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Hey guys,

Not sure if this post will get fucked up due to the April fools fun (and there was much rejoicing), but this is chronos.

Been on my mind for a few weeks, maybe even months now.

I am a pretty early adopter and vocal supporter of Poal as evidenced by much hate I received on voat. I don't post many links or anything here as they usually end up being reposts. I don't come here for whatever fucking bot inside joke you all have going on, or for random music videos or random news etc.

What I come here for is the INTERACTION with other users. I'm not much into chat or poalcasts, so that is primarily via comments or up/down ticks. What I am seeing more and more (maybe it's always been there and I am just now noticing more?) is that there seems to be less interaction and more random stuff posted.

I'll make a very long, well thought out comment and won't even get an upvote many times, much less a reply. This negatively reinforces me and makes me reconsider making any long, well thought out comments. Not because I give a fuck about points, but does / did anyone even read said long comment? Is it worth the time to type it out? Is this post worth the time to type out, or will it be lost in a bunch of randomness?

I still come here, but as interaction decreases my GAS factor (give a shit) also decreases.

TL;DR - for me, a nice discussion is worth more than 1000 random links.

Cheers guys and gals

Hey guys, Not sure if this post will get fucked up due to the April fools fun (and there was much rejoicing), but this is chronos. Been on my mind for a few weeks, maybe even months now. I am a pretty early adopter and vocal supporter of Poal as evidenced by much hate I received on voat. I don't post many links or anything here as they usually end up being reposts. I don't come here for whatever fucking bot inside joke you all have going on, or for random music videos or random news etc. What I come here for is the INTERACTION with other users. I'm not much into chat or poalcasts, so that is primarily via comments or up/down ticks. What I am seeing more and more (maybe it's always been there and I am just now noticing more?) is that there seems to be less interaction and more random stuff posted. I'll make a very long, well thought out comment and won't even get an upvote many times, much less a reply. This negatively reinforces me and makes me reconsider making any long, well thought out comments. Not because I give a fuck about points, but does / did anyone even read said long comment? Is it worth the time to type it out? Is this post worth the time to type out, or will it be lost in a bunch of randomness? I still come here, but as interaction decreases my GAS factor (give a shit) also decreases. TL;DR - for me, a nice discussion is worth more than 1000 random links. Cheers guys and gals

(post is archived)

[–] • 8 pts

I notice this too. It reminds me of Voat when it was still fairly new. Interesting posts, but not a lot of comments. At one point I thought the MO was not to comment as much. I was commenting on so many posts I was afraid people thought I might be spam, so I slowed down. That is how poal is now. Some days I feel like I'm commenting too much, and sometimes too harshly. But if memory serves me, when I backed off with voat suddenly newbies swooped in and kind of "took over" which really pissed me off. I felt like I (and a lot of others) had put a lot of effort into thoughtful comments and posts in voats early days, then a swarm of assholes showed up and voated in their idiot leader. All of a sudden they were posting "who is your favorite voater" posts and NONE of the OG's were in it. What the hell? Then another wave, and another. Now it's utterly unrecognizable from it's early days. The most popular voaters are shit for brains and every comment ends in disparaging remarks about Jews. So I learned my lesson. This time I'm not backing off. I'll comment the hell out of everything on here when I have the time, and post as much good content as I can find. (No matter if people agree with my point of view or not, or get tired of hearing from me). I've learned through Reddit, and now voat these sites are basically a popularity contest. Whoever is the most popular runs the narrative. Well why the hell can't it be us? I'd like to have engaging conversation with you, and when you piss me off I'll just call you a fagot and move on to the next post. And I will expect no less from you!

[–] • 2 pts

I think I had the privilege to be the first being called a faggot by you.

[–] • 2 pts

I think you mean faggot, also thanks for being here!

[–] • 1 pt

Lol, I got my first faggot the other week talking bout GTAV roleplay

[–] • 1 pt

That was me. I called you faggot (faggot)

[–] • 1 pt

Hey you said "(most) gamers are faggots" There's like a 5% chance I'm not lol.

