How often to you bail on a half-written post or response?

The irony is that there might have been a fair amount of replies to this, but people bailed on them. I guess we'll never know.

All the

I cancel more often. Because who cares what I have to say? And sometimes I realize it's been more therapeutic to just type a comment out than it is to hit post and deal with people's potential responses.

Here I am writing my opinion, only to realise that many of you have already posted most of the valid points I was going to make. So now my comment is pretty much worthless and adds nothing to the discussion.

I cancel most of the time, but today I'll open an exception to prove my point.

Have you somehow become more enlightened by my post? Yeah, should have cancelled it.

Congratulations on finishing this post!

It’s a good 70% of the time that I’ll cancel instead of post. As I’ve gotten older my desire to be right has greatly diminished when it comes to random people on the internet.

Like 95%. Almost cancelled this one before I erased most of it.

Constantly cancel. It's rarely worth arguing with people here.

You'll be getting less answers from people who cancel more often. 😉

I think I cancel my posts about 1 to 5 percent of the time. Usually when it gets longer and I notice that my brain is too stupid to continue. Sometimes also when I catch myself being a little bit too sarcastic.

Absolutely. Sometimes you know your post isn't going to do anything worthwhile. Sometimes you're just being a dick. Sometimes the other person is clearly not going to listen to you. Sometimes your post adds nothing of value. That kind of self reflection is a good thing IMO. I wish more people did it

40% I'd estimate, I tend to write very long and in depth comments and will realize either I dont care enough about the subject to finish my statement or argument point, or I'm likely being baited by someone who doesnt care about having a genuine exchange of ideas and just wants to be "right".

There's a high barrier for me to even start typing a comment, but I try to contribute more on lemmy. Haven't really participated on social media in years. I guess about 20% of the time when I think I should comment I actually do it.

im so glad you asked this question. i cant tell you how many times i-

actually never mind

I wrote out a comment to answer you but halfway through I decided that my opinion wasn't worthy of sharing on Lemmy so I deleted it and wrote this instead.

Quite often.

I start organizing my thoughts by writing them down. Then I'll realize it's going to be impossible for me to succinctly yet accurately convey my point.

If what I've written is too long or too convoluted, I don't bother posting it, as the intended audience is usually the least likely to actually read it. If what I've written has too many caveats or too many points of contention, I don't bother posting it because I generally don't have much interest in connecting with pedants or those being intentionally obtuse/ignorant/etc.

Honestly, my experience has been that this place is mostly just a slightly different iteration of the same shit as the alternative it is modeled after when it comes to discourse. And I have minimal interest engaging in much of that. So, definitely more likely to lurk and/or to bail on a response than to actually post here.

My comments tend to be short enough that I've already written them and by that point I might as well submit.

Eh not that much. Who cares about points? I’ll edit my response if I mistyped or made it difficult to understand, but why not contribute to the convo? Again points matter way less here than on Reddit and even on Reddit it didn’t matter a whole bunch

About four words in

Far less than on the other site. I've been trying to commit in order to grow the Fediverse, even if I've got a few garbage hot takes. I will say, my shit comments seem to get way more responses than my good ones.

depends. on political posts it's like 90% bail rate, because i get done typing a message and then realize i'm just feeding into the outrage machine.

but on meme posts? maybe 10% bail rate, because lol

I do it fairly often. Usually when:

• It's pointless to submit the content, for the others and for myself.
• There's a high chance that someone will misread it and whine.
• It would help someone whom I don't want to.

In Lemmy it's usually the first thing.

Funny enough, I almost replied to a comment here and then deleted it.

I've been trying to do it less since migrating to Lemmy because I recognize that the smaller userbase means that my interaction is more valuable, even if it's scary.

For me personally it's when discussing controversial topics, I know I'm right but I'm too lazy to get into an argument to elaborate on my points in detail.

All the time. Sometimes I'll write an entire wall of text, correct all the typos I could find and then delete it. "Why bother? This person is just not going to consider a different opinion, just save yourself the pointless discussion."

A lot. Sometimes I have something to say but so afraid of ridicule I back out

Virtually every single response I type out gets canceled without posting. It's extremely rare that I actually feel good enough about a comment I'm making to actually post it. Even if I do make a comment I'll often come right back and delete it, or make a hundred rapid fire edits to it before usually deleting it anyway. That's how after 6 months here I've only made 5 total comments.

I literally bailed while writing a comment on another post just to scroll down to this post next.

So yea… all the time.

Did it just n

Yeah that’s something I’d never do because it just seems

Ok, so well I made this several weeks ago and well, you know…

Sometimes I realize I'm not contributing anything new to the conversation. I just upvote the post that said what I wanted to say and be done with it. Yeah, I could get some upvotes, but what's the point? It's not like I can buy things with imaginary points.

I have a personality with a low neuroticism and a low conscientiousness, so I usually post.

Probably 50/50. Mostly because I don’t care enough to get in an argument or have to defend what I say.

Simple throwaway comments, observations, generic opinion stuff I’ll just drop it and move on.

Anything I’m really knowledgeable in though, I’ll start and then cancel because there’s always someone who wants to challenge and argue and it’s just exhausting.

