An honest question...

[BryanaCamp]

hi @Eden1919 

I find it can be emotionally exhausting welcoming new members to the forum. Unfortunately I've found that when I've put a lot of work into answering their post they don't seem to write much back, much less be able to offer support to others.

I participate in the forum quite regularly because I'm bored and lonely during the day being unemployed and like to feel a sense of connection to something and to have people to catch up with. I come here for company but if it feels like someone is not likely to be company, is not looking for that and wants emergency support with something very specific then I might be hesitant to reply to them as I expect that the support will be one-way.

[Appleblossom]

I often am in different states of minds so only post as authentic to that moment. 

At first I covered all posts without replies and would search the threads.  I was going back in time too.  Someone told me to only focus on recent posts.  In my life I have waited a LONG time for responses and my needs to be met, so I had no sense of what was reasonable.

There are so many ways to contribute on the forum. I think it is important for the mods to be aware of the difficulties ... thats what they are there for .... without making some people favourites or trouble makers .... or goodies and baddies ....I was uber sensitive to any of that kind of thing and still try and break that down.  I am more likely to pass by someone who seems to have  a lot of support and respond to outliers ....

I dont need a response back as I dont know the full circumstances, but just hope I have made a small difference.  When I was made a community guide I took it even more seriously, but in the end felt a little controlled, and withdrew to honour myself, rather than having to deny aspects of who I am.  I still probably act in that way for the most part, but when I am in need, or have a sore spot ... I allow it to be.

[Ali11]

Great thread to start @Eden1919! Communities can be a lot like the outside world, some people gravitate towards each other, some might misinterpret one comment and put up walls about the commenter, which takes time to move past and change that impression, other times (as mentioned in an earlier comment) it may just be that people aren't in the right frame of mind to reply or don't feel they can add to the thread. From experience, this community is very friendly, supportive and welcoming as they get to know people, there are so many wonderful friendships and connections formed here. That said, not everyone has the same needs for support. @Teej had a great point "It might be helpful if we had a discussion about sharing what works as support for each of us individual". Maybe we could make that one of the questions for new members in the Introduce Yourself Here thread, what form of support do people like, replies to everything they post, 'likes' that support their posts or just to observe and feel part of a community? As a couple of people noted, there are so many threads on here, and some days it can be easy to just visit the threads you know well and spend time in them, other days you may feel like seeing who is new and what brought them to SANE. As long as everyone focuses on the love and support that is here, it's likely that they'll be positive about being online and replying to more people who join. Whew, that was a lot of typing 

Thanks for starting this discussion, @Eden1919! You've got a lot of us thinking about ways to better welcome and support new members. Everyone was new here at one stage, so we should all remember how daunting it can be to feel like the new kid in school  

[outlander]

HI @Eden1919 and everyone
Firstly i wanted to say that im hearing what your saying and what your concerns are in regards to this.

Besides what others have said about connections, comfort levels, experience etc, one thing ive noticed about the 'mini' communities is that the people who seem to have those generally have their stories all in the same place ie using the same thread rather than starting new ones. Im aware this might seem intimidating (even though its not intentional) to others and i totally understand that i was and still am to an extent like that, its where that person/people have felt most comfortable in sharing what is happening for them.

the part i struggle with when it comes to connecting with a newer or even regular membesr is the constant new threads they create where their story is really spread out rather than having the one or 2 threads and inviting members to those.

some members have multiple threads running but each new thread is almost like a continuation on from the previous post so instead of answering or updating those few members on their current thread they just create a new one. Generally by the time ive caught up with that member again ive missed out on alot of relevant details that they are now being repeating to me so i could catch up. Ive found that when this happens also alot of people stop interacting with those members because they themselves feel ignored and dont want to 'chase' people to keep up with them.
So sometimes a member may seem like they only have one or 2 supporters there are several others on their various threads as well.

In saying all of this, im not discouraging anyone to create new threads where they feel they need to but my view in seeing those mini communities comes from basically those members having everything in the one place and inviting others to there rather than having things scatterred around all different threads.

hope this makes sense...

[Eden1919]

@outlander  i understand what you mean about multiple threads but i think people make new ones because people stop responding to the origginal one. most of the time the last post is by the original poster and nobody replies which sometimes is because there isnt much to add but also i think then people feel like that thread is then being ignored but idk that is just my observation. 

