Are these premises all true?
1. People who post "first!" or "first post!" to new threads on web message boards make life that much worse for their failure to contribute anything useful.
2. Nonetheless, having the first post on a new thread at a popular web site is pretty neat in its own right.
3. If you happen across an empty thread (newly posted, naturally) on a very popular web site, you may -- must? -- dash off a very quick first post, so long as it actually does have real content (thus precluding any "first"er)?
4. That dashed-off post must have ONLY "real" content, and can't even allude to the first post phenomenon.
5. Hours later on your own weblog, bragging about a "first post" is borderline at best but vaguely excusable if veiled in netiquette blather.
6. If a site gets anywhere from 100-200 comments on a typical post, the gap between #1 and #2 is on the order of minutes (e.g. nine minutes), rather than seconds, so the "gotta get this first post in under the wire" adrenaline is misplaced.
Posted by Matt Bruce at September 21, 2007 05:58 PMI say 1-4 are true, 5 is false, and 6 may be site-dependent but with 100-200 commenters I'd guess 2-5 minutes rather than 9 minutes.
I say it's acceptable to feel quiet internal satisfaction at commenting first, but bragging about it in any form is stupid. To the extent that content suffers in order to get the comment in, it should be a source of shame rather than pride (but you could do a quick-reaction comment followed by a longer one).
Posted by: Richard Mason at September 22, 2007 11:37 PMI'm not a Slashdotter or Farker or whatever other site you may be thinking of, so the only premise I would agree with is #1.
I've never seen the significance of being the first poster in a comment thread or been too impressed by that as an accomplishment (with a slight exception for the parodist who found a new thread about Sen. Bill Frist and posted "Frist post!").
Posted by: Joshua at September 23, 2007 08:08 PM