As there are more and more messages on the forum, I figured it might be useful to bring the attention to a few points that might be helpful to navigate the forum without getting overwhelmed or getting lost.
The main starting point for most questions is in our manual, which can be found in the Onboarding Package > IT manuals: Edgeryders - a short manual.docx - Nextcloud
Here’s a few points that I find particularly helpful myself:
1. Life-saving rule number one
- Don’t try to read everything! We share everything on the forum for the sake of transparency and documentation, but it is not expected of anybody that you read everything.
2. Prioritise
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Focus on messages that require your attention first: you find them listed under your avatar with an @, an envelope or the icon with three little people. These are messages that are equivalent to emails that are addressed at you specifically. Checking them regularly really contributes to the group’s efficiency by keeping the information flowing.
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Filter messages by using the tags: click on “reef-building”, “reef-gathering” or any topic that you are interested in to get a better overview per topic.
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Got really a lot of messages? You can also click on your avatar, click on the little man icon at the bottom, and from their go to “notifications”. There you get a horizontal menu, with messages sorted by type (@mentions, replies etc).
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A golden trick in case you do want to read everything: let less interesting threads run for a week a so, then scroll through them in half a minute. Your dopamine system will thank you!
3. React
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Use the bookmark function for threads that you want to come back to: sometimes you don’t know the answer right away, sometimes not replying to a message prevents a lot of trouble. People might be waiting for your reply though, so a good trick is to use the bookmark function at the bottom of a thread. This way the system will provide you with reminder at the moment of your choice.
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Heart
: remember that somebody has put in energy and/or some vulnerability when they were writing a post. Giving them a sign of life by using the heart function can work wonders. See also: About the use of the heart function
4. Get less notifications
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If you manage to check in twice a week: turn off email notifications. The whole charm of the forum is that it doesn’t invade your inbox. I dearly recommend it.
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Turn of notifications of threads that keep following you even if they are not very interesting: when you reply to a thread, the default setting is that you get an update for every new reply. Sometimes that’s really too much, so it helps to unsubscribe at the bottom of the thread (see the manual for further information or ask for help).