Do people dismiss new/low post members?

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babinro

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Sep 24, 2010
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IceForce said:
babinro said:
It's kind of sad but a lot of people will discount what you have to say by your profile alone. They'll disregard you because you're perceived as a noob in their eyes or as a no-lifer in their eyes. Only those in the middle ground of their personal accepted range matter.
I assume you're talking about profile info as a whole, and not just post count?

I've deliberately not filled out any of my profile details (age, occupation, country, etc), because each detail you provide about yourself is just another potential ad hominem that people can use against you.

And some users on this forum have a really bad habit of attacking the person or something about the person, rather than attacking the argument that person has made.
I'd rather not give them the opportunity to make that mistake.
My response was really general to all forums I participate in.

I've been very active in the Diablo 3 forums and I don't automatically dismiss someone who posts with a WoW avatar...or someone who has a low monster kill count or low paragon level, etc. There's a lot of dismissal that goes on in those forums based on profile information.

Here you can see the join date and post count at a glance and yet I don't pay attention to them. I don't go into people's profiles here at all either. I consider the escapist forums a location of pure discussion. The individuals who make up that discussion are less important to me.
 

Callate

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Dec 5, 2008
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I tend to hope that good writing will out, regardless of post count. But it often takes a while to get into the "flow" of a new forum regardless.
 

Fappy

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Jan 4, 2010
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AkaDad said:
Fappy said:
Zachary Amaranth said:
Woohoo! I'm old guard!

Oh, right, there was a topic here. Umm...Carry on.

I don't tend to look at join dates or post counts often. If I recognise a name, I will respond based on my history with them, be it a friendly face, someone I think offers insight, or someone I think is full of crap. But I will pay more attention to people like Fappy, Colour Scientist, Zukhov (whose name I might spell right one day without 30 tries) or MarsAtlas (to name a few) because of who they are or things they've said. And Vault, but I think that's because of her avatars. >.>

This is definitely a form of bias, but it has nothing to do with their join dates. Been chatting with a couple of newbies of late, who I won't name because it's not fair to drag them down when they're so young and full of hope. I tend to evaluate people I don't know by their ideas. Someone who posts a thoughtful response as their first post is more interesting to me than someone who POST LIEK THIS ALL THE TIME!!!!!

Also, they must absolutely agree with me on everything, as is only reasonable. <.<

I've been doing this ">.>" a lot. <.<

I think I'm up to something.
Stop being so shifty, Zachary! We don't want people catching on to machinations of our Old Guard Illuminati!
You have a lot of balls even mentioning the Ill*******. It's been a pleasure knowing you. You'll be missed.
Don't worry, I'm good. We don't subscribe to Fight Club rules. It's all part of our marketing strategy to spread awareness about our new line of rainbow ice cream sprinkles.
 
Sep 24, 2008
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Ten Foot Bunny said:
quarter of an inch shy, yes. But I also like to wear heels and 4" wedges that put me way over the top. Because fuck genetics, I'll wear what I want!
I remember when I was just shy of 6 feet. My, I was but a Lad then.

That's right, a black guy just called himself a lad. I've enriched all of your lives with Culture!

joshuaayt said:
I think they're clever and handsome and brilliant and handsome, because that's me in a couple of months

I dunno, you're not wrong- it's a balancing act between post count and join date. I did recognise it as a bias, to be fair.
But are they handsomely clever or brilliantly handsome? DAMNIT, man! I need more options!
 

AkaDad

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Jun 4, 2011
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Fappy said:
AkaDad said:
Fappy said:
Zachary Amaranth said:
Woohoo! I'm old guard!

Oh, right, there was a topic here. Umm...Carry on.

I don't tend to look at join dates or post counts often. If I recognise a name, I will respond based on my history with them, be it a friendly face, someone I think offers insight, or someone I think is full of crap. But I will pay more attention to people like Fappy, Colour Scientist, Zukhov (whose name I might spell right one day without 30 tries) or MarsAtlas (to name a few) because of who they are or things they've said. And Vault, but I think that's because of her avatars. >.>

This is definitely a form of bias, but it has nothing to do with their join dates. Been chatting with a couple of newbies of late, who I won't name because it's not fair to drag them down when they're so young and full of hope. I tend to evaluate people I don't know by their ideas. Someone who posts a thoughtful response as their first post is more interesting to me than someone who POST LIEK THIS ALL THE TIME!!!!!

