What keeps you involved in forums

Tera2222 · October 2014

Hi Everyone,

Please forgive my intrusion into your community. I have been a lurker for a while and am an active member on another message board community. I am a graduate student in Communications at a university in Canada and am currently working on a project with regards to women's involvement in message boards. I was wondering if you could tell me about your experience on this board,

and what keeps you coming back to the board after your wedding is done, or to talk about topics outside of your wedding. I was also wondering, as women (which I assume the majority are), what are your feelings on men becoming more involved in the message board community, and why do you think that men are more likely to shy away from message boards than women?

TheKnot has one of the fastest growing forum communities, so I thought you all might have some great insight. Again, I apoligise for any intrusion, as mentioned I am part of another forum and I can understand why this might seem very weird, but hopefully some of you are interested in sharing your experience.

Thanks in advance!

AddieCake · October 2014

I like weddings, and I'm a firm believer that you get the best advice on anything from people who have experience. And I enjoy chatting with the people I've become friendly with here.

theartistformerlyknownas · October 2014

Ditto Addie. The people here are awesome, it's nice to share with and get advice from people who aren't personally vested in your "real" life, and after being immersed in wedding planning for 9 months I wasn't ready to give it up once the wedding was over.

jdluvr06 · October 2014

I had some questions when I was planning my wedding so I joined to ask. I didn't think I'd stick around but the posters here are aweseome.

gladyscf · October 2014

The honesty.

When you ask a question to your friends/family, they generally tell you what they think you want to hear. Here, you get the cold honest truth so that you don't treat your guests like shit.

During this whole process, you get to know the ladies here and make friendships. While I'm not married yet, I don't anticipate those friendships ending just cause I said, "I Do."

falsara · October 2014

Hey, welcome to TK. Just from what I've experienced here so far the reason why many of us choose to stick around or keep coming back is simple.

These boards are a safe place to get advice, vent about any family drama and you can talk about your real life problems with completely objective people. Primarily yes this is a wedding planning board and we come here to talk about our wedding planning because it's unfair to bombard our real life friends and family members with constant wedding talk, and sometimes it's hard to hear family members shoot down your ideas and react negatively to your plans. Here we can get honest opinions from people who genuinely like hearing and talking about weddings.

One if the reasons we post about other things other than our weddings, is that honestly we have a whole lot of other things going on in our lives other than our weddings. We still have jobs where we might have bad days, and we still like talking about things that our Significant Others do that make us cranky, and this is a good place to talk about these because you can vent without the person you're venting about ever hearing about it. We also love to share food resipes.

Some of the ladies have chosen to stick around after their weddings because they've made connections with other members, and they feel that this is a good place to talk about other things. It's always a bad idea to talk badly about something your fiance or husband did to people in real life who know him. These people aren't objective and can react negatively. People on these boards often understand the need others have to just tell people that something is bothering them and often they can share some advice or support.

As for men coming on these boards. I'm sure many of the ladies would be open to the idea. Men though view wedding planning a little differently in my experience. They tend to pick one or more specific things that they are good at, normally food or music, and they center their planning ideas around that. While leaving more of the stuff that is nuanced to their FI. Or they are part of all the big decisions but they askeep their FI's to narrow the options down to a handful.

I hope some of this helps. I'm sure some of the other ladies will have great responses too. Good luck on your project!

WinstonsGirl · October 2014

Lots of people are here to pass on advice. 99% of us have planned a wedding, so we have experience. Without us, people would be giving advice who have no experience doing it. Kinda like if you wanted to learn how to drive, do you ask your friend who has also never driven, or do you learn from those who have??

pinkcow13 · October 2014

I originally came here for advice for my upcoming wedding. I then realized that I really like the posters here, and love chatting with them. I even met a few in real life! I think women tend to be in general more social creatures than men, which is why I think they may shy away from message boards. I would embrace any man that wanted to join our community (remember Tony, anyone?). My wedding is still a few months away, but I will definitely stick around once I'm an old married hag!

raissyrais · October 2014

We've all become somewhat virtual "friends". We know some things about one another and we just keep up with each other, as simple as that.

beethery · October 2014

The place is funny and entertaining, and a good place for advice.

gladyscf · October 2014

My FI belongs to a couple of forums himself. Neither are wedding related though.

