May I, as a very new member, say something?
Absolutely!
So what do do? Start new threads on questions that have been delt with already one or several times? That will most likely get you the "this has been answered here and here already" comment, if the "old" people bother at all.
Old person here. Or at least, oldish. My back tends to get up if a new person tells us that tehy've been reading Tarot for two weeks and have come up with a whole novel new system, of they haven't bought their first deck yet but they think they should design a deck because tehty know so much more than anyone else. I tend not to answer every thread that pops up: sometimes I have no time, sometimes I am not interested in the question, sometimesw people who have already replied said everything I'd say, and sometimes I simply don't know.
All that being said, I welcome newcomers and their questions! This forum isn't some kind of crusty closed oldbies club. It's a forum to share ideas.
Revive the old threads? A lot of the people from the peak of activity in the Historic Forum, 2003 - 2006 or so, don't seem to be around any more, so they won't answer or discuss with you.
But others will! And I for one tend to lo-o-ove people who revive threads! Shows that they suspectyed some of us might already have discussed something, and have some some research, It's very flattering to the community generally when someone new does that, and we often find we like to revisit our old replies, and see how much we've changed, or be reminded of experiences we might have shared in the past. It's always good.
Anyway, I have the feeling it passes more or less unnoticed when you revive old threads.
Oh, no! Anything but! I love thread-rescusitation teams and thread-first aid!
And, on a side note, it is also hard to understand the history of the forum itself for a newcomer, with it's friendships,
I try to be friendly with everyone.
Meh. I don't do rivalry. That implies superiority/inferiority. Who cares?
Ditto here. What's the point of feeling negative when you could feel positive?
<gasp> Aren't we all one big group? <smile>
(which doesn't help when you try to read an old thread and half of the discussion is replaced only by the word "edited"...
).
I edit posts of mine all the time. It doesn't mean I posted something three times as long originally and deleted all the meaty stuff. All it means is that I'm Queen of the Typos, and missed a number of glaring errors when I was re-reading, so I went back later when I noted them. That little "edited" thingie at the bottom is automatically generated, not our way of saying "you missed out". In fact, when I come back to my posts to change actual content instead of keystrokes, I usually add more stuff!
So if you have an opinion or advice how new member should deal with this, or if there is a constructive way of dealing with it at all?
<warm smile> Don't look for problems where few or none exist, and just ENJOY! And if, through time, you find you are not enjoying one thread, or one subforum, or even one member's posts, there isn't a rule saying you have to read every single post in every single thread in every sub-forum. Read what you enjoy, as long as you enjoy it.
EDITED to add: I wanted to say what an incredibly friendly and nice forum this is. I think it is truly exceptional, so many forums are dominated by people trying to only get their point across, guarding their territory.. and here I found a spirit of sharing and kindness and openness that truly amazes me. Just to state the very positive, too!
I think it all depends. I belong to a self-suffucuency forum, too, and a backyard agriculture forum, and a personal-preference forum, and I have belonged to all of them for years longer than I've been here, and not once in all that time has any conflict happened. Oncve, in the backyard agriculture one, someone came along and reckoned he knew better than all of us, but he was just kindly trying to share his divine revelations with us poor ignorant clod-turners <warm smile>. He left after a while, and came back a year or two later, chastened and much more open.
The key is just to enjoy and not either be negative to others or try to read hints of negativity in the comments of others that might be a bit ambivalent, and if you always look for the positive, that's what you'll find wherever you go.
It seems that if you post anything 'stronger' but don't reassure people that "to each his own" and that "whatever they think is fine is fine" and fill your posts with hearts and kisses, people feel that you are attacking them personally.