Backreaders Team Guide

[mime]

-----------============ WORK IN PROGRESS ============-----------

So you're interested in backreading? That's awesome! We'd love to have you as part of the backreading team. It's an honorable activity that helps grow the community by ensuring that people are reading everything that gets posted on our forum's threads. In this post, I'll try to give you all of the tools you'll need to effectively backread any thread in here, even Anti-Social & Lurker Hang Out Spot.

What is "Backreading"?
Backreading is the term we use for reading pages of a thread that aren't the current page. As of the writing of this, Anti-Social & Lurker Hang Out Spot has 3975 pages of content and 79,500 posts. It doesn't mean going back and reading the entirely of that thread, because very few people would have the time to complete that task anymore.

Most backreaders start where they start and keep up with the thread as it grows. And if you're wondering, yes, a handful of us did read the entire thread. It's weeks of reading for hours a day to accomplish, so I don't recommend trying to join that club! It's not worth it!

How does backreading help the community?
When you backread a thread, you are reacting to some of the content as you go. This does a few things:

• It reminds the person of the content they posted earlier and lets them know how people felt about it.
• It lets users know that someone actually read their post. For some users (especially new ones), they won't have a reaction on their post, so might feel as if they're throwing messages into the void. This lets them know there's a community reading what they post.
• It gives people LC Coins for their contribution to the community here.

It sounds like backreading helps others, does it help me too?
You're right that you don't get coins for reacting to other people's posts, however, there are some benefits if you need them to get you backreading.

• Backreaders know a lot of things about what's going on in a thread. You know the context of conversations. You know the people posting. You know topics that have been covered before. This gives you context to work with in your own posts. You can reference shared history in the thread. You can cater your posts to specific people. You can avoid asking questions that have been answered, and can answer them if someone else asks a repeat question.
• You read a lot of content, which means you can reply to it as you go. If you're worried about replying to 8 hour old content, don't worry about it. Reviving those topics can be fun in chat as long as it wasn't something that required timing to matter.
• People in the forums tend to like the backreaders. This in itself is a benefit, because people even forgive some of your transgressions. Like nudging people into the first pig war...
• You get more reactions when people recognize you. People notice the names of people who fill their alerts with reaction messages that gave them lots of coins.

OK, I'm going to try backreading. How do I keep track of where I left off?
There are a couple of ways that I know of for keeping track and work well for some of us.

• DO NOT TRY TO REMEMBER PAGE NUMBERS - There are sometimes deleted posts or threads merging into others. If you're tracking page number, it can change.
• Using the LC bookmarking feature. I sometimes bookmark the post where I next need to continue. I give it a label of "backreading", so I know it's a backreading bookmark. When I log back in, I check my bookmarks, and it's the first in the list and it has the correct label.
• Some people keep a backreading tab open in their browser. If you keep lots of tabs open, just keep one for backreading, opening new tabs if you need to go to other pages in the thread to reply or see what's happening.
• Use your browser bookmarks. Be sure to use the link to the post where you left off. It'll be the number in the top right corner and is the post number in the thread. This post, for example is "#1" in this thread. That's a direct link to this post.

When I backread, I am not engaging with current topics. How can I?
There are two main ways that I try to keep up with the current thread. One is for when I know there's a topic I want to be engaged in that's current in the thread, and the other is what I use the rest of the time.

• If I'm just backreading normally, I try to post something before I backread a full page. I do this for 2 reasons. I want to be engaging with the thread, so this ensures I do that. Also, new posts since your page load will be included at the bottom of the current screen, above your post when you post something. I then interact with those new posts. If more than a few new posts were made, I miss those, but it gets me a nice snapshot of what is going on.
• If I know there's an important topic, I keep 2 tabs open, one for backreading and one for frontreading. At the end of each page of reading, I reload the front to see if there's anything new I care about. I also check it each time I make a reply as I backread. This lets me interact with new stuff.
  
  • Be warned when doing this, that it'll slow your backread. If you're in a hurry to catch up, don't do this.

 

[mime]

Tips to make backreading easier:

• The easiest way to engage the community is through gifs, since they're more attention-grabbing.
  
