If I had a penny for every time a thread or response of mine was ignored…I’d be about 26 bucks richer.
[sub]Looking forward to my next penny…[/sub]
hanza, the responses in your memory thread were not lame, just few.
Why didn’t more people respond? Perhaps because it was a difficult question, vague. Perhaps it invoked staring into space remembering colorful balloons we have known and loved, rather than typing.
I agree with the people who mentioned readability. You might find it easier to get all your thoughts down in one big block of undifferentiated stream of consciousness text, but more people will read your post if you preview and edit it. The editing may take more time than the initial writing.
Put a blank line between paragraphs. Put two spaces between sentences. Break up some of the long paragraphs and sentences. Use fewer question marks. Correct more of your spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors on preview.
More people will read the whole post, and more will respond.
“Edit, edit, edit. Avoid redundancy.” - E. B. White
…And you are…?
hanza, I don’t for one second think it’s because you’re a newbie. I think that lel hit it - they were difficult to read. Welcome, and remember that correct spelling, punctuation, and those durn blank spaces are your friends.
AND, in my opinion, people are more likely to respect what you have to say as coming from an intelligent, knowledgeable, and careful person if it is properly formatted, maintains proper grammar and punctuation (including spacing), and reasonably good spelling. The latter gets a little more slack because typos happen so readily, and are so hard to see by their typists. Also because there are a lot of bright, well-educated, really bad spellers on the SDMB! 
Special hint (not to you, hanza, but in general) - watch your they’re/their/there, your/you’re, its/it’s and your apostrophes (hint - they almost never occur in plurals).
As a matter of curioisty, hanza, (and derailing a bit) why is it that you’re so interested in starting a thread that you’ll go looking for topics to do so? There may be others in this thread who do the same, and I’m curious - why is it important to you to start a thread rather than just reading and responding when you have something to say? I mean, I can understand starting a thread when you really do have something to say or ask, but I’m puzzled as to why anyone would seek out topics to raise just for that purpose. Can anyone explain that to me?
Of course, I’m a newbie too, so there are certainly nuances I don’t understand.
Whenever I start a Cafe Society thread on Queer as Folk it drops like a stone. Let Otto start one and it goes on for days. I hate him. 
It’s because his handle is a palindrome, and we all know what THOSE people are like. :eek:
One less penny for you.
Re: the OP.
My own experience is that the less you try to come up with a popular topic, the more popular the thread will be. Don’t worry about the number of responses you will get when you start a thread.
It’s a crap shoot…sometimes the topic will have been done to death, and the newbie doesn’t realize this, which is why their thread dies.
I thought starting a thread called Your unintentional voyeuristic moments would get a hearty response, but it got scrolled into electronic oblivion. Another time I started a thread about Grandpa Simpson quotes which lasted for weeks. Just keep trying. You don’t always start a fire on the first spark.
I think I’ve had three threads that generated more than fifteen posts, and I have a few hundred posts under my belt, at least.
Oh, sure. Take away my source of income. I’ll have to turn my children loose on the streets to fend for themselves.
Thanks for all the advice everyone. I will try to keep in mind all the good advice about spelling, spacing, capitalisation etc. (I’ve noticed that it’s a pet peeve of some people’s before- it’s just a bad habit I will try to break.)
I can’t make any promises about the spelling, I’m a pretty bad speller, but I stick to my guns about odour- and colour, and night and through etc.- that’s the way I was taught to spell 'em, so that’s how I’m gonna spell 'em.
As for why I like to start threads, well of course I’d be lying if I didn’t say that at least a little part of it is about attention- all those people listening to what lil’ ol me’s got to say. But also, I am genuinely interested in abstract topics like “memory” and “dreams”, and I really like leading people into thinking in this area ( as for starting the thread about pizza topping just to get some attention- well, I’m not quite that desperate for attention- yet 
)
Thanks for all your responses- I think we can officially name this my most successful thread, evah!! hoorah!
There is one place in which the newbie factor comes into play, and that is for people with very limited time.
Often I have very little time to spend on the SDMB during the week. Having an actual career, teaching, and running my own Board of 400+ Members takes a wee bit of effort. So most days the threads I click on are:
- GQ threads that directly interest me.
- Pit threads that directly interest me.
- Threads started by someone who directly interests me.
So if you don’t fall into category (3) because I don’t know you, then you could say that is a “newbie” effect.
However, newbie or not, fall into category (1) or (2) and you’ll get my attention.
Here’s something that no one else has mentioned and could be a big factor - you live in Budapest and are thus in a different timezone to the majority of people on this board. Timing is important - if you post a thread at 10am, the majority of posters are in bed fast asleep and your thread will slip quietly off the front page before they wake up. I’ve learned from experience 
But his post only slips off the first page because others are posting at the same hour.
(I’ve thought of this excuse for myself, a nightowl, and it doesn’t hold water, unfortunately.)
I don’t mind tossing a thread subject out there and watching it wither and die. At least I tried to spark some enthusiasm on the subject. If someone else starts basically the same thread and it becomes wildly popular, I take solace in the fact I at least thought of an interesting subject.
And to the OP - congrat’s you have a winner here
Oh! Look hanza! Your thread is now a two pager!
GuanoLad I never tough of that back then! My first thread ever did run into 2 pages! I never thought that was big deal since I had lurked for months and I figured it was a good idea for a thread, what was reckless was that I started first in Great Debates!
I figured that since I did not get my head bitten off, that I had finally found my home!
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=79097
Now you have done it, my head will swell more; see what you get from fighting ignorance? Some guys can begin to stop being humble! Horrors!
Of course, the problem with this thread’s survival is, every time I see the title, I hear it in an Ali G voice: “Is it because I is a newbie?” Oh, well.