A recent thread* (which I don’t want to discuss) about unhealthy posting behavior got me thinking about how I engage here.
I probably write ten posts (or partial posts) for every one that actually gets the ol’ submit of approval. The more substantive the topic, the less likely I am to actually contribute. A lot of the time, writing the posts is - for me - like that exercise where you write a letter but never actually mail it. Sometimes by the time I’ve finished a post I realize that I’m glad to have expressed my thoughts but have no interest in sharing them. Sometimes I’m just doing everybody else a favor by discarding the draft.
Anybody else in the habit of writing more than they post?
*Not really recent. For reasons that are probably self-evident, this post has been sitting as a draft^ for weeks.
^Here’s a fun exercise, by the way. Did you know that discord will save any number of drafts even if you didn’t explicitly ask it to? Go to your user profile and find the drafts tab; if you’re anything like me you have a bunch of 'em there.
Fairly often, perhaps 1 in 5, I discard a response post I’ve been composing. I’m actually proud of myself when I do because it means I’ve recognized, “I’m not really contributing something worthwhile here,” or, “I haven’t fully thought this out yet.”
But it’s still a gain for me because I’m a person who has to write in order to know what I think. Writing something out, even if it goes nowhere, is part of my process toward organizing my thoughts.
Your 10:1 ratio probably beats mine… I probably post <5% of what I start writing. I think I deleted five starts yesterday, and have already done two or three today…
Mostly I do this (delete draft posts) on the more serious and difficult threads. By the time I go through writing and then checking my reasoning and my cites, I realize that I’m not even convincing myself, or that the subject is too subtle for my ability to express my thoughts clearly, or even that I have changed my mind from what I started to say. I haven’t counted or anything, my guess is that I post less than half of the posts I start to write.
We must be very different then: I only find two drafts there. Now I wonder why those were kept and not the other ones I discarded, and why I did not submit those. They were good, interesting, clever, amusing and everything my other posts usually are too.
I guess I don’t submit about a third of my drafts, perhaps half of them.
For me, about 1.01 i.e. I very infrequently begin writing a reply and end up not submitting it. In the infrequent cases where I do that I have second thoughts because the thread has high potential of setting off peoples’ triggers and conflict averse me does not want to not end up crucified as an innocent bystander* (one instance of this was the first woman/man/bear thread).
I quite often forego posting because of this reason, or more often because what I wanted to say when opening the thread has already been said better, but in those cases I did not write anything.
When I do post the submitted post often ends up totally different from what I intended at the first keystroke.
Ha, yeah, my ratio is probably something like 3:1 or 4:1 of drafts to actually-posted posts. Sometimes because I don’t feel I’m elaborating enough and therefore my post isn’t really adding much, and sometimes because I feel I’m elaborating too much so it’s TMI.
I’ve been here long enough that I can predict what sort of replies I’ll get so I delete about 1/5 of what I type. Another 1/5 of the time I don’t even bother to start typing.
Mmm. I depends on how, like the OP, I parse “writing”.
There are a large number of times I write a sentence or two, then think better of it, and delete before finishing the post (not adding anything, someone said it better, idea is not articulate).
There is a smaller number of times I write at least paragraph or two, then reconsider: I’m adding to a hijack, the thread is troll-bait and I’m falling for it, and related - the thread is doomed due to being a poisoned well/poorly written, and it’s best to get out quickly.
If I include both categories, I’d say 1 actual post to 3 unwritten, but if I only include the second, more like 1-1 or 1-2.
I probably don’t discard posts as often as I should. 1 in 20 maybe. The problem is when I spend an elaborate amount of time composing something only to realize it doesn’t add much or it takes the conversation away from its original subject matter. Or it’s TMI.
When I’m really stressed and angry I discard posts way more often. Or I self-edit heavily.
I’m better at recognizing when my contribution will be useless before I even start to post, though. So to really get an accurate picture, you’d have to somehow incorporate all the times I say to myself, “better not.”
I’m damn glad to see other Dopers are like me…start typing something that I think is very insightful, or witty, or interesting, and then realize that it’s none of the above. I probably discard about half the posts that I’ve started, so my ratio is 1:1. And, as has already been mentioned, there are a shit-ton of my posts that I wish I had never submitted.
I think it also depends on the kinds of threads you are in. I rarely have something meaningful to contribute to Great Debates. There are usually people with far more experience in subject X for me to contribute much more than a few questions. I still follow those threads, I just don’t post much in them. I often don’t even think about posting in them.
Now if it’s IMHO or the Pit, bloviating opinions or playful banter, where the bar is much lower for participation, there you shall find me. I do admire people with better restraint.
Depends on where I am. I do most of my posting in Thread Games, where, for the most part, we’re just adding a song title or food item to a list, or whatever. There usually won’t be much reason to reconsider that, although it could certainly happen. In other areas, I might abandon about a third of the posts I start, mostly because once I see it in front of me, it doesn’t seem like much of a contribution (not that I’m claiming that what I end up posting is wonderfully worthwhile, but there it is anyway).
I’ve no idea what the ratio is; but I fairly often don’t post something I’ve written; sometimes because I decide what I was going to say has already been addressed by somebody else, sometimes because I decide it wasn’t all that relevant, or that it wasn’t all that coherent, or that I just didn’t feel like sharing that bit of personal or family info. Or that I’m not sure I even agree with what I was writing. Or that it requires a cite and I don’t want to go hunt one up – or that, in the process of hunting one up, I realized that I was probably wrong.
I do sometimes find the discarded posts useful for that reason.
