One thing that’s starting to bug me about using the SDMB is that I’m never quite sure if I responded to something and then stopped following the thread…and later somebody else came along and responded to something I wrote. I know about the option of emailing me when somebody responded to a thread I participated in (which I quickly turned off cuz it just sends me 50 emails a day), and once in a while I do a search for every thread I participated in, but that just lets me know that somebody else wrote to it. I still feel like I have this obligation to check every thread anyway, just to make sure nobody else is asking me something. How do all your other dopers (especially those of you who post more than 5 messages a day) keep up in all your threads so well?
e-mail notification and sometimes vanity searches
I read quickly
I prety much just assume no one gives that much of a damn about anything I have to say. So far it seems to have worked.
What is a vanity search?
I never use e-mail notification - because it e-mails you if someone responds to ANY post in a thread, not just yours.
So if you said something in a very busy thread, you’d get sent loads of notifications. none of which are likely to be responses to your post.
Vanity search: Regular search function, just use your name as the word(s) to search for.
thank you NoClueBoy 
I’ll usually look at the next five or ten posts after mine just to see if I need to respond to anything. If I don’t (usually the case), then I’ll start deleting the email notifications without checking the thread and, if I see it’s still being posted to, maybe go back to the thread once every few days just to track it and see if anything interesting has developed.
I just assume that every thread I respond to will die a slow, painless death as it drops down the list of threads, never to be heard from again.
Kinda like this one will now.
I thought that about myself until just today when I got an e-mail from a Doper thanking me for some comments I’d posted in a particular thread. It seems that I was articulating his/her (identity kept secret since I don’t know if they’d want me mentioning it) exact thoughts on a matter that they were close to better than they felt they’d be able to. (Surprising considering their connection.) I’ve also had Dopers e-mail me with pictures of a Tucker that they’d found on the web without my asking. So, it’s really hard to say what goes through folks’ minds.