One thing I intuitively think could help a ton is an opt-out-only “First Post” (and also maybe “Second Post” and “Third Post”) tag placed on such posts.
I think it’s both good and true that Forum users would/do shift their qualitative feedback and voting in a more charitable direction if and when they knew that a particular post was a user’s first. But it currently takes a couple clicks to discern this information which I assume most people don’t actually go through upon reading every post by an author they don’t recognize. Of course charitable voting/commenting could go too far, but that seems like a fixable problem
Literally true for me, down to the physical motion of cringing (maybe more like a grimace lol), a minute ago when I stared into the abyss.
Thanks to the 13 people who gave it a like to spare me some trauma at the time, though; in all seriousness, if it had gotten 3 karma instead of 20 I don’t think I would have tried again
One thing I intuitively think could help a ton is an opt-out-only “First Post” (and also maybe “Second Post” and “Third Post”) tag placed on such posts.
I think it’s both good and true that Forum users would/do shift their qualitative feedback and voting in a more charitable direction if and when they knew that a particular post was a user’s first. But it currently takes a couple clicks to discern this information which I assume most people don’t actually go through upon reading every post by an author they don’t recognize. Of course charitable voting/commenting could go too far, but that seems like a fixable problem
To share a bit of my motivation for this idea, here’s my comment on “Your first posts will be cringe. It’s fine.” :