What do you do when you screw up a post?

So in my infinite stupidity I made a post that was well thought out in idea but I botched the presentation big time to the point where almost nobody who responded seemed to have actually understood what I was trying to convey.

After re-reading a couple of times I see clearly what I did wrong: I did a PP job of organizing my thoughts and misdirected the focus by unclear language.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has ever done this and am wondering what people generally do once they realize their great idea should not have been posted in the middle of the night on very little sleep?

Just suck it up and forget about it or try again later? And if try again later how do you do that without creating trouble for two similar topics?

It depends really how much your point matters to you, and how much you think your ideas need to be heard.

I personally do not care that much for interpretation of my posts, as i think we can all interpret any post any number of ways, like you already would know. Perception is in the eye of the beholder.

The best way i guess to post would be trying to post a answer, if your trying to get a child to understand something, this way you sort of explain it more in general terms, and are not guessing about the readers intellect.

get drunk and argue with anyone who doesn't get the thread.

re-write the thread and repost it, after asking a mod to remove the thread of shame first.

forget about it completly, and pretend it never happened. (after getting drunk and arguing with everyone on the thread)

reply to post by Jinglelord


If it is just a post in a thread my advice would be to simply post again, say something like "I want to rephrase and elaborate on something I've already touched upon...".

If it is a thread that you authored, you have two options.

1) Rewrite the OP the way you'd like it to read, then use the "complaint" tab, under "tools" so ask if a mod can edit your OP and replace the old with your new version.

2) If it is a thread with no or few replies you can also ask that the staff delete it, using the same function. But this is not guaranteed to happen. Staff would then discuss the pros and cons of deleting it.

I hope this helps.

~Heff

Thank you everyone for your input!

Andy, you're right, it is perceptual and I do need to set it out as if I'm explaining to a child, I think that was my mistake. The only reason I care that it was missed is I thought my line of thinking would benefit people who didn't understand the concepts they preach... probably a bit too arrogant on my part.

Acidtastic, LMAO. That was actually one of my original thoughts but I'm out of liquor.

Heff, What happened to Zim!? I imagined your posts in Zim's voice and they were awesome and strangely fit... It is a thread I authored and I think re-writing it via an edit would cause too many issues with making the replies seem ridiculous and there are too many replies to just close it up and delete it.

I think I will ultimately rewrite it and spin it differently so it isn't a re-post of the same thing but still getting the same idea across.

Here is the thread I was referring to if anyone is curious: www.abovetopsecret.com...