  • Stockpile gifs locally.
  • Save interesting ones as you read - yes, it's OK to save the ones people are using.
  • Keep a tab open to giphy, google images, etc. to find new ones to use.
    
    • If you don't think you'll reuse it, just copy-paste the image to avoid saving locally.
• If a post is long, skim through it for interesting bits. Sometime you know what someone's saying, since they say similar a lot. You can breeze by those quickly.
• You don't have to react to everything, in fact, don't react to everything.
• These are roughly how I use each reaction, you can do the same or your own.
  
  • If found it humorous, 🤣
  • If they're being a jerk 🖕
  • If their content is negative to the community 👎
  • If you love what they posted or it's heartfelt in some way ❤️
  • If you're thinking about it or wondering about something 🤔
  • If you don't like it or feel bad for them
  • If the content is shocking, terrifying, or disturbing 😲
  • If the content needs a facepalm (self explanatory) 🤦‍♂️
  • If the content makes you angry 😡
  • If someone posted something hot
  • Everything else (or you're feeling lazy) 👍
    
  Effects of each reaction

  All reactions will give 5 coins to the person whose post you react to. And this image shows the amount of change to their reaction score.
  

  You must be registered to see attachments
• The mods can't catch everything. Trust me, some of us have read more posts on here than they have. If you see content violating the rules, report it.
  
  • I've reported tons of content that's gotten deleted.
  • The rules are there to keep the forum up and running smoothly.
• Some of the content that gets posted is disturbing. We joke and post about using "eye bleach" all the time. Here are some tips when that content is in a thread.
  
  • If it disturbs you, try to avoid it
    
    • Scroll past quickly.
    • Watch for marked spoilers and don't open them.
  • If you need a break, go to one of the safer image threads where less of that content appears.
    
    • I like redheads, so I made a Redhead Thread where I can give my eyes a break.
      
      • You don't have to make your own, you can check out any that others have made.
  • If it's too much, you can skip some pages in your backread to try to avoid it, because the threads do sometimes stay on a topic.
• Don't try to fully catch up every time.
  
  • If I'm more than 20 pages behind, I may know I'm not going to catch up, so I post about it.
    
    • Example of what I might say: "Starting this 20+ page backread, but I won't catch up. Anything fun in these? If not, someone please post some good stuff for when I continue this thanks! ❤️ "
      
      • Change "good stuff" to a request. People are more likely to ai-generate things for backreaders, since it's a tough job.
• Don't be afraid of saying when you start/end your backread.
  
  • It's one of the "low effort" bits of engagement that the community is OK with.
  • Since you're about to spend a bunch of time doing other work for the community, people won't give you a hard time about your post's context being just about the backread.

 

[Silrog22]

You must be registered to see attachments

 

[mime]

Yeah, I think it’ll help! comment your advice. I’ll be adding to the first post!

 

[Silrog22]

Advice from my experience so far as an avid backreader:

1. Remember where you left off at
2. Make a stockpile of gifs and memes to have to respond with (collect as you go for future use)
3. You don't need to "read" every last word in a conversation, skimming through is fine to understand the context at hand
4. You don't need to "like" every post you see, some don't deserve it
5. If you spot something that's against the thread or site rules, call it out and report it
6. Expect your eyes to burn, because they will eventually from either hundred of pages or from the eye bleaching from certain posts
7. Have a video, stream, music, etc. going in the background as something to disconnect from some of the posts as needed

 

[mime]

Quotes about backreading (saved)

Not a damn thing. I got all caught up on backreading then there's no one here. That could be why I got caught up.

Ok so here's a good question. How do I keep things in context While I'm watching the back readers and talking to my self?

Finally caught up on reading.

You must be registered to see attachments

Eyes are dead.

But, I didn't need to use bleach this time, which was a surprise.

That´s why the backreading is pretty fast this time. Even with the constant distraction on other things.

extremely much boring content to skip.

Ok. gotta read more.

Okay more boring topic so you can backread faster......

Oh.
It was a slow time.
3 replies from me.
Anti-Social & Lurker Hang Out Spot
Of course I did not know.
Because I´m still backreading...
Is it bad?
Nah, don´t think so.

Oh.
Present...
It was not so much today..
No unseen. or eye bleach.