I dont know if i can remember who said what exactly but i think someone mentioned about quality vs quantity and while i completely agree i dont believe those 2 things are mututally exclusive sometimes the quantity can have a relationship to the quality for example if someone wants to feel like people are listening they may feel like getting only thumbs up or maybe one reply might not feel like they are being heard. which there is nothing worng with the reply they did recieve and i am sure they are very greatful but i think it is confusing especially for new members when they see a thread with thousands of replies and theirs has one. now mostly people dont look at the date of when things were posted here because usually the most recent post is at the top but some of these threads are years old and thats why there are so many replies but it could have the effect of making the forums look a lot more active than they actually are leading to more confusion for new members. 

i do agree that currently mostly the people replying to new member threads are the same buch of people who seem to be the most active of the longer term members which is fine and as others have said everyone has different needs but it does make it hard to get to everyone. but i think that becomes a catch 22 of sorts because the new people come dont get many replies or dont get maybe what they expected and then they don't stick around which then makes people feel like they might not want to reply to newer people because they dont reply back. really it just seems like a bit of a large and ever changing wild goose chase (this makes sense in my head but struggling with explanations today). 

also as for basing things on how many replies you get that wasnt so much what i was trying to adress.... more the aspect of continued vs non continued support and why some threads have people coming back while other threads just disappear. 

@Former-Member  as far as what the moderators could do maybe if possbile they could keep more of an eye out for unanswered threads or maybe open up a few different sections for different topics i understand this could be complicted so idk about logistics but maybe if there were more specifc places to post then there wouldnt be so much general traffic and it would be easier for people to find things they relate to. so like instead of just a blanket problems section you could keep that but add some other things for different common issues. but idk if that made any sense i also think my idea provided i even got it accross would work because i feel like it could eaither be really good or have the complete oppoosite reaction and make more clique type groups and split people up..... but i really dont know but i think it could be good to have some other sections maybe not as many as i was thinking at first but just to make it a little less chaotic. 

[CheerBear]

Hi @Eden1919. I'm another hearing you and wanting to add to this conversation. I think there are some great replies and I'll try not to double up with my suggestions and ideas, though I have already forgotten a bit of what I've read in the last pages!

I think some people join the forum to find particular info, have a specific question answered or to get something off their chest and once that has happened they move on. We can't assume that all people want lots of replies and continued discussion (not that anyone is suggesting that) but maybe we can find a way of asking new members what they'd like from the community too? I think that is something someone else suggested and I really like this idea.

Another thing I think we can do is ask more open-ended questions when replying to new posts as a way of inviting continued discussion. Maybe we can also invite people into the social spaces and active social chat threads where they can get to know others if they'd like. Perhaps we can create more of these social threads and spaces too?

I think there is definitely a place for long threads that are based around one member's ongoing story where mini communities seem to form. I thought it was a great idea to move longer threads into "Our stories" where they can sit together with other ongoing threads. From what I see, most people when they join initially post in "Something's not right" and I think it could be very disheartening to have their new post receive only a couple of replies while sitting next threads with hundreds or even thousands of ongoing supportive posts. Perhaps something Community Managers can do to help with this issue is to continue to move ongoing threads into a section that is more suited to the ongoing theme and topic of the thread. I know this has been discussed a lot and that the most recent thread about this has been closed so I feel like im putting my neck out a bit here in bringing this up again, but I think it is important to mention as it seems the wider community agreed this was one way of working through this issue. To an extent it has happened, but I think there could be a more consistent approach.

Something I have noticed that seems to have helped is having the unanswered section on the forum landing page. From what I see, new posts are receiving replies much sooner than they used to. To me that was a helpful change that came from the big forum update.

I think it is great that you start these kinds of discussions @Eden1919 as I think it is through these conversations that we can all work together to build and grow the community. I hope it has helped to see that people are listening.

[Former-Member]

Hey @Eden1919  thanks so much I am going to reflect with the team on your ideas here, and have some chats to some humans in the background at SANE HQ 🙂 Thank you for opening up this conversation, it's been a really important discussion for everyone.