

1. Forum rules reminders: No personal information; no commercial links; no medical advice
2. Posts that get more replies are:
   - Well punctuated and broken down into paragraphs
   - Focused on a single theme (you can always make more posts later for a parallel discussion on a related topic, linking the original post).

Thank you for your very interesting and useful suggestions! They have been passed to the admin team.