In the thread about the 2026 Death Pool it is becoming rather evident that some newbies (and few old timers) do not bother to read anything but the title of the thread. Now, I know about people complaining about the large number of posts in some threads making it impossible to read all the posts, but I think reading at least the very first post in a thread is necessary, especially if that first post elaborates/expands on the topic and, in the case of contests, gives the basic rules necessary to participate. Is this a problem that needs to be fixed and, if so, how?
This has been an issue since the early days of the internet, back when folks were using newsgroups, and long before internet message boards were even a common thing. You can try to make a rule for it, but it’s not going to help. The common netiquette advice is “read before posting”, but if a newbie isn’t going to bother reading a thread before posting, then they certainly aren’t going to bother reading forum rules before posting either.
People have tried different things to fix it over the years, but in reality there’s not much you can do about it. You can always give them a gentle “read before posting” reminder as a reply to their post, and I’ve seen some forums that are downright rude about it, though that doesn’t really help either and just makes your forum seem unfriendly to newbies.
Forget it Jake, it’s the internet.
I’ve been guilty of this a few times myself. It usually happened when the starting post was excruciatingly long. When it did happen, a poster would politely suggest I read the original post next time, and that was enough to make me read it before posting in the future. Now, when I run into an extremely long initial post, I typically skip it and go to the next one. I think that works for most people, but I can’t guarantee it will fix the problem.
Honestly, I don’t post if I haven’t read the OP, and very rarely do I post if I haven’t read the entire thread. If a thread already has 300 posts, I know I’m not going to be able to keep up with it, so I don’t participate.
I’ve made exceptions when someone has personally addressed something to me in the thread-- there was once a very long thread about something with an ASL question in the middle that someone shouted out to me, just as an example. I answered that bit, and never went back.
If the starting post is pages long-- or worse, a wall of text, that is usually enough to tell me it isn’t for me.
Anyway, people who are jerks from the get-go aren’t going to shape up if nothing happens to him-- they are different from people who usually toe the line, but maybe have a bad day, and say something rude.
If someone posts something, say, in Death Pooln 2026 that is way, way out of format, and going to make Baker plotz, someone can gently tell the poster, who is almost certainly a Newbie, what the correct format is, and direct him (or her) to the OP.
If there is then another post also way out of format, Baker or a mod can PM the poster and say "Get in format, or you will not be participating in the thread, after which the poster has a third chance to get it right. Three swings. Three pitches. That’s enough. If he can’t get a hit in three, he’s out.
And Baker has discretion. If someone is struggling, but polite and contrite, and Baker wants to give him more chances, I don’t care. I can scroll through them. Scrolling through the nth attempt by 7 or 8 rude posters is different, and probably not what anyone wants.
This is, of course, just a suggestion. If Baker and the mods go a different way, it will not hurt my feelings.
Not just the internet, or there would be no need for the initialism RTFM.
Reading the rules before posting has been a thing literally everywhere I’ve ever posted on the internet and the more you try to police it the more people will break those rules. Maybe not even intentionally, it will just happen. You could even enact a paywall and not only will people break the rules, some of them will gladly pay to break them again
I tried. I read the post and had done it properly in prior years. I hadn’t kept up with formatting changes and didn’t know how to fix it.
Sometimes it’s not a case of not reading, it’s that you don’t know what you don’t know. My apologies.
I think that’s the big issue with formatting in the death pool, specifically. If you naively try to post in the requested format, the message board will automatically change your formatting. There are workarounds to that, but not everyone knows or understands the workarounds.