Users vs. Guests

I would guess sometimes people look at the boards without logging in.

@frimmel:

I would guess sometimes people look at the boards without logging in.

I sometimes do that.  I’ll hop over to the site and have a quick check at the front page to look for new postings.  If there aren’t any, or at least none that I’m particularly interested in, I’ll leave without signing on.

Can confirm that people don’t always sign in… I am one of them.

I joined this site many years ago and have been a regular visitor since. I love A&A and I the love a lot of the content in these forums. I get plenty of enjoyment/insight from the content everyone posts. I also like to glean new strategies and read about players game experiences. I quickly got out of the habit of posting though, for a number of reasons. In no particular order, here are a few of said reasons for being mostly a forum appreciator rather than contributor:

I am loathe to make a redundant post. Many of my questions about the games/ new rule versions are already answered (I just have to look for them). Why bother cluttering up an already monstrously large forum?

The forum website itself is a little cumbersome and old fashioned. I primarily use a smart phone and I find it is difficult to make posts on a little screen. If there is a mobile friendly version, I am not aware of it… But it’s existence would make things much easier for people like me!

It is sometimes tough to keep track of conversations. In the day and age of things like facebook, twitter or whatever social media you use, this forum lacks a lot of the nice ‘interactive’ and ‘user friendly’ notification features. It takes time to sift through dozens of threads/posts to see if there was a response to your post.

I’m a bit of perfectionist. It takes a while for me to make a post and often I just would rather continue reading or move on to something else.

Some posters can be shy and some can be a little disrespectful. It’s tough to speak your mind about something you are passionate about when people trash you or your friends.

Over the years, I have used dozens of devices/computers and wipe cache for all of them quite often. I guess you could say I’m a little lazy and often don’t bother signing in… In fact, I had gone a couple of years without signing in and had totally forgotten my password!

I think that about covers it. Hope that shines some light for you regular posters.

PS- this thread encouraged me to post once again. Go figure!

Thanks for your insights, Admiral T, and welcome aboard…though I’m not sure that’s precisely the right phrase, since your post indicates that you’ve actually been aboard for many years, albeit in a low-profile way.  “Welcome to the ranks of the active posters” might perhaps fit better.

I have the same problem you stated (if it qualifies as a problem, which is a debatable point) about being fussy with my posts, and what I’ve found to be the best way to handle it is to pre-type my posts (say, in Word) and then to cut-and-paste the finished text into a posting box on the forum.  My original motivation for writing posts this way, however, had nothing to do with fussiness; it was simply a trick to avoid losing all my work when, for whatever reason, a message I’d typed directly into the forum got lost in transmission – as has happened to me a few times, leading me in each case to direct some highly unparliamentary language at my computer screen.  I later discovered that, as a bonus, this technique allowed me to write posts that I liked better because I could take the time to compose them properly and, if need be, put them on hold and come back to finish them later.  So this method turned out to be a good fit for me.  I’m not sure it would work quite as well on smartphone, however; I’m still very much a desktop keyboard devotee, which is just as well considering how long some of my posts get to be.

Anyway, good to hear from you!

One more thing!

There are undoubtably thousands of casual A&A fans from around the world. I’d bet my bottom dollar that many of the Guests are simply those people who stumble upon this site.

Also, thanks for the welcome back after my long hiatus CWO Marc! You and I share a similar process for avoiding… ‘unparliamentary language’ :) . As you say, it doesn’t work as well on the smartphone though… :(

@CWO:

Thanks for your insights, Admiral T, and welcome aboard…though I’m not sure that’s precisely the right phrase, since your post indicates that you’ve actually been aboard for many years, albeit in a low-profile way.  “Welcome to the ranks of the active posters” might perhaps fit better.

I have the same problem you stated (if it qualifies as a problem, which is a debatable point) about being fussy with my posts, and what I’ve found to be the best way to handle it is to pre-type my posts (say, in Word) and then to cut-and-paste the finished text into a posting box on the forum.  My original motivation for writing posts this way, however, had nothing to do with fussiness; it was simply a trick to avoid losing all my work when, for whatever reason, a message I’d typed directly into the forum got lost in transmission – as has happened to me a few times, leading me in each case to direct some highly unparliamentary language at my computer screen.  I later discovered that, as a bonus, this technique allowed me to write posts that I liked better because I could take the time to compose them properly and, if need be, put them on hold and come back to finish them later.  So this method turned out to be a good fit for me.  I’m not sure it would work quite as well on smartphone, however; I’m still very much a desktop keyboard devotee, which is just as well considering how long some of my posts get to be.

Anyway, good to hear from you!

From another site I got in the habit of copying my posts before submission and pasting them if they get lost. Its worked for me.

A funny story - I challenged Admiral T to a game online because of this post -and upon discussion…

We discovered that from 2009 - 2011 we lived literally a stones throw from each other lol.

For all you lurkers out there… sign in… you never know who your neighbour is!