What's your reading habit at The Fort?

It has seemed to me for a while now that threads in the forums can stay alive for days or weeks at a time with a lot of back and forth.

However, I fee like all the front page articles get discussions in the day the article hits, then any comments dry up to a trickle afterward.

I've noticed this a lot in the past with the Barnestorming feature, but it seems to happen to most all articles.

So, how do y'all consume data at The Fort? Mainly use a saved link straight into the forums? Stop off on the home page first before coming in? What?

I use Trash Talk almost to exclusion, but I always come in through the front door. I don't really like the commenting system on articles/blogs in general, and I think the discussions there aren't as in depth.

Mostly I log in, head to TT, and start clicking the "new" tag to get to where I have missed out.

Always start with home page to see last five comments to articles that gauge what's new or hot. Then trash talk.

jeb wrote: I use Trash Talk almost to exclusion, but I always come in through the front door. I don't really like the commenting system on articles/blogs in general, and I think the discussions there aren't as in depth.

Mostly I log in, head to TT, and start clicking the "new" tag to get to where I have missed out.

Ditto.

I always come in through http://fortressat.com/forum/recent because that's where I end up when I click the Trash Talk link and it's where Chrome points me when I type 'f' in the address bar nowadays. This means I'm usually active in active threads, and inactive in inactive threads. It also means it's hard for me to find old posts when I want to revive something. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time getting relevant results through the search box.

When I get here I click all the little green 'New' buttons next to forum posts to read what I haven't read. It bugs me if I navigate to the forum page(s) accidentally because it clears out all the 'New' buttons and it's like losing my place in a book.

I usually see new blog or front page posts through the horizontally scrolling bar above the forum index, but I also subscribe via RSS so if I don't get a chance to check in for a while I can catch up later. I would stay more active in the articles if they showed up with a little 'New' that let me know they were still alive. Since I don't visit through the front (or back) page much I don't see the latest comments thing that Barney uses very often.

wadenels wrote: I always come in through http://fortressat.com/forum/recent because that's where I end up when I click the Trash Talk link and it's where Chrome points me when I type 'f' in the address bar nowadays. This means I'm usually active in active threads, and inactive in inactive threads. It also means it's hard for me to find old posts when I want to revive something. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time getting relevant results through the search box.

I find the best way to search Trash Talk is to use Google and include site:fortressat.com in the query. If I wanted to revive the old F:AT TITAN thread I would do something like this:

TITAN acts site:fortressat.com

I just hit the recent button and ocasionally hit an article if the title catches my eye.

I usually just read and reread whatever I've recently wrote. Then I go to the Trash Talk page and look up top to see how many hits the stuff I've written has gotten then I randomly determine a thread to comment on so I'll have some new stuff of mine to read.

Erik Twice wrote: I just hit bookmark the recent button and ocasionally hit an article if the title catches my eye.

Same here.

The great advantage of the forum over the article/blog comments is that you can set notifications. It is a pain going back occassionally to a blog to find nobody has commented, or commented a long time ago.

To see if folks are talking about interesting AT titles. Not many of those nowadays though, as Barnes as turned this into a euro rubber fetish site.

About the only thing missing to complete the image, is a closing statement at the end of his reviews saying:

"Now ist der time und Sprockets ven ve dance."