Guidelines for Responding to Intro Posts

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

We as a staff team have been observing the comments in intro posts lately, and we want to lay out some guidelines of what should and shouldn't belong in responses to people's introduction posts. 

Lately, responses to new people's intro posts tend to be quickly flooded with inside jokes and RP. Half the time, the new person is basically being ignored while other users joke around with each other. While fun to you, this type of response can push people away instead of making them feel welcome. While there's a lot of young folks on the Shard, you don't know if the person joining is 14 or 40, or whether they're at all interested in games/RP, or whether they're just here to discuss the books.

When joining a new group, it's not fun to be instantly met with a bunch of inside jokes and references you don't understand. Instead, it just makes you feel like you don't belong, or that it might be hard to fit in with everyone. We want this site to be as welcoming to everyone as possible, so that means asking normal questions that everyone will understand, and saving the RP for forum games/RP topics. If you want to mess around and do RP, there are other places for that. Act as if you were meeting a new fan in person, where you likely would not do any of this.
As a general rule, some things to avoid:

• Meme/inside joke questions like "what color are your bones?" or "where is your soul?" or "would you like a cookie?" 
• Hyper specific questions like "Have you watched/read [specific piece of media]
• Ignoring the original poster and just messing around with each other 
• All caps shouting

Instead, you can ask questions that anyone can answer, like

• How did they first get into reading Sanderson? 
• Which Cosmere book is their favorite/least favorite? Characters?
• What non-Sanderson media do they like?
• What are their hobbies?
• Things like which Cosmere characters/places they'd want to meet/visit

If you have questions about what kinds of behaviors aren't suitable for intro posts, you're welcome to either ask them here or to PM me.

[-ACE- he/him]

I like to ask strange questions in the AMA section, my favorite of which is "on a scale of 1 to 10, what is your favorite flavor of crayon, yes or no?" and with he cookie question disabled(?) I need a new intro question. Would questions like the crayon one be okay?

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

On 11/21/2025 at 11:50 AM, -ACE- said:

I like to ask strange questions in the AMA section, my favorite of which is "on a scale of 1 to 10, what is your favorite flavor of crayon, yes or no?" and with he cookie question disabled(?) I need a new intro question. Would questions like the crayon one be okay?

Things like that are kind of borderline. Maybe technically ok, but still kind of weird and off-putting for some. Put yourself in the shoes of a 30 year old person joining a community to discuss the books, and they're immediately greeted by your question. What impression do you think that gives? Introduction posts are where people get their first impression of the site, and so just keep that in mind. AMA, forum games, rp: Go wild, ask as many weird questions as you want. I'd encourage ya'll to ask normal questions that anyone can answer, and that won't potentially weird people out. Remember that you're not just talking to people your age, but all sorts of folks.