HaileyDancingbear · October 2014

Tera2222 said:

Hi Everyone,
Please forgive my intrusion into your community. I have been a lurker for a while and am an active member on another message board community. I am a graduate student in Communications at a university in Canada and am currently working on a project with regards to women's involvement in message boards. I was wondering if you could tell me about your experience on this board,
and what keeps you coming back to the board after your wedding is done, or to talk about topics outside of your wedding. I was also wondering, as women (which I assume the majority are), what are your feelings on men becoming more involved in the message board community, and why do you think that men are more likely to shy away from message boards than women?
TheKnot has one of the fastest growing forum communities, so I thought you all might have some great insight. Again, I apoligise for any intrusion, as mentioned I am part of another forum and I can understand why this might seem very weird, but hopefully some of you are interested in sharing your experience.
Thanks in advance!

On this particular site it is mostly women (Idk, I guess men think their penis will shrivel up and fall off if they get too excited about weddings or some shit) but that's not true across other sites.

In fact part of the reason I post HERE as opposed to other forums that may even have more interesting subjects to me (Ex. I love comics, I do NOT post on forums about comics) is because it is mainly women here- so when I say the F word (Feminist) I don't get called a man-hating dyke/cunt/bitch etc. And when I complain about the shit you deal with as a young woman, nobody tells me I'm making shit up or asks me what I was wearing. That just doesn't fly on other sites.

I think you need to revise the bold, there are PLENTY of men all over many forums. Just not HERE.

As for why I post here, sometimes I have wedding-related questions that either A. I think my friends/family would be bored with, I mean if I asked them EVERY question I had they'd already be sick of wedding talk! or B. things I want a completely unbiased response to. Because my friends and family will not be objective, they'll say what they think will make me feel good. And that's wonderful in many cases, but sometimes you also need someone to tell you the truth even if it isn't what you wanted to hear. I thrive on that- I went to art school for a year, and while I didn't like a lot of things, I LOVED critique. Because every time I was told "That arm is too long, that hip is not proportionate etc." I fixed it, and ended up with artwork that was FAR superior than I could ever have made before. Of course I want to hear that I draw pretty pictures, but I'd rather have the chance to draw an even prettier picture.

But mainly, as I usually hang around on not so wedding related threads, is that I just enjoy seeing how people interact and think. I wanna know what makes people tick. It's extremely fascinating. I also enjoy the personalities on this site. As I said above, I can say the F word, so that already puts this community over many other people I know. The people here are funny and blunt and full of sass. They certainly won't walk on eggshells to preserve your ego, but they also don't put up with racism or sexism or any sort of shitty hatred like that for a second. It's nice to see that balance. I usually find people are too afraid to say what's on their mind, or they're so uninhibited they think calling a girl a whore is absolutely acceptable if she doesn't sleep with you or wears an outfit you don't like.

destinationtake2 · October 2014

I am not currently super active but I initially joined TK around 2003 when I was planning my 2005 wedding. I became super close to several ladies and stayed on the boards for quite a while after the wedding. I liked keeping up with my friends and also paying it forward by sharing my experience, advice, reviews, etc. Then came The Bump and The Nest and I was on those for a few years also. During that time frame, I met a handful of Knotties IRL.

Eventually, I did outgrow the message board world and I left the boards but it was a slow process. By then I was FB friends with those I'd bonded with here or had some other way of communicating with them. I have even done girls trips with a couple of the ladies I met here. They are very special and amazing friendships! We enjoy being out "in the real world" and telling the story of how we met on a message board planning our weddings!

(I am back now because we're renewing our vows and I knew I would get invaluable advice and ideas once again. )

luckya23 · October 2014

It updates quicker than something like facebook... Good for ADD.

I'm not married yet so I'm still the original target audience. I'm gathering ideas.

doeydo · October 2014

I love weddings. I love getting inspirational pictures and hunting down things like dresses for posters on here. After spending some time on here, I feel like I have gotten to known these women and bonded with them. I like the anonymity, too, so I can feel like I can post freely and get advice from people.

blabla89 · October 2014

I actually started hanging out on the Not Engaged Yet board before FI and I got engaged. That board has a lot of fun, non-wedding chat and the people are hilarious. It kept me from going BSC wondering when FI was going to propose. Since we got engaged and started planning, I've been more active on the other wedding boards.

To your question about men vs. women on the forum, I don't think I would mind men being a part of this community, but it seems like most men just aren't interested in all the wedding planning stuff. Just like I'm not the least bit interested in FI's football forum, but they have a few female posters. We used to have a [male] bouncer named Tony but I think he quit a while back...

