How Do I Know If A Subject Has Been Discussed?
This can be quite difficult for newcomers. There are simply too many posts to look back through. I would suggest that you do a quick check to see if there is a recent discussion on the subject by using the Search in the information bar. Just to make things confusing there are two "search" mechanisms. The dark pink line relates to all of AWAD. You need the pale pink line, below the AWADtalk heading. Chose the options highlighted in red: Forum to search All Forums Words to search for your word(s) here Search Options Entire Phrase or alternative, if you prefer Date Range all posts Number of results to show per page. your choice If it doesn't give you anything, modify your word and search again. If you can't find anything useful, then it is likely to be new. If you do find some discussion decide: (i) Is it recent? If it is, you may choose to add to the thread which you have just uncovered. (ii) Is it old? If it is quite old, then some people may not have been around the last time it was discussed. If the thread is short, it may be a good idea to add your post, it will then "resurrect" the thread to the top of the list and people can follow on from there. If it is very long and has divided into a lot of subthreads, then you might prefer to start a new thread. If you are feeling helpful you can provide a link to the old thread using the method shown on this page. Providing a link to an old post: Once you have conquered adding links - see using markup in posts , use the same method to make an internal link. (i) find the relevant post, using "search" or however you prefer. (ii) Highlight the post address from the window at the top of your screen then copy and paste it into the new post, deleting everything after the number: http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=17010 adding [ url ] before and [ /url ] after ( take out the extra spaces ) makes it into a hot link. So I get http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=17010 and others can choose to look at it.