Recently, I posted a question on Cafe Society. It was kind-of a complicated question, so I did my best to reflect the spirit of the question in the title but assumed that my more detailed description with examples in the OP would effectively get the point across.
However, it quickly became obvious that a vast majority of the responses did not even remotely make an effort to read the OP, and simply answered the (admittedly reductive and inelegantly worded) question in the thread title the way they interpreted it (which was very different than what I’d intended). Overall, of the first 12 responses, only 2.5 showed that they actually read the OP.
So I asked a mod to change the title of the thread before it snowballed into a deluge of responses with no relationship to what I intended the thread to be about.
Now personally, I never respond to a poll or a question without getting a little more context or description in the OP. And I guess I assumed most people did, too (though some answers in threads obviously indicated outliers who clearly weren’t paying attention). But this opened my eyes.
So, put simply: Do you bother reading the OP when the thread title poses a question? Or do you just jump straight to your answer based on the thread title alone?
I think I do, and want to say that I do, always read the OP before responding; although I can’t help thinking of responses to a provocative thread title even before I read the OP. But it’s clear that some people do respond to the thread title without reading the OP. (A subset of this is when the thread title asks for examples of something, and someone posts a response giving an example that is already given in the OP itself.)
I think the lesson is not to make your thread title a question unless that question stands alone without further qualification given in the OP.
I always read the OP. I don’t always fully comprehend it, and I often miss an important, crucial detail that someone has to point out to me after I respond, but I definitely read it.
This. Plus, I have to read the entire first post… my phone often cuts off the title, so if I don’t read the description of what’s being asked, I may not know what’s going on. And yes, it cracks me up when people reply who clearly haven’t read the four other times that others have supplied the same answer.
Every once in a while I’ll respond without reading the whole OP. Usually those are cases where the question in the subject line seems very straightforward and I’m not expecting the OP to have important clarifications.
Sometimes I re-read things I posted and realize after the fact that my brain went off onto a tangent or that I got distracted in the middle of writing and then forgot to finish fully responding. Someone reading those posts might think I didn’t read the OP, but there’s a good chance that I did read it before the brain failure turned it into something irrelevant. :smack:
MovieMogul, when I read your original thread title, I immediately thought of the movie The Brothers Bloom (about which I won’t say more for fear of spoilers). But I didn’t post my comment about it because a reading of the OP clued me in to the actual sort of responses you were looking for.
I will often not read the thread intentionally in IMHO, when being asked for my base opinion. I don’t want my answer sullied by having read everyone else’s arguments.
This is especially so in polls, but it also applies to threads that are made like polls.
If that results in me having the same answer as someone else, I see value in knowing that two or more people came up with the same opinion without working together.
I guess if that makes people laugh, I’m at least making people happy…
In other forums or types of threads, I will also sometimes give the same opinion or fact, but try to explain it in another way. Surely those don’t make people laugh.
I usually do, but, once in a while, when a title seems blatantly obvious, I might just skim the OP. Speed read.
And, yeah, this has gotten me in trouble.
So…please…make your titles as descriptive as possible! No fair laying snares for the unwary.
If someone starts out, “Chocolate or Vanilla?” and the actual question is whether chocolate beans or vanilla beans are better ammunition for a slingshot, and this inquiry is buried deep in the text of the post… Well, c’mon! Some of us are going to jump to the very obvious conclusion that the question regarded flavors.
Ah, sorry, not what I meant. When looking for opinions, of course some of the answers will be the same, and that is to be expected. Because they are opinions, after all. But what I’m talking about is, say, person X comes into a Cafe Society thread to answer the OP’s question about a specific song they were trying to remember. Going by the description, they offer up so-and-so. Then the OP replies that, although they appreciate the attempt, that’s not what they were looking for. Four hours and six posts later, someone else goes, “Hey, what about blah, blah, blah (the exact thing as above)?” then they obviously didn’t read the responses before them in a rush to supply anything FIRST. Lather, rinse, repeat several times in a thread and it’s a little more than amusing. And if it’s in regard to something more important? Seriously frustrating and annoying.
I always read the OP, and almost always read through the thread before responding. I’m self-conscious enough about looking like an idiot without doing it on purpose. Threads often morph and go off on relevant tangents, and there’s always that doofus who posts something already addressed a page ago and irrelevant to current conversation. I don’t want to be that doofus.