This is my first time posting, but I have been checking out The Straight Dope religiously for quite a few years. I felt obligated to respond to this topic so I finally registered. (Edit:This turned out to be very long. instead of overthinking it, I am just going to submit. Please forgive me)
I find the columns and the forum on this site to be refreshing to say the least. It is an oasis on the internet. I read a lot of the threads. Even when I do not agree with some of the things people say, it is generally very edifying and I learn a lot.
I don’t know if you would call me an intellectual. I believe myself to be intelligent? Yes. Am I able to follow the topics discussed here without scratching my head? Yes. But here are a couple reasons I have never dove in. Someone will correct me if that is the wrong grammar, right? Great, here we go.
I may have something to add, but I am just not up to it.
I will not go into why, but I find it mildly exhausting to gather my thoughts enough to partake in the level of conversation that takes place here. I read it and I process it, and it is not lost on me. However, if I were to always chime in with my thoughts, I know that I would need to be ready to respond if someone argued or tried to deconstruct my point. I would find it burdensome to see my arguments/discussions through to the end. I respect this forum, and don’t want to just be a buzzing bee. The rest of the internet definitely reinforces lazier interactions that rarely result in serious discussion, so maybe that is part of my problem. When I was younger I would be more prone to committing to discussions that I felt strongly about or had an opinion about, but somewhere along the line I became the way I am now, where I can hardly be bothered once the ball starts rolling. This a characteristic of my own personality, and not a reflection on you all.
My jugular
The other was touched on in the previous, but I’ll expound: You guys don’t screw around. Due to what I explained earlier, I know better than to make half hearted attempts at including myself, and I think you would shut me down pretty quick. I just feel like I won’t belong in this community because I am not willing to put the effort in. Again, that is a reflection on me.
*Politics… *
I have strong political opinions. However, I have always found that someone who is ‘right’ about an issue will more often than not lose out to someone who is more current on knowledge of politics. I don’t keep up on politics enough, so there is no way I can keep up with people who do and discuss it all the time.
I guess what all of these come down to is some people keep their wits sharp, and some are more content to just sit on the sidelines more often. The trouble is, when you do want to get involved you find you are not equipped. Some people jump in anyway. I am not one of those.
I will say that I am a 35 year old who used to have a lot more mental energy for this stuff, long before I came across this site. So, whatever inferences you would like to make based on that feel free. I am not implying it is wrong to include that fact in your analysis, but I did save it for the end for reasons you can likely guess.
I appreciate all of you for unknowingly being a part of intelligent discussion that has had a great impact on me for the last several years. I am sure there are others who lurk in the shadows, or at least I hope so, for the sake of humanity. I fear I pulled an Eduardo Moreno in this post somewhere but I am just going to submit it now.
PS - I will not ignore further discussion if this sparks it, but it is ok if you ignore this completely as well. Thanks for reading!
A ant, glad you decided to post! You DO sound like a sharp feller and I, for one, would like to hear more from you. At 35, you “used to have more mental energy”? Oh dear. I do understand, but then I’m twice your age. Here’s my advice: just jump in. Yeah, people might get all up in your face and they will certainly find any flaws in your presentation/position, but so what? Hey! that’s what we pay them for! (Actually, we don’t pay anyone.) You are not obliged to reply to anyone, defend yourself, or even check to see how people reacted to your comment (but, if you’re like me, you won’t be able to resist). As long as you’re not TOO cocky or arrogant (a little cockiness is okay and can be charming), respectful (mostly) of others’ positions, and keep your wits about you, you’ll be fine. There was a slight whisper of preemptory defensiveness in your post – no need, my friend. We all put our pants on one leg at the time here. (Well, we don’t put them ON here, but you know what I mean.) If someone is mean to you or you don’t want to read their posts, that’s why we have the “ignore” function (found under UserCP - control panel). A literate, intelligent, good speller is always welcome in this writhing pit of [del]snakes[/del] intellectual ferment. So don’t be a stranger! ('Cause we already have a Stranger.)
What?:smack: I joined in October 2000. Almost 200,000 posters have registered since then. That was a completely different environment. Back in the early history of the board, when messageboards were more popular, one might expect new registrants to post more often. I was speaking of the situation in recent times, not in ancient days when Cecil still walked the Earth. Those data aren’t at all relevant to what’s going on now.