Jen4948 · October 2014

I'm interested in planning weddings and etiquette in general, and the issues that come up. Sometimes, when someone has a very hard issue to deal with, it's nice just to offer support. I like to be able to help people when I can.

lyndausvi · October 2014

The art of hosting seems to be slowly chipping away. It makes me sad. There seems to be a lot of people who just never learned some of the basics. I feel like it's almost my "duty" to keep people hosting properly.

Please do not confuse tradition with proper hosting. Traditions can and do change from generation to generation. Do not want a bouquet toss? Don't. Do not want a sit down dinner? Don't.

That said, properly hosting people with the appropriate amount of food for the time of day, giving them proper cover from environmental elements, not making them open their wallets and giving them a seat are examples of things that should never change from generation to generation.

It's doesn't hurt that most of the people are awesome.

SmileDamnit · October 2014

I love the sharing of information & opinions that happen here. And I love the humor of a handful of the ladies here.

lurkergirl · October 2014

I come here primarily for entertainment and advice. I love that I never really need to post my questions because they have likely already been asked and answered somewhere else.

Also, and maybe I'm a loser for this, but I have a very tight-knit, but pretty small group of girlfriends, so I enjoy having a larger community of women to interact with. I mean the same 7 people IRL don't want to hear about my wedding over and over again, and based on the friends who have had weddings...they aren't the ones I would ask for hosting advice (sorry, friends!)

The only other message board where I participate is also all/mostly women, so I can't really speak to the presence of men in the forum community.

JCbride2015 · October 2014

Ditto PPs, mostly. I came here looking for advice when I first started planning my wedding. I got to know some of the posters and I really enjoy hearing about what's going on in our lives and chit-chatting about random stuff. And now that I'm so far into my wedding planning process and have read up a lot about etiquette and proper hosting, I can pass along some advice to people who are just starting the process.

levioosa · October 2014

I like hearing from a broad spectrum of views and opinions, and I've learned about a lot of stuff etiquette wise. It's nice to see everyone supporting each other when it truly matters. It's also entertaining. Ditto other PPs for what they have already said.

RebeccaB88 · October 2014

Ditto all of the above. I'm also nosy. Like, really nosy.

danamw · October 2014

I am older, I have been married 21 years and was only a BM once, before that. I know I don't belong on these boards, as I have been told by a few other posters that my stories on the "olden days" (emphasis mine) are not welcome, or appreciated. Things are done differently today, from 20+ years ago!

But I have always liked reading about weddings. I limit my postings, no more old outdated stories of weddings in the Dark Ages.

lyndausvi · October 2014

danamw said:

I am older, I have been married 21 years and was only a BM once, before that. I know I don't belong on these boards, as I have been told by a few other posters that my stories on the "olden days" (emphasis mine) are not welcome, or appreciated. Things are done differently today, from 20+ years ago!
But I have always liked reading about weddings. I limit my postings, no more old outdated stories of weddings in the Dark Ages.

I'm old and I'm welcomed here. There needs to be a balance. If not it would be the blind leading the blind.

Inkdancer · October 2014

lyndausvi said:

danamw said:

I am older, I have been married 21 years and was only a BM once, before that. I know I don't belong on these boards, as I have been told by a few other posters that my stories on the "olden days" (emphasis mine) are not welcome, or appreciated. Things are done differently today, from 20+ years ago!
But I have always liked reading about weddings. I limit my postings, no more old outdated stories of weddings in the Dark Ages.

I'm old and I'm welcomed here. There needs to be a balance. If not it would be the blind leading the blind.

Ugh, I can just see it. "Yes, of course it's fine to ask all your guests to wear white lace so they match your burlap chair covers. And the three hour gap gives them time to change into their matching burgundy evening gowns. Don't worry about it!"

beethery · October 2014

Inkdancer said:

lyndausvi said:

danamw said:

I am older, I have been married 21 years and was only a BM once, before that. I know I don't belong on these boards, as I have been told by a few other posters that my stories on the "olden days" (emphasis mine) are not welcome, or appreciated. Things are done differently today, from 20+ years ago!
But I have always liked reading about weddings. I limit my postings, no more old outdated stories of weddings in the Dark Ages.

I'm old and I'm welcomed here. There needs to be a balance. If not it would be the blind leading the blind.

Ugh, I can just see it. "Yes, of course it's fine to ask all your guests to wear white lace so they match your burlap chair covers. And the three hour gap gives them time to change into their matching burgundy evening gowns. Don't worry about it!"

Maybe that's why that shit flies on some of the other boards. Not really mommas and already-married-for-a-whiles over there.

