New Members Sticky Thread - Any updates?

[Vettester]

Just checking to see if anyone has anything they would want to contribute to the New Members sticky towards the top of the forum?

If so, let me know and we can get it touched up a little.

Respect,
Vette

[xtitan1]

I'm new here myself, so this is just an idea I'm throwing out there for discussion. If you don't like it that's fine.

A lot of people seem to be forgetting to do even the basics, like height and weight, or providing labs when they make their first post. Even if they do provide labs they are oftentimes so poorly recorded they can't be interpreted (no reference ranges, ambiguous titles such as estrogen or testosterone --is it free or total testosterone, estradiol sensitive or total estrogens, who knows??).

I don't know how we can get more people to read the sticky itself, but perhaps if it were a simple form that they could fill in the blanks, people could just copy and paste and fill in with their own info. Also, it would make the format/organization of their post a little better. Some people post a long run-on paragraph with various blood work numbers hidden inside. It's hard to comprehend the information when it comes in that form. Using a form may fix this. For example:


New users: copy and paste this into your first post and fill it out!

1. Age:
2. Weight:
3. Height:
4. Symptoms:
5. Blood work exactly as it is written on your lab (including exact name and reference ranges, units wouldn't hurt either):

etc. etc.

[Vettester]

xtitan, thanks for the input, everything is appreciated. I like your idea, and a few others have also discussed trying to do a similar format. The problem (at the moment) is that we don't really have a method to integrate some sort of form, or template, into our platform. We could format it like that into the sticky, but the member will still have to start a blank thread and layout the details for us.

Let me look at the sticky a little closer and possibly structure it as you suggested. If it helps people then that's what we need. I think you kind of hit on to something with the comment about getting people to the sticky itself thing. I wish new members coming in here would just spend 1 solid hour on the stickies. When you think about it, a good portion of individuals are on the brink of making a critical decision that will impact the rest of their lives! 1 hour to help set the stage for the rest of your life! Think about it... Sadly, we do get quite a few that just bypass the whole thing and want the quick fix answer to their current problem(s). Then in a lot of cases we will see those same guys back here in six months with a crisis thread.

[xtitan1]

What if, hypothetically, we had some outside link we could send people to that did have a form system that would ensure they enter all necessary information and, when completed, would spit out everything in a neatly organized BB-coded format that they could copy paste into their post?

[Vettester]

I just don't know if people are going to be that patient to come here, get redirected, go through the process, then come back ... Maybe they will. Tell you what, let's see if a few other members here will post in their thoughts on that. If others feel that is a way we should go, then I'll run it up the pole with Admin and see what his thoughts are. Again, personally, I don't see people going through all those steps to get their thread up, but, I could be wrong. And even if there's a show of hands on this, there's no guarantee that Admin or the site owner will want to implement something like it.

Anyone else have a position on this?

[xtitan1]

Yeah you're probably right lol