You guys should do something about all the people that spam the welcoming threads for +1 telling users to read the rules. They don't even read the user's post and just paste some generic "read the rules" crap.

It does not give off a warm community feeling, and it's hurtful to a new user's first impression. As a new user myself, I can say this with the utmost certainty. It just says that nobody cares about them or any of what they had to say.

Flooding new user's welcome threads with posts telling them to read the rules, and not even reading their posts.... it's very unwelcoming. A lot will probably leave because of it. I know I nearly did.

It just shows nobody cares about you or reading your post. Not a good sense of a warm and welcoming community, to be sure... Why, I just read a greeting post yesterday that someone specifically said in their post they read the rules and everything else everyone spams in those threads, but still they had 3+ replies that didn't read their post at all, nor make any kind of constructive reply, and just spammed for them to read the rules.

So disheartening... Forum staff should really do something about it.

Telling someone to read the rules is fine, but not if someone, or multiple people already have. And also, it shouldn't just be that. There should at least be a constructive reply as well, otherwise it's just for +1. Stupid spam...

It may help the situation if you remove post count from that section, though I suspect less people will have any motivation to go welcoming people. But, it'll stop the worst of the +1 offenders. Well, maybe that's not necessary. But... something should definitely be done. It really is spam, so maybe it should be warned/infracted for.

Well, personally, I think getting a copy/paste welcome message is better than getting no message at all, because, in all honesty, so many people register to this site it's hard to keep up with, and without those some people might get overlooked.

Now, I myself tend to take the time to read through them all and custom write my own, just because I have no life and spend all my time on this site, so I can see where you are coming from, but really, I don't see any major issues with what they are doing. I agree it's kind of disheartening to think that people aren't reading what you're saying, but most people actually do, it's just most introductions are just a "hey, here I am, be nice to me" sort of thing, and you don't really need to say much to that. Now, I'll admit maybe some people don't read and just go straight to it, but most people won't take it too personally.

Anyway, I appreciate your sentiment at least, and we'll have to see if anything is done about it, though I'm not sure what.

I am sorry that you did not like the warnings that you received from other users, but they did not mean it as a method to dishearten you and drive you away. As staff on other websites, when ever I sent a welcoming message (among the actual welcoming part) I always suggest that people read the rules, as 99% of them don't and most end up doing something which results in an infraction. Most of the time on welcoming threads people will only read the first post (if at all) and then will respond, so unless you stay you have read the rules there, people will most likely think you won't know them. I have seen countless users with thousands of posts banned, so just having been around for a long time, does not mean you will know them.

Either way, what's done is done, and I don't think deleting the posts will really make you feel much better (once something is read, it cannot be unread (if only that were the case for spoilers.))

Regardless, if it is not too late to have any meaning what so ever, welcome to the site, and despite what may seem like a rocky start, I hope you can enjoy time here. Not everyone is just spamming to get their post count up, and a lot of us are rather friendly.