Nobody's going to get mad at you or run you off any advice or suggestions you make, unless you come off like a condescending peen about it. That applies to everybody.

danamw · October 2014

Heck no! I hate gaps! And I fully agree about over-managing brides and moms.

I feel I can help, just saying I don't remember what the centerpieces looked like at any wedding I ever went to. Spend money and agita on things that will be remembered.

theartistformerlyknownas · October 2014

danamw said:

I am older, I have been married 21 years and was only a BM once, before that. I know I don't belong on these boards, as I have been told by a few other posters that my stories on the "olden days" (emphasis mine) are not welcome, or appreciated. Things are done differently today, from 20+ years ago!
But I have always liked reading about weddings. I limit my postings, no more old outdated stories of weddings in the Dark Ages.

I don't think I've ever seen you post, but I'm sorry someone was a jerk to you about that. Like Beeth said, as long as you're not a self-centered ass most of us don't care how old you are or how long ago your wedding was.

Wegl13 · October 2014

Tera2222 said:

Hi Everyone,
Please forgive my intrusion into your community. I have been a lurker for a while and am an active member on another message board community. I am a graduate student in Communications at a university in Canada and am currently working on a project with regards to women's involvement in message boards. I was wondering if you could tell me about your experience on this board,
and what keeps you coming back to the board after your wedding is done, or to talk about topics outside of your wedding. I was also wondering, as women (which I assume the majority are), what are your feelings on men becoming more involved in the message board community, and why do you think that men are more likely to shy away from message boards than women?
TheKnot has one of the fastest growing forum communities, so I thought you all might have some great insight. Again, I apoligise for any intrusion, as mentioned I am part of another forum and I can understand why this might seem very weird, but hopefully some of you are interested in sharing your experience.
Thanks in advance!

So true story: I actually used to be a very active forum goer in high school.... On a math forum. We'd have great talks that would go on for days (or until someone became a shithead) about everything under the sun, including religion and philosophy and real life and it was great and I loved it. And on our petty days, we would list all of our accomplishments (SAT scores, AP classes, GPA) and go "why MIT no like me?" (I would generally be the one that went "because you are boring and you have no life!"). Btw about 60-80% of those posters were male.
And then I grew up, and a high school forum was no longer an appropriate place to be. I was active on the xkcd forums for a bit but I think Randall deleted them because people were jerks.
I lurked the knot before now but never found it appropriate to be a member unless I was engaged. And then I got engaged in April, signed on for ALL THE PLANNINGS, and found this place. OMG A FORUM.
I enjoy posting on here for getting good advice (mostly). I really hate planning/hosting events and was never a big wedding dreamer, but I'm doing it for the fam (still at >100% RSVP acceptance rate btw). I also really enjoy the random discussions I get into, wedding related or not so much. I work really long hours and my fiancé lives 4 hours away, so this is sometimes a nice down time activity for those days off in the middle of the week when I'm too tired to get out of bed but need some socialization. It's also nice to be able to go "omg wtf I will never survive this" and being told that it's going to be okay.... Instead of my parents who are like "chill the fuck out and be a fucking adult dammit"- it normalizes my anxiety.
I think for me forums are good for delayed discourse. Unlike with Facebook, or texting, or anything else... With forums there is an expectation that the people you talk to aren't going to respond right back. Which means I can throw in my two cents, go to work, and come back to the conversation at the end of the day without 10 people going "hello? Wegl? Where did you go?" It also allows us to give the entirety of our opinion without feeling like someone is interrupting us.
With that being said, this is the first and only forum I have been a part of that is primarily female. Both the math and the xkcd forums were balanced or had a male majority. I haven't been to the big male forums (fourchan?) but I will say that my experience with the other forums I have been a part of has been overwhelmingly positive. However in almost every case, there wasn't a lot of gender ID (and I don't think they really knew my gender) or much gender related discussion. In both of these cases, negative name calling was heavily policed. I honestly think I've seen more name calling here than anywhere else but I think that is more a result of (until recently) not much moderator input than gender bias.
I'm not sure if I am going to stick around post wedding or not. Like I said, wedding planning isn't really my thing. I think if the nest were more active I might hang around there, but probably not. There is an amount of "fitting in" pressure here (knot nest and bump), although I'm sure most of you would disagree. This is probably felt by me more than others due to my standard level of not-fitting-in (although I was a cool kid on xkcd!), so I wouldn't take this to mean "all the women here are snobby jerks" because that's NOT the case.
I also get super gratified when I see people replied to something I said, or "loved it" or... MY VERY FAVORITE... When I get quoted! It's like people read my shit and thought it was good enough to actually respond to personally. I'm easily entertained.

