Reading is one of the most essential things in human culture. People read many types of things, from online sources (news, social media groups, message platforms), from paper things (textbooks, newspaper), and more. Today, I would like to raise to discussion, that is also a Warning for posters, especially newbies.
What we should do first in the forum? Reading, Writing, or Discussing?
No matter what your opnion is, the answer for all of us is available there:
Newbies - Read before posting (by Lauda)
Besides things presented in the Lauda's topic,I want to ask you: What we should read?
[1] Reading the OP's title;
[2] Reading the OP's contents;
[3] Reading previous flow of discussions;
[4] Reading the day of last post.
Let's look deeper in to each of these three Reading steps.
[1] Reading the OP's titleTopic title is the one that help readers to fastly have first impression and main ideas of one topic. It is only true with topics that have good title. Theymos has a guide on how to make good topic titles here:
Topic title style guideYou should read the topic titles first, before moving to OP contents and read more. If the topic tiltes are boring, you can skip those topics. However, I don't generalize that boring topic titles are always equal to boring topics. Maybe, sometimes writers don't have good skills to choose good titles for their topics. So, if you actually have time to read, you should move to read OP's contents, even with boring topic titles.
[2] Reading the OP's contentsThe topic titles give your first impressions, but the most important thing of topics are OP's contents. Good topics mostly have well-organized contents. They usually writen down with main points, from which details, minor points will be spred out to express what authors want to talk about. Therefore, you have to read the OP's contents before start to think of writing down your posts and join discussions.
[3] Reading previous flow of discussionsAfter reading the first two (Topic title, and OP), you should spend your time to find out which things have been discussed till the day you find that topic. Which flow of dicussions and ideas raised and answered in previous posts. This step is only unnecessary when you are the first people find and read topic, and there is no or less replies after OP before you read it.
You can read OP, or someone do a little better by readind the OP, and last post, or OP + first previous posts after OP + last posts, then typing your reply with intention to help authors or to discuss, but it will become non-sense and off-context reply if topic's authors actually find what they asked for with replies for others, before yours.
Tips:- Reading the OP;
- Scanning to find merited posts, and read some posts around merited posts;
- Reading last few posts.
[4] Reading the day of last postIt does not always true but creating new post to reply to such topics most likely spamming, then your posts most likely will be reported or deleted by mods.
It is spam (usually account farmers). If they miss the posting date, they shouldn't miss the red warning while trying to post:
Other stuffs for WritingIf you don't have the intent to pass off someone else's work as your own in order to pad your post count/size, then you don't deserve a ban, at least.
By university standards, well-known quotes should be in quotation marks, but need not be cited. Sayings don't need quotation marks.