Also, they must absolutely agree with me on everything, as is only reasonable. <.<

I've been doing this ">.>" a lot. <.<

I think I'm up to something.
Stop being so shifty, Zachary! We don't want people catching on to machinations of our Old Guard Illuminati!
You have a lot of balls even mentioning the Ill*******. It's been a pleasure knowing you. You'll be missed.
Don't worry, I'm good. We don't subscribe to Fight Club rules. It's all part of our marketing strategy to spread awareness about our new line of rainbow ice cream sprinkles.
I'm relieved to hear that. Pushing rainbow ice cream sprinkles on the masses is exactly the bold and innovative thinking that's kept your group in existence for so long. Well played.
 

Elvis Starburst

Unprofessional Rant Artist
Legacy
Aug 9, 2011
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Yeeaaahhh, I kinda have the same issue. More often than not I'll see someone with a couple hundred more posts, then look to the dude above with 30 and no avatar and determine which one I wanna listen to a bit more. Granted, I still read most of the low posting user's posts, but if they simply appeared a few months back, never posted much, never changed their avatar (Or even gone badge hunting in the slightest) then it doesn't always look great.

As far as content and high level of discussion value, I admit I don't always give some of the most strongly worded posts I can, and default to simplistic responses. My reason for doing that though is cause I'm a lazy toss and don't feel like writing paragraphs (Or sometimes just one) to get a point across when I can sum it up just as easily. But, again, that's just me being lazy. I've made good posts in the past.
 

Zipa

batlh bIHeghjaj.
Dec 19, 2010
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Personally I thought the internet had moved beyond caring about post counts on forums on the like. You shouldn't dismiss someone because they just joined a community, that sends a really shiity message.
 

TheIceQueen

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Sep 15, 2013
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I don't particularly care if someone has a low post count, but I do have a longstanding bias against those who have generic avatars, especially the faceless ones. When you get a real and personal avatar, that gives me something personal to attribute to you the poster. I recognize plenty of people here by their avatar themes. Shrekfan always has Kyary avatars. CaramelFrappe always has a caramel frappe somewhere in there. PsychicTaco always has a taco somewhere, to name a few examples.

It's not just themes either. I always recognize JoJo immediately. Zachary immediately. Even Baffle I recognize immediately and they're a relatively new person here. Just give me something personal and original (which means a slight point count against you Vivian James people out there) to you that sets you apart and makes you different and then I care about you and what you have to say even if I disagree with you.
 

Twinrehz

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May 19, 2014
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That's why I try to up my post-count. I pretend to have something to say, so the mods don't notice me. *stealth mode*

EDIT: Jeez, I've been upped to Muckraker? Really don't like that title....
 

Mimic

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Jul 22, 2014
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I'm another one of the newbies myself. I can understand that some people may develop a bias or wariness towards new posters' contributions as no doubt some people do just set up accounts to troll. I kind of expected some wariness which I would say has in turn effected the way I post along with some things I've seen on other forums in the past. I remember one which ended up very clicky where wariness of newcomers turned into something worse. They were picked at constantly when they posted whilst older members ignored forum rules with impunity. I wasn't interested in any of that so I left and I guess subconsciously that made me more concerned about how to behave as someone new to a forum.

I feel like I'm dipping my toes in at the moment, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to create an avatar so to be less of a 'faceless' newcomer. But this forum seems nice, despite the recent flood of controversial topics, and, hey, we were all newbs once.
 

Jhonie

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Oct 24, 2011
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Well, I've been a member on this site for nearing on three years now, so I like to think that may give me some credibility, despite my, err, less than impressive post count. There are a couple of reasons it is so low, however.

First is that I generally don't do well with forums or internet communities in the first place. Never have, really. There are few places where the collective idiocy of humankind is as glaringly apparent as it is on the internet, and staying off of forum platforms at all is one thing that maintains my very fragile little flame of hope I have left for humanity. The fact that I am a woman and therefore inevitably more of an easy target for vitrol-spewing morons does not help. This way I keep myself from wanting to snap someone's neck every few minutes. Well, usually.

Second is that I just generally have never been too fond of communicating within the boundaries of text (despite my love for literature). I am a fairly social person. I like to talk with people and have a very easy time to make new friends, yet I feel rather uncomfortable speaking via the internet. It's much less personal, and you miss so many important aspects of communication this way. Tone of voice, body language, personality... On the internet, I don't know who I'm talking to, if anyone will ever even listen to what I say, and it's that much harder to tell how serious the other person is. No, I'd take speaking to people's faces in real life over a message board any day. It's just kinda hard to do, even though there are conventions arranged for that kind of stuff, because I kinda live in Sweden. I also don't have an income right now.
The fact that message boards tend to be completely riddled with word crimes all over does not increase my willingness to use them as a platform, either.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I simply don't feel like I have anything to say, most of the time. Either I'm not invested in the topic, or there's too much whining and yelling going on, or my point has already been said fifteen times by other posters already. I may be a chatterbox when I speak with someone face-to-face, but even then, and even more so on the internet, I strictly go by the code of "If you have nothing to say, say nothing".