[–] • 1 pt

Yes! Exactly this! Just how I felt on Voat too.

[–] [deleted] • 2 pts

Sometimes it's just good self-therapy to construct a missive that expresses your thoughts. If no one comments, that may mean that they agree.

Don't let your feelings get in the way, ever. It takes time, but, seriously, fuck how other people's words affect your feelings. They're random strangers, after all.

[–] • 1 pt

Oh I meant more of how I felt like I was an early adopter / commented often, then the "l33t" guys showed up and basically took it over and long timers kind of faded away. I did keep commenting, but then noticed no one would reply anymore or upvoat (meaning saw, liked enough to click, not that I care about voats). So seemed like talking to myself. If I'm going to do that, would rather just save a file on my computer vs. throwing my sincere thoughts to random people.

[–] • 5 pts

Only thing I can say is, I read everything everyone says to me personally, I reply to most of it too, if I didn't reply to something its not because I didn't read it, its probably because I am just a lot more busy these days. I've been seeing our sense of community getting stronger if anything but maybe I'm off base on that

  • PMYB2
[–] • 4 pts

Site is still small. Everyone kinda filling a niche and doing their own thing. There is plenty interaction in riot chat.

Riot.im

[–] • 3 pts

chat.poal.co! for home server and identity server. I should really add this somewhere.

[–] • 4 pts

Realhero33 here, I also noticed the decrease in interaction in the past few days, though I'm pretty sure it's just temporary. This isn't the first time this has happened in the 10 months I've been here.

[–] • 4 pts

You have a valid point. We don't have many comments but i feel like that is due to the smaller pool of active users. I personally will make an effort to comment and reply more

[–] [deleted] • 4 pts

I just went on, what constitutes for me, a commenting spree because I agree with you 100%.

For whatever reason, I will often type up a comment but never hit the submit button. I even did that earlier today on this post.

[–] • 0 pt

Yes this. I found myself doing it more and more here because I asked myself something like, why bother submitting / continuing this long comment if basically no one will read it? If that makes sense. And hence my post.

[–] [deleted] • 3 pts

It's bound to happen.

Most people aren't good at holding a meaningful conversation. So the more people join Poal, the more random links and less meaningful conversation you will find from the average user.

This is why I think there should be some consideration put into ording posts based not just on the up/down ticks, but also based on the amount of conversation being had (total number of comments, maybe factoring in how many different people are commenting).

Would encourage more people to comment. Keep the highly discussed topic on the front page. Incentivize starting discussions.

[–] • 1 pt

I'd like an option to just sort posts by number of comments.

[–] • 3 pts

I agree with what said.

I’d like to add that poal is a small community compared to other places, but most of its user base are adults busy with responsibilities. So the place might not be chatty at times (depends on your timezone), but I’m certain posts don’t get ignored.

Regarding votes, thing is we don’t really give a value to upvotes. It’s not what drives people to actively submit posts/comments. For example, upvotes are just a way for me to know I’ve already read a post and its comments.

We almost never use downvotes, except for spam and shieeet.

Enjoy your stay!

  • AOU
[–] • 1 pt

Hey

You are right. We are all busy adults. So when I spend my precious busy adult time to reply to someone by offering an answer to a question, different perspective, my opinion or a thought-out exact answer to what they need / asked / are looking for, it is negative reinforcement to do so again if I get no indication the person has read, agrees with or even disagrees with what I spent time to give them. The only way for me to know is through a vote or a comment. Receiving neither leaves me wondering if my time was well spent.

Regarding the rest of your comment, I've been here for 11 months, I think within a month of this site being setup. I at least view the site at least once per day. So I am aware of site size, function and use of the votes etc. Most of your reply read like a welcome to poal welcome message. Not sure if you meant it that way.