I arbitrarily picked JackieLikesVariety and the next 99 posters who registered after him. However, since he registered in 2012 that’s not really current data either.
I was curious enough to look at a more recent sample. I started with registrant 200,000, who registered in November 2018. Because of the large number of spammers and zeros, I looked at the 200 registrants after that number.
So of the 36 non-zero posters, 19 (57%) made just one post, and 28 (78%) made fewer than 10 posts. I’m pretty sure a larger sample would not deviate substantially from that distribution.
So, for more recent data, what I said originally was true. The mode and median are both just 1 post. A very substantial majority of posters who make any posts make fewer than 10 posts.
Thank you for the warm welcome! That was very encouraging. I will chime in more now that I am registered. I waver between apathy and passion, but lean past the center line toward apathy more often. That is why reading passionate posts and not getting involved is normal for me. I guess that is a lot more concise than my previous post, huh?
What part of my post had a whisper of peremptory defensiveness? Was it when I pointed out my age? I wasn’t expecting an issue. I just chose that way to include the information because because I thought it may be of interest, but it is less important than my other points even though my age could be a factor if we are wondering why others like me may not be getting involved. The only reason I thought of it was because a few posters had already made age related posts and so it was a little on people’s mind. I don’t prefer to adopt labels, but as a millennial who doesn’t really fit in with the vanity of the rest of the internet, it plays a role in how much I feel like this forum is the place for me.
Does that make sense? If it seems like I am hijacking this thread to talk about myself, I am not. But this is the whole reason I got involved… because maybe I am part of a demographic that wasn’t weighing in, and I felt like this may be an important discussion so that more people like me can get involved!
This is exactly what I would have expected. It sounds very much like Lotka’s Law, which is often informally summarized as “Most authors publish only one book” (the actual law is more nuanced, but that’s the general idea).
Huh, that’s not at all what I would have expected. I wonder why people bother to register and not post. I wonder what motivates them to make a single post and then wander off, never to see if they got answers.
I know that most authors publish only one book, and that doesn’t surprise me at all. Publishing a book is very different from chatting on a list. I mean, obviously, my intuition is wrong. But I just don’t get it.
No, age is not an issue. People of all ages post here.
Maybe defensiveness wasn’t the right word. Maybe preemptively apologetic before you’ve done anything you need to apologize for. Like you’re expecting to be clobbered. Everyone gets clobbered a time or two. Once I had a whole Pit thread clobbering me. It was a proud moment. At least it meant people were reading my stuff.
I wasn’t suggesting that posting on a message board is comparable to publishing a book; just noting that the distribution Colibri found reminded me of the Lotka’s Law phenomenon.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that someone would dip their toe into a message board and never return, because I’ve done it lots of times. I’ve joined message boards and never posted; in my case, it’s because many boards place limits on what you can do without registering. I’ve also joined boards and only posted once or twice, because I had a specific question and wasn’t motivated to return once my question was answered. Or I’d make a comment about something, and forget all about it the next day.
A followup, since the edit window has closed: I’ve been working through my saved passwords in Chrome, because Google pointed out that my passwords are lame and I’ve been reusing some of them. I’ve discovered login information for a bunch of message boards that I joined and promptly forgot all about.
Welcome, a ant. I can actually understand why you’d be hesitant to post because of feeling like you need to keep following up. It can be a time suck. My suggestion would be to try to limit the number of threads you are subscribed to, only adding new ones when the old ones die out.
Actually, the first few numbers do fit Lotka’s Law, which is just a form of the inverse-square law that applies to many systems. The expected number of posters with two posts should be 1/4 of 19, or 4.75; it is 4. The expected number of posters with three posts is 2.1; the actual number is two.
nit-picking:, we are not nit-pickers! We just love precision. Accuracy. Rigor (not mortis, the other one). Hitting the nail on the head.
I mean, the translation into Dutch of nit-pickers is mierenneuker: he who fucks ants. Go figure! You could just as well be called a bean counter! A chartered accountant!
On the other hand… better than a penis joke I (again!) did not get.
I’m not very disciplined, but sometimes I look at what I’ve written, and don’t see anything anybody could disagree with, so I just delete it and go do something else.
I’m pretty sure that what the world actually enjoys is pointing out my mistakes.
Those data aren’t at all relevant to what’s going on now.