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
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.
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.
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. ;)
(post is archived)