This particular forum is more set up with a base of "helping the person who started the thread to understand their cards" more than "helping the people who provide interpretations".
Actually, based on my observations, the forum is most targeted at helping all of the third-party people sitting at their computers reading all the responses in a thread.
It is true that many of us in this thread have focused on the time and effort the interpreters have expended and the lack of manners and consideration of the Original Posters who ignore that effort. However, the greater harm of shoddy feedback is in fact not to the Good Samaritan interpreter who feels they wasted their effort but, rather, to all the forum members reading the thread who are cheated out of putting these card/reading interpretations into an informed context, such that they can learn.
If OP write, "oh, I can see what you mean, thank you!!," everyone reading has been cheated out of connecting the cards to real situations, as when the conscientious OP comes back and says, "Ah, yes, you're right about that reversed Queen of Pentacles; I'm a terrible manager of funds and I spend money like water."
This is perhaps why I've participated on and have done more involvement on the Reading Exchange forum instead. There, I can set my own guidelines from the beginning. With this set up, there is bound to be more conflicts.
! Nothing could be further from my own experience. I was never a frequent user of the Exchange, but I gave it up for a lost cause after several nasty experiences. That place is crawling with repeat free-readings trawlers and ill-mannered louts. Because of the stipulation that the OP (i.e. oneself) must first read for the other, it often happens that the OP puts effort and thought into his or her reading whilst the respondent either reciprocates with a two-sentence, book-generated response or blithely ignores the OP's explicit requests in the opening post for "detailed, thoughtful feedback that addresses each card I analyzed in your reading."
The excellent mods have got rid of repeat offenders and are very keen to keep the forum clean, but there's only so much they can do. I ignore that Forum, myself. Because I am not as interested in readings as in study, I don't come by Your Readings often, but I would do so even less if not for the strong, consistent presence of conscientious community members that helps set the tone for other posters and for newbies for who show promise of being conscientious (such as
poppierossi, perhaps); their community spirit is infectious to those other posters *who care* and it helps keep YR afloat where the Exchange often sinks.
I find this community to be very helpful and everyone I have come across so far have been very generous with him or herself. Anyways I hope to continue to partake and give as well.
Your conscientious feedback as an OP and your generous interpretations of other people's readings will help hundreds, perhaps thousands, of readers out there. May other posters follow suit.
This thread is sort of acting like a sticky.
In a way. At least people are talking about it.
They could make this actual thread a real sticky. Confrontation sometimes speaks more clearly to a certain type of "gimme gimme" personality where polite, gentle reminders often roll off their backs.
I am (not) sorry to say that I have recently taken to reporting "thank you" as "feedback"....
And that's just what others should do. The community should tend its own, not rely on the overtaxed mods to swoop in. And indeed, I've seen many posters step in before a mod has a chance to do so.
