Oh, I did that too. I had a thread going where I was the last person who responded to it, saying that I thanked them for their help and was going to try what they'd given me and report back. Nobody replied to that, and about three hours later when I'd followed those instructions, I posted back saying I'd done everything and had one last question. A few more posts were posted by others and myself, and about four hours later I received a private message from a site admin saying that I was guilty of the infraction of bumping my post up without letting 24 hours pass. Clearly, this wasn't automated because it took so long. So here they were, telling me that I'd been docked 5 points (FIVE POINTS! OH NO!) and that they were likely permanent points! My goodness! Will this go on my permanent record?

I was astonished. Fortunately I need only one last thing from this forum and then I can never go back there again.


I thought about that in advance, trying to explain as much about what was going on as I could without getting too verbose. That didn't seem to matter much, they just seemed to have this knee-jerk reaction to treat someone horribly.

I had actually checked out a couple threads in advance, and saw forum veterans chiding newcomers for not posting in the introductions forum. They were really giving them grief for it! So I made certain to post an extremely friendly, polite, and brief introduction in that forum. That didn't seem to matter. When I posted in the help forum (which was specifically labeled as help for newbies), I got something like "stop being stupid and follow the instructions the other guy left for you in your intro thread."


Indeed.