MyLot DON'Ts Guidelines for Responding to Discussions

You certainly have a point! I ususlly read all the response before responding myself and if someone has said what I would have said then I don't bother rsponding at all. Maybe I make a comment on another response. That would certainly be a heck of a lot of responses to read through I would give it a miss I feel. Yes I have read the Guidelines and I do so quite often too. Never know that they might have added something else which I was not aware of

Nope... I have not read the guidelines. I use common sense and my own guidelines. For the most part... I only answer the questions of my friends through notification emails. And in doing so... mylot does not provide a link to the responses... so it is impossible to read them before posting. I will sometime read a few responses after posting my own... if I am interested by what people have to say about a certain topic. You have to show iniative in life. If you did everything according to the rule's book... you would never be doing anything. You would be spending most of your life reading rules from people telling you what you can do and cannot do. I simply don't let people tell me what to do. lol

This is one rule that I do not agree with and break on a regular basis. Yep, that's right, I go against this guideline. Why, because I think it is stupid. It has to be one of the dumbest rules out there and I personally think mylot should get rid of it. As you pointed out who in their right mind is going to read all the responses first, especially when there are a lot of responses to a discussion? Not only is it time consuming it is discouraging, at least for me. If I see a discussion I want to respond to I don't want to have to read every single response before I respond. If I was to do that I would lose my train of thought on what I was going to say. One thing I will do though, if it is an older discussion and there are a lot of responses, is skim through the responses to see whether or not I already responded to it. After all, I don't want to respond to it twice! There have been times that I have read the responses first. But whenever I do that I tend to not respond to the discussion at all. I hope one day mylot gets rid of this rule, guideline, or whatever it is called. It would make mylotting a much more enjoyable experience. Just my 2 cents. PS Yes, I have read the guidelines, but as you may have noticed by now I don't agree with all of them.

Personally, I do not read all the responses before I post my response. I have a method I have followed which works pretty well. First I check to see if the discussion is a question about our personal opinions or personal habits, which I feel does not require reading the other posts. Our opinions and habits are our own and it is not likely that we will be duplicating someone else's response. So I don't feel a need to read before posting. However, I do read them after I post mine. However, if the question is a how to type question, or some other question with a specific answer required, then I will read the posts first to make sure I do not post the same answer as someone else. After that, I check the number of pages of responses. I never respond or really read responses to discussions that go beyond 3 pages. After that I don't think there is anything new to be said so why take the time. That way I don't have to deal with as many responses as you mention in your discussion. So, with a discussion such as you mentioned, I probably would not have responded unless I was within the first 3 pages of responders. But if I would have responded, I probably would have answered that I wash my dishes by hand and then gone on to read the other responses. I do not believe that discussion had to have a limit put on it. It was about personal habits and not about a specific answer to a specific problem or situation. As far as the MyLot guidelines go, there are some that could and should be revised. This is one of them. I agree we should not keep posting the same solution to a problem over and over again if it has already been answered. But the point of mylot is to get responses, so asking that kind of question will only get you one or two responses. Asking questions that look for personal habits or opinions will get the most responses. Not much chance of duplication. Guideline here should be revised. So should the one about saying thank you. It is like it is banning politeness. But there are other guidelines that need changed...and policy too...which is a major reason why this month is my last month on MyLot.

hahahahaha. I started that discussion and I'm not sure even I read all the responses!!Whew!!!!

I prefer no tto read teh other responses till i post my response, as i am likely to get biased by what the others hafe written. I like to keep my response as original as possible and that is possible only if I respond first and then see what others feel about it. That is my personal view.

I believe if it is a general question instead of it asking for your opinion they are not asking you to read them all.Use your best judgement.

A good percentage of us answer from email alerts and so we are unable to read the other responses. This isn't such a bad thing sometimes because we are responding with our own thoughts and ideas not those uttered by another member previously. I think the idea behind this guideline is so that there are not 222 members saying "I don't have a dishwasher". It's often the case that each responder says pretty much the same thing but they want to contribute their bit to the discussion as well as everyone else...even if it's the same answer as everyone else. The only time I read all the discussion is when I'm presented with the digest....unless there are too many responses of course. I also do not read when there are heaps of comments in a response where several members have contributed and it is all a lot of rubbish that is off topic and just utter nonsense.

I have read the guidelines for MyLot. Several times actually to date, but I still don't follow this guideline per se. Why is that? Because, the way that I found MyLot is the easiest for me is to respond to my friends discussions from my e-mail. For some reason, even though its part of the TOS, there's no link given in order to read the discussion first in the e-mail, only to respond. You are taken straight to the response box without a chance to read the rest of the responses to the discussion. I understand the reason for the rule. You should read the responses of the discussion in order not to duplicate a response. I'm not worried about this though. I am an individual who always responds from what I feel. I haven't seen yet where a person had the response I had, as I usually go back after I respond and read the other responses.