I’m doing some backreading. I’ll be gone most of the day for Mother’s Day. I might be on tomorrow and will try to be active a bunch on Monday!

❤️

Love ya too!

 

[VND]

Eh, What?

 

[UnusualGhost]

Some of the content that gets posted is disturbing. We joke and post about using "eye bleach" all the time. Here are some tips when that content is in a thread.

• If it disturbs you, try to avoid it
  
  • Scroll past quickly.
  • Watch for marked spoilers and don't open them.

Only thing I can suggest to improve would be a note here that replying to a post with spoilers will show you what is in the spoiler.

 

[mime]

Only thing I can suggest to improve would be a note here that replying to a post with spoilers will show you what is in the spoiler.

OMG! Yes, I forgot to mention that as a warning! THANK YOU!! 🤣

 

[conzibald]

just gonna leave this in here

You must be registered to see attachments

 

[Slumdum]

Don't know if these need to be said but...

• Don't be afraid to break a line of only one kind of reactions, example a post has only , and you want to react with a different one like a .
• And don't be afraid to be the first to react to a post.

Watch for marked spoilers and don't open them.

But miiiimmmeee..... I HAVE to know if the spoiler tag is right...
Must click it!

You must be registered to see attachments

 

[mime]

Don't know if these need to be said but...

• Don't be afraid to break a line of only one kind of reactions, example a post has only , and you want to react with a different one like a .
• And don't be afraid to be the first to react to a post.

But miiiimmmeee..... I HAVE to know if the spoiler tag is right...
Must click it!

You must be registered to see attachments

Yeah those are great! I'm the first to react to a bunch of posts. Sometimes people just don't see it, especially if it lacks jpegs/gifs.

I also click all of the spoilers, but you don't have to in order to backread.

 

[mlpatreon2]

You can also mid click on "Reply" to open it in a new tab to collect the posts that you may want to reply. After reading, reply to those you want, close the ones you don't want. Otherwise you can lose the post you want to reply, or the spot that you were reading.

 

[mime]

You can also mid click on "Reply" to open it in a new tab to collect the posts that you may want to reply. After reading, reply to those you want, close the ones you don't want. Otherwise you can lose the post you want to reply, or the spot that you were reading.

Yep, extra tabs work really well to keep your place. I also often use this link to get back to where I was replying from after I reply.

You must be registered to see attachments

 

[Tosser]

-----------============ WORK IN PROGRESS ============-----------

So you're interested in backreading? That's awesome! We'd love to have you as part of the backreading team. It's an honorable activity that helps grow the community by ensuring that people are reading everything that gets posted on our forum's threads. In this post, I'll try to give you all of the tools you'll need to effectively backread any thread in here, even Anti-Social & Lurker Hang Out Spot.

What is "Backreading"?
Backreading is the term we use for reading pages of a thread that aren't the current page. As of the writing of this, Anti-Social & Lurker Hang Out Spot has 3975 pages of content and 79,500 posts. It doesn't mean going back and reading the entirely of that thread, because very few people would have the time to complete that task anymore.

Most backreaders start where they start and keep up with the thread as it grows. And if you're wondering, yes, a handful of us did read the entire thread. It's weeks of reading for hours a day to accomplish, so I don't recommend trying to join that club! It's not worth it!

How does backreading help the community?
When you backread a thread, you are reacting to some of the content as you go. This does a few things:

• It reminds the person of the content they posted earlier and lets them know how people felt about it.
• It lets users know that someone actually read their post. For some users (especially new ones), they won't have a reaction on their post, so might feel as if they're throwing messages into the void. This lets them know there's a community reading what they post.
• It gives people LC Coins for their contribution to the community here.

It sounds like backreading helps others, does it help me too?
You're right that you don't get coins for reacting to other people's posts, however, there are some benefits if you need them to get you backreading.

