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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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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