I posted since I am noticing more and more the front page is full of links (not txt posts), but most, if not all of them will have zero comments. I've found myself looking to the top posts and pretty much skipping any other part of the site anymore since top posts is where I will see discussion. If I want links, I can get them at Voat / Reddit / Drudge etc.

As I have done since I joined Poal, I point out when I see things may be going astray, whether that be a technical bug, way trolls are handled, or now, the proliferation of random (IMO meaningless) links with few votes and few, if any comments.

Luckily most people who read my post seem to have had a realization or thought that maybe they should comment more.

Losing one user is no big deal. But losing a canary is not a big deal either unless you're in a coal mine.

I like poal. I've liked getting to know all of you to the extent we can on a site like this. But I don't get to know you through random links. I've had some good discussions here and that is all I remember of Poal. Not that someone posted a music video or random news article.

That is also what I remember about the early days of Voat. The great discussions before it changed.

Anyways, I said what I wanted.

[–] • 1 pt

Hey, since we are team and AOU is rather busy today, and we discussed this post quite a bit actually, I hope you don't mind if I tag in(we are a team after all).

Man I can't tell you how often I've wished I could get more interaction on my comments, honestly I've got to agree with you the user interaction is the thing I love most about this place after almost a year of running it. Getting no indication someone has read your comment can be extremely discouraging I'm not going to argue that, I've been there myself. I'd argue its always time well spent as you don't know who down the road might gain some small insight into a problem they are having based on what you said, I know its happened to me I've been thinking about a problem I have in my life and I found a really old reddit post that had some helpful insight, we are not just creating immediate conversation here we are effectively creating conversations that could guide people in the future to solutions to their problems. Just my 2 cents on the issue, and how I choose to look at it.

I don't think he did mean it that way based on our conversation but I obviously can't be 100% sure, you are yellow so I would be surprised if he did.

Honestly the front page being full of links is a consequence of people wanting the site to remain active and not get stale, I think thats a good thing that people want to contribute so much in terms of posting content, I'd like to see more discussion and I've made a concerted effort to encourage this, I think its just one of those things that I hope will come with time, as far as getting more interaction out of the place especially good discussion I'd welcome you to participate in the podcast, I know I know people don't want to reveal their voice or anything but we have had people just commenting in text chat multiple times that we have incorporated into it. I'll make a point going forward to comment on every post I see you make within reason(If you start posting 60 post a day I might have trouble keeping up with that one)

On the pointing things out, we welcome that and I don't think meant to detract from your points, just try to explain what is happening.

On the getting to know people and doing it through discussions, I guess all I can do is issue a challenge, if you truly think that we can do better with more discussion post an askpoal post or a discussion post once a week, I'd be willing to bet the response would surprise you. I know I try to answer everyone of those that I see pop up on /all/new

I think I speak for both and myself that we will do everything we can to see that what happened to voat does not happen to poal, the content will increase but I hope the interaction increases with it, and we just get to be a bigger close knit community not just a bigger one.

Now I've said all I want to say ;)

I know is busy and I thought this deserved a decent response so I tried to go through it paragraph by paragraph. Nice having you around don't ever be afraid to call me out on something, I welcome it.

[–] • 0 pt

I don't think he did mean it that way based on our conversation but I obviously can't be 100% sure, you are yellow so I would be surprised if he did.

I usually greet people with a "welcome to poal, faggot!".

"Enjoy your stay" means have a good time here. ;)

[–] • 3 pts

I'm always a bit unsure if I should comment on posts. I just don't know if I should always be saying something. Though, that's pretty hypocritical as I always want to get comments on my posts. I'm going to try to be more of an active commenter. I'd like more of a culture of interaction, too.

[–] • 1 pt

I'd always welcome more comments.

[–] • 2 pts

Most people on sites where you can voice an opinion or comment are overwhelmingly full of lurkers. I have accounts on Poal, Voat and Reddit for different reasons and it's hard to want to comment on most posts because of the potential for harassment, doxing and other things.

[–] • 2 pts

Fine I'll try to reply more.

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