lurkergirl · October 2014

Wegl13 said:

Tera2222 said:

Hi Everyone,
Please forgive my intrusion into your community. I have been a lurker for a while and am an active member on another message board community. I am a graduate student in Communications at a university in Canada and am currently working on a project with regards to women's involvement in message boards. I was wondering if you could tell me about your experience on this board,
and what keeps you coming back to the board after your wedding is done, or to talk about topics outside of your wedding. I was also wondering, as women (which I assume the majority are), what are your feelings on men becoming more involved in the message board community, and why do you think that men are more likely to shy away from message boards than women?
TheKnot has one of the fastest growing forum communities, so I thought you all might have some great insight. Again, I apoligise for any intrusion, as mentioned I am part of another forum and I can understand why this might seem very weird, but hopefully some of you are interested in sharing your experience.
Thanks in advance!

So true story: I actually used to be a very active forum goer in high school.... On a math forum. We'd have great talks that would go on for days (or until someone became a shithead) about everything under the sun, including religion and philosophy and real life and it was great and I loved it. And on our petty days, we would list all of our accomplishments (SAT scores, AP classes, GPA) and go "why MIT no like me?" (I would generally be the one that went "because you are boring and you have no life!"). Btw about 60-80% of those posters were male.
And then I grew up, and a high school forum was no longer an appropriate place to be. I was active on the xkcd forums for a bit but I think Randall deleted them because people were jerks.
I lurked the knot before now but never found it appropriate to be a member unless I was engaged. And then I got engaged in April, signed on for ALL THE PLANNINGS, and found this place. OMG A FORUM.
I enjoy posting on here for getting good advice (mostly). I really hate planning/hosting events and was never a big wedding dreamer, but I'm doing it for the fam (still at >100% RSVP acceptance rate btw). I also really enjoy the random discussions I get into, wedding related or not so much. I work really long hours and my fiancé lives 4 hours away, so this is sometimes a nice down time activity for those days off in the middle of the week when I'm too tired to get out of bed but need some socialization. It's also nice to be able to go "omg wtf I will never survive this" and being told that it's going to be okay.... Instead of my parents who are like "chill the fuck out and be a fucking adult dammit"- it normalizes my anxiety.
I think for me forums are good for delayed discourse. Unlike with Facebook, or texting, or anything else... With forums there is an expectation that the people you talk to aren't going to respond right back. Which means I can throw in my two cents, go to work, and come back to the conversation at the end of the day without 10 people going "hello? Wegl? Where did you go?" It also allows us to give the entirety of our opinion without feeling like someone is interrupting us.
With that being said, this is the first and only forum I have been a part of that is primarily female. Both the math and the xkcd forums were balanced or had a male majority. I haven't been to the big male forums (fourchan?) but I will say that my experience with the other forums I have been a part of has been overwhelmingly positive. However in almost every case, there wasn't a lot of gender ID (and I don't think they really knew my gender) or much gender related discussion. In both of these cases, negative name calling was heavily policed. I honestly think I've seen more name calling here than anywhere else but I think that is more a result of (until recently) not much moderator input than gender bias.
I'm not sure if I am going to stick around post wedding or not. Like I said, wedding planning isn't really my thing. I think if the nest were more active I might hang around there, but probably not. There is an amount of "fitting in" pressure here (knot nest and bump), although I'm sure most of you would disagree. This is probably felt by me more than others due to my standard level of not-fitting-in (although I was a cool kid on xkcd!), so I wouldn't take this to mean "all the women here are snobby jerks" because that's NOT the case.
I also get super gratified when I see people replied to something I said, or "loved it" or... MY VERY FAVORITE... When I get quoted! It's like people read my shit and thought it was good enough to actually respond to personally. I'm easily entertained.

I wasn't going to quote because it was long, but then I had to!

That's interesting that you feel a fitting in pressure here. I feel kind of the opposite. I can get along with anyone and make conversation easily IRL, but rarely feel like I truly "fit in" with most social groups. Here, I feel like it's really super easy to fit in. There is definitely some snark, but everyone is mostly really nice, forgiving if you stick your foot in your mouth, they're encouraging and caring and overwhelmingly positive.

And I know a lot of regs have posted things about being socially awkward IRL, so maybe we have a slight case of the island of misfit toys, haha. I love it, though

What keeps you involved in forums

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