• Backreaders know a lot of things about what's going on in a thread. You know the context of conversations. You know the people posting. You know topics that have been covered before. This gives you context to work with in your own posts. You can reference shared history in the thread. You can cater your posts to specific people. You can avoid asking questions that have been answered, and can answer them if someone else asks a repeat question.
• You read a lot of content, which means you can reply to it as you go. If you're worried about replying to 8 hour old content, don't worry about it. Reviving those topics can be fun in chat as long as it wasn't something that required timing to matter.
• People in the forums tend to like the backreaders. This in itself is a benefit, because people even forgive some of your transgressions. Like nudging people into the first pig war...
• You get more reactions when people recognize you. People notice the names of people who fill their alerts with reaction messages that gave them lots of coins.

OK, I'm going to try backreading. How do I keep track of where I left off?
There are a couple of ways that I know of for keeping track and work well for some of us.

• DO NOT TRY TO REMEMBER PAGE NUMBERS - There are sometimes deleted posts or threads merging into others. If you're tracking page number, it can change.
• Using the LC bookmarking feature. I sometimes bookmark the post where I next need to continue. I give it a label of "backreading", so I know it's a backreading bookmark. When I log back in, I check my bookmarks, and it's the first in the list and it has the correct label.
• Some people keep a backreading tab open in their browser. If you keep lots of tabs open, just keep one for backreading, opening new tabs if you need to go to other pages in the thread to reply or see what's happening.
• Use your browser bookmarks. Be sure to use the link to the post where you left off. It'll be the number in the top right corner and is the post number in the thread. This post, for example is "#1" in this thread. That's a direct link to this post.

When I backread, I am not engaging with current topics. How can I?
There are two main ways that I try to keep up with the current thread. One is for when I know there's a topic I want to be engaged in that's current in the thread, and the other is what I use the rest of the time.

• If I'm just backreading normally, I try to post something before I backread a full page. I do this for 2 reasons. I want to be engaging with the thread, so this ensures I do that. Also, new posts since your page load will be included at the bottom of the current screen, above your post when you post something. I then interact with those new posts. If more than a few new posts were made, I miss those, but it gets me a nice snapshot of what is going on.
• If I know there's an important topic, I keep 2 tabs open, one for backreading and one for frontreading. At the end of each page of reading, I reload the front to see if there's anything new I care about. I also check it each time I make a reply as I backread. This lets me interact with new stuff.
  
  • Be warned when doing this, that it'll slow your backread. If you're in a hurry to catch up, don't do this.

I was wondering why I also noticed you popping up in my reactions quite a bit. Thanks for this thread and for you and the team doing what they're doing. It's something for me to consider. With the lurker thread in particular, I'll get there and there will be 200+ new pages after a single day, and I'll just give up and skip unless I happen to open to a post that really catches my attention.

Appreciate ya! Keep up the good work.

 

[mime]

Some useful gifs for backreaders!

Reading and Backreading

You must be registered to see attachments

 

[Happy Time]

I want to share my input damn it!

One thing I have noticed is that there are a few that might start back reading and be over whelmed from the start.
I think maybe adding an intro (Back reading 101) might be a good plan.
Honestly for many starting 20 pages back is daunting. I would suggest 5 to 10 pages to start.
Gives them more of a chance to get used to it. And before they know it they are just picking up where they left off.
It might also be worth while to mention going to some of the smaller threads and share the love.
We have one or two that have started back reading, that were pulled from smaller threads on the big thread now.
For those with cool down timers. Quoting a post rather then liking a post helps them get to where they need to be faster.
They will get more likes on quotes. Then when the timer is gone for them, BAM! They can let those likes flow.
Just wanted to share a couple of thoughts didn't mean for it to become a damn book.

OK I'm done now.

 

[VND]

@Happy Time Do you like every post you read?

 

[Happy Time]

@Happy Time Do you like every post you read?

As long as the post isn't lame ass spam or the person isn't being an ass hat, yes.
There are times when I'm in a hurry I don't.
If I don't get what was said but still give a like.
I do read the posts. So if it's funny I laugh. I'll admit sometimes I don't get a joke.
I do give more then just likes.

 

[tylkasta42]

awesome to see a guide made for that... - maybe, if we did something like this back then, there would have been more to do so... i mean... it seems there's a pretty big number of ppl doing so now... at least partially^^
so thank you for this guide, and also for improving the awareness about it... feels like the hangout's been in good hands - well done to @ll contributors!

guess i can lay back some more, maybe with

her

You must be registered to see attachments

?