An observation on behaviour

It is sometimes stated a poster has posted before as it establishes a timeline and further background information.

You can only comment on what you know.

Sometimes, you may remember the username or story details or use the search function to see if the poster had participated in the community before.

It also depends what your purpose for posting is - you want advice to improve the problem or you want support/poster is venting

Sometimes a person will ask for help on a specific problem and get replies and then, for any number of reasons, come back months later for advice on the same problem.

It is then that a few posters will pounce respond with a query which implies, 'What are you posting again for, wasn't the first lot of advice enough?'

Fact is, we don't know any background to these problems; we don't know the persons posting. We certainly don't know the issues and capabilities (or lack thereof) of people who post here.

Maybe they forgot. Maybe they didn't like the first lot of answers. Who knows?

The thing with Gransnet is not to take it too seriously.

This is a place where people who have opinions from A to Z and all shades in between are free to post and one would hope, politely.

Vain hope sometimes

You don't have to take any notice. You don't have to believe what's written here. You would certainly be unwise to get drawn in to contentious conversations.

Treat it a bit like Trivia: interesting, educative sometimes but entirely irrelevant to most people's real lives.

It just shows how involved people become in a site like this. I think what often happens, is that people post the same questions on various sites, not just this one. They then forget which ones they posted on.
It is also true that some of the people are not genuine. I know for a fact that some people start a thread just to see what the reaction is!

Interesting perspectives and I appreciate your replies. You have given me food for thought!

I never remember anything I read on here, or who posted what. I tend to respond to the OP straight away, much like if I were sitting with them having a coffee. I only read other posts once I’ve responded. I don’t want to be influenced by other opinions. Of course, you’ll always get people questioning why you don’t know something, ie didn’t you read the posts? I just ignore them. I won’t be holding anything against you, because I’ll just forget!!

Sometimes when the site looks boring people post a question to get chat going.

I don’t think people are being aggressive, I’ve seen posts that I vaguely remember before, I don’t bring it to the attention of other posters though, just read and comment if the post is of interest to me. I think gransnet is great, and can at times be very informative . No need to feel wary of posting Midnightschild. We are a great bunch lol