The few posts I have put up so far are all times when I felt like I had something to point out that people, from my point of view, seemed to be missing, or when I felt I otherwise had something to contribute with, if only to supply my opinion in a topic I cared about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there may be a good reason behind a person's low post count. One should go by the content of the person's post, because that's all that really matters, in the end.
 

Fappy

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Jan 4, 2010
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Mimic said:
I'm another one of the newbies myself. I can understand that some people may develop a bias or wariness towards new posters' contributions as no doubt some people do just set up accounts to troll. I kind of expected some wariness which I would say has in turn effected the way I post along with some things I've seen on other forums in the past. I remember one which ended up very clicky where wariness of newcomers turned into something worse. They were picked at constantly when they posted whilst older members ignored forum rules with impunity. I wasn't interested in any of that so I left and I guess subconsciously that made me more concerned about how to behave as someone new to a forum.

I feel like I'm dipping my toes in at the moment, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to create an avatar so to be less of a 'faceless' newcomer. But this forum seems nice, despite the recent flood of controversial topics, and, hey, we were all newbs once.
I won't lie, we have our fair share of cliqueness, but it's not some forum-wide thing. There are a lot of small groups of old users that tend to congregate together. Since we've all been around here so long, sometimes we tend to pat each other on the backs publicly. It's not particularly noble behavior, but it's mostly harmless. And honestly, it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Favoritism can also be a small issue every now and then, but the moderation team and site staff have long since improved upon that.
 

BraveSirRobin

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Mar 17, 2010
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Andy Shandy said:
I'll only tend to dismiss someone's post if they have a low post count, default avatar AND a recent join date combined.

Anything other than that, and I try to avoid doing so.
This is pretty much what I end up doing as well. I tend only to dismiss them if it's in some controversial thread where you can tell they've only joined to post in that thread and spout off whatever they deem proper. That or they made some one sentence thread saying "Check out this video." I prefer to avoid these types threads all together though.

Honestly, if it's just some random thread I won't even bother looking because we all joined at some point, and personally I didn't even bother adding an avatar til a few weeks after I made my first post over a year after I joined.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
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Fappy said:
Stop being so shifty, Zachary! We don't want people catching on to machinations of our Old Guard Illuminati!
\
What, you mean our secret plan to overthrow the mods and rule with an iron fist? There's no way they'd find out!
 

Pinkamena

Stuck in a vortex of sexy horses
Jun 27, 2011
2,371
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Pshah, who cares for the low post count riff-raffle? Let them scrounge for each others attention. I prefer to keep myself in better company - strictly 20k posts and above.
 

Redlin5_v1legacy

Better Red than Dead
Aug 5, 2009
48,836
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I'll be wary of a new poster but I'll give them a chance. After all, I used to be new and got yelled at for being new.
[sub][sub]I have a life outside this site though, hard as that might be to believe... <.<[/sub][/sub]
 

Agayek

Ravenous Gormandizer
Oct 23, 2008
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Dr. Crawver said:
So I just want to know, do other people share this problem with me? Am I alone in this? And if I am, any recommendations as to how to try and put my bias's to one side?
Personally, I don't tend to have an overt bias to post count, but that's more because I don't tend to notice post count. My eyes slide right over it when I'm reading, just like people's names (I ID people by avatar and writing style, predominantly).

That said, if I see someone post something really stupid and I look over and notice they've got like 4 posts to their name or whatever, my first reaction is "Oh, I should have known". My default assumption is that shit posts come from new members for some reason, which is pretty much the same bias you're suffering from expressed in a different way.
 

Malbourne

Ari!
Sep 4, 2013
1,183
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I'm mainly attracted to pretty colors, so catchy avatars grab my attention for a longer period of time. As for posts, I believe people should be given attention for the quality of their writing, the substance of their commentary, and the relevance of their topic. New people with a low count may actually have something important to say, and even if it's not something I agree with or somewhat controversial, then I try to find some value in it that I can take away regardless.

But yeah, I'm guilty of the bias sometimes.