bus

I'm just hardly ever on bus anymore.

I stepped away from the whole board for a while. I popped in now and then to say hallo and send the newbies pms but for the most part I needed a break.
I am slowly coming back onto the board. It will take time but I am willing to stay on the welcome wagon.

Emi

1. I'm sort of flighty; short attention span and all of that. I can't hang around one place too long without losing interest. So I don't stick around here constantly, but I keep coming back. I'm also been recently diagnosed officially (cyclothymia, atypical ocd, general anxiety); and that's been interesting, as far as my everyday life is concerned; thus limiting my time online.

2. More specific things I can do to help out.

i find it rude when people dont reply to my welcome PM's, so i stopped PMing people.
maybe thats just me or whatever, and i know maybe its scary for some members to get a PM when they have *first* joined -- but it wouldnt hurt them to reply and say thanks, or reply to any questions you ask.
also, i still have 5 pms in my outbox that have been there since september.
i think the WW functions fine that way it is -- nothing needs to change, really.

It was really my own depression. I went through a lot of therapy about SA that took a lot of energy. I am now trying to schedule my life and parent myself so to speak, and I can definately try to make the welcome wagon routine. It is easier now that some other of life's stresses have been or are being resolved.

Thanks for all the replies, i have not been on bus for about a month now, due to various reasons, but am back now and after i have caught up with things and when i get time i will start going through all the replies.

Sorry if it seems i am not doing anything, life is a bit manic at the moment.

Alex

Just to let ya'll know i have slowly started to work my way through the responses. What i will be doing is picking out the main points from everyones reply and creating a whole overview of what has been said here. From that it will hopefully make it easier to work out what needs changing, what works, what doesnt work etc. and from that i can start discussing with other mods/admins and hopefully any neccessary changes can be made.

Alex

I've gone through all the responses and narrowed them all down to a few key points.

Reasons for inactivity:

Didnt recieve responses from pm's sent
Issues to deal with
Inactive/not enough time
Don’t know what to say in welcome PMs
Worried about feeling obligated to be friends with people
Didn’t want to overwhelm new members with too many pm's
Losing interest


Changes that may help improve the WW:

Focus more on replying to new threads rather than pm'ing
Make post on main
Easier to just PM people who make a first post rather than timetable
How the WW works was not clear enough

Next up i will start having discussions with others mods's/admins about this to see what changes can hopefully take place. Will try to keep ya'll updatted as much as i can.

oh.
another reason for inactivity.
i always forget to post/visit in here to prove my activity.
and you sent me a pm which i then forgot about


yeah

personally. new threads are all good and stuff.
but i don't think i posted anything until i got the pm... like the 3 or 4 welcome pm's i got made everything seem ... friendier?

but maybe some advertising around mian and all that should be good.

yeah
*rambles*

you done good alex.

Thanks for the input claire

General update, though subject to change and not final:
1. Rota's may go
2. I am currently writing a thread to reduce stickies, and to make things generally more clear

If a set of questions were to be answered in a thread to help make the welcome wagon clearer what kind of things would you want answered?

For example:

1. How much time do i have to give to the welcome wagon?
2. What will happen if i become inactive?
3. How do i spot newbies?
4. What should i say in welcome pm's?

Etc.

Thanks.

Have i made things clearer with the 'essentail reading' thread? And is the 'questions sticky' useful.

Hope it's somewhat useful.

if i'm inactive, it's for the following reasons:

1) i don't spot newbies
2) i don't visit this forum often enough to warrant replying to stuff
3) i'm generally lurking and not around