I think that if the original question being asked isn't just rhetoric, and is something the original poster would genuinely want opinions on, or need the answer to, I would read every response. However, if the question is "What's the weather like there?", why would I care? I'm going to join into the conversation, but I don't care if the weather is sunny in the Philippines and rainy in Tennessee. I only respond to those questions for the few cents added onto my earnings, to be honest.

Some posts are rather hard to get your head around. I usually read all the responses on a posting of this type. But when I find a Post that hits a nerve, or one that I have strong feelings about I do not read the responses because I want to keep my response to just my own ideas. I have found that when I read other peoples responses its difficult to keep my response entirely my own.

Well, I didn't realize that it was a rule that you HAD TO reall ALL the responses before responding. IF that was so, then when I get an email notification, why does it send me directly to the new response page, instead of the entire discussion so I CAN read them first. Sorry, sometimes I read some of the responses first, but not always. How am I to come up with MY OWN ideas without mixing in some of somebody else's when my head is filled with other's words. AFTER I have responded, then I see if there are any other responses that I want to comment on. That's it folks, my big no-no.

I have read all the MyLot FAQs several times, and they have actually proved quite helpful in a number of areas. I doubt many people read them, especially newbies... Anyway, I usually read the first page or two of discussions (okay, maybe I SKIM them) and then reply, but if a topic has more interesting responses, I will read more responses. I often comment anyway without reading ALL the other comments unless there were only a few, like less than 20 or so.

I try to read all of the posts prior to answering, myself. I don't ALWAYS do this, though. Sometimes I feel that I have something valuable to contribute to a given discussion and it really doesn't matter what the other people have posted. Even if they have said essentially the same thing as I would, my comment will just help to support their position. I do like to read a lot of the other posts and add comments to them as well. Really, though, if I see that a discussion already has 40 or more answers, I tend to avoid it and move on to another topic. If it is something that I feel strongly about, I might just respond anyway. In that, I agree with what DonnaLawson (post no. 9 in this thread) said. I think that the idea of a discussion is that we all have our own opinions and experiences. If there are 2 responses or 222 responses, we are still of our own unique point of view and should be able to contribute to the discussion either way. I usually don't answer a discussion that is asking a question and it has already been answered. Sometimes I might - just to support and embellish upon another person's answer.

I usually read the first 3 pages after I respond LOL I don't want my comment to change because of somethin I read. I have read th guidelines but it wasn't til this account was suspended LOL

Well, if the discussion is from a friend on my list, then no, I don't read the responses first. Why? Because it doesn't take me to where I can see the entire discussion. It just allows me to respond, without seeing what others have already written. I end up reading others responses after I post my response. But as for discussions I find on mylot itself, I usually read at least 5 to 10 responses, sometimes all, but never 222. I think the only reason to read all the responses would be for questions like how do you fix a microwave or who is the secretary of state. Those questions would have a limited answer, so I would look to make sure my response would not be moot. That is just my opinion though.

I have never read the MyLot Discussion Guidelines and I am not being smart about it but I don't read all of the responses before responding.. I read the entire new discussion, but I never read the responses and don't intend to.. My response is just that, "My Response".. My thoughts and opinions are mine and mine alone, they don't hinge on what someone else has to say in a response.. If all 222 people said, "No, they use the dishwaser, my responses would still have to been to say that I do my dishes by hand" and I see no reason to read all of the responses before mine to know the correct response to this one.. So my answer is, NO, I don't read all of the responses before responding for myself.. I do however, find ones that I do read all of before responding but it is to make sure that I know what I am responding to and that doesn't happen often...

I think most of us don't read all the responses because on some discussions like you said it would take too long to read all of them. For me I read most responses especially the first few and last few response or any which catches my eye.

I read the guidelines when I first joined Mylot and I do read some of the responses to a discussion before responding but, if there are too many...and 222 is waaaay too many ...then I just respond. I believe that what mylot wants folks to do is to not respond the exact same way over and over again in a discussion. Also, by reading some of the responses already posted, you may come up with something to add that you hadn't thought of prior to reading the thoughts of others.

When I first started here,I read the guidelines weekly. Now I skim over them about once a month. One thing for sure, if I break a guideline, somebody will be sure to turn me in & brag just before my discussion gets deleted. As I enjoy knowing what other people here think, I usually try & read every response before answering. Yes, I've done it when there were 80 responses. NO, I won't when there are over 200. Everybody here looks at that guideline in a different light. I wonder why that rule is there as when we receive our notifications for a new discussion, it takes us directly to the response window with NO opportunity to even see what others have said. I've seen the question more than once as to How does myLot know whether I read all of them or not? I do my best to read them ALL simply because I enjoy seeing what was said. At a certain point, I believe it becomes unnecessary. I believe in adhering to the rules, but there comes a point where it is not feasible!!! I don't think you'll be banned for not reading over 200 responses before giving your opinion. I've always found that reading all the responses doesn't change my opinion...but has given me something to think about at times. I still suggest you read all responses when you can; but at over 200, I believe Admin will forgive you of that one sin. Unlike in life, there are varying degrees of sin here!!!