Constantly

Hahaha I saw this after bailing on another post. Like 80% of the time I think better of it. My comments tend to actually get posted when I'm in bed half asleep. Apparently I'm more willing to share when I'm mentally impaired from tiredness

Fairly often. I’ll get a sentence out and then

i tend to be long-winded and i dont often have a good sense for what information is explicitly necessary, so i have started a fair few comments that ive lost steam on and convinced myself werent worth posting. i also have not participated in social media for about ten years, so i dont have the sense that i can just casually post something without it being particularly valid, but when i do post its after reassuring myself that what i say doesnt always have to be life-altering.

so yea, probably 40% of the time i bail if i start thinking about it more than i should, which is easy to do when i have to proofread so much due to florisboard not having autocorrect.

fuck it never mind

80% of my comments. I try to set a baseline and be kind/respectful (not that I am always successful) but I'm not particularly a kind or respectful person. A lot of my comments are bitter and bitchy and I end up deleting them. This place isn't reddit and I'll be damned if I participate in inflicting my negativity on this place.

50% of my messages here on Lemmy.

I'd guess more like 25% of messages at work and 75% on the discord server I use with IRL friends are deleted without being posted.

Quite often, probably mostly because I have social anxiety. Sometimes I feel like I'm not adding anything meaningful to that conversation or that I'm probably not being as helpful as I initially think I am. I sometimes also have trouble putting my thoughts into words.

here's me, posting 1 in every 10 comments I start writing.

Sometimes I react emotionally. Resting a reply is the catharsis to release, and usually by the end I’ve lost my steam by letting it out. 🍵🫖

Every once in a...

All the

Aborting short ones like this, maybe every third. Longer ones 9/10

I do this all the time. I see so many brainless, low-effort posts all over the internet that I don't want to add to the pollution with anything I'm not confident is either informative or funny.

But I also want Lemmy to grow and thrive, so here I've been making more of an effort to try to finish and post even comments I'm not so certain about. I figure that has to be better for the site than contributing nothing at all.

You pretty much summed it all up there.

I'd say 30% or so for me?

When I start on a responce, which is rare, I finish it. I'm more a reader then writer.

A great deal. I also don't like to get in internet arguments a lot for the same a reasons.

My Lemmy app keeps a receipt every time I bail. So far it says I've bailed 56 times. Lmao.

About 20% I'd say. It used to be much higher, arounx80%, but pushing through the anexity of feeling like have nothing to contribute has helped improved my writing. Perhaps it's come with age, but I feel like it's much easier to make myself and my thought process understood by others. A younger me thought that logic and just "being correct" was enough to be persuasive, but that's just not how people work.

Constantly.

Dail

I'd say over half. Maybe 60% ?

Rarely ever

It depends how long the comment is. Short comments get past the "dont post it" filter 99% of the time. But long posts give me time to realise i dont care enough to carry on.

I do that often. Sometimes I stop and touch grass and realize I'm being stupid. Other times I realize I'm just wasting time, or just repeating what someone else said. Like yeah, my opinion matches up with someone else's, but it isn't helping the discussion any. Or other times I just need to chill from a heated discussion.

But usually the biggest one is when autocorrect is fucking with me and I just don't have the patience to go back and fix just about every word I just swiped. I figure, if it's that bad, then it just wasn't worth posting.

I delete probably half of all posts/responses I start (across many accounts). Sometimes it's because I realise the answer to my question while typing it but more often than not it's because I realise what I'm saying is ambiguous/opinionated and I get too anxious about someone taking it the totally wrong way and getting offended or annoyed.

Annoyingly this gets in the way of a lot of my online communication. Either that or I realise no one cares what my opinion is... Unless they directly ask- thanks OP!

Yeah, I'd say it happens fairly often (~15% of the time). I try to stop myself from being too snarky at people when it's not warranted. I try to save that for internet assholes, not confused people or people making a small mistake.

Another instance is if I'm 2 replies into a back and forth convo with an individual, I might write a 3rd reply but often just cancel it, because most times by that point the discussion isn't worth me continuing.

PS you will find I often edit replies right after publishing to fix stuff, add stuff to fully answer the question, or change my tone if it sounds too aggressive. Sorry about that.

Rarely I will do it.

I wanna say half the time. Lot of times I catch myself posting about something not worth my time and energy.

This is something I started doing fairly recently and it’s really cathartic! I’d say 90% of the replies I write to people who are rude or looking for an argument, get deleted without sending.

I even do this in real life. I do this thing where I say my whole next phrase between my teeth and only then I say it out loud and almost 50% of the time I don't repeat it out loud.

I cancel a lot more lately. As I'm writing my response I'm also thinking about what they might respond with to my response and as I'm doing this I realize this discussion is going to take more energy and engagement than I really initially cared for or than it's worth and at that point I'm like.. why even bother, nevermind

More often than not, I hit publish, but I definitely hit cancel sometimes. Sometimes it's because it's not worth arguing, but sometimes, I realize I don't really have anything worthwhile to contribute and should probably just stfu

i have a pretty specific example, but i do this in the comment section on pretty much every post about EVs, because very frequently there's somebody repeating the lazy myth that oh actually EVs are just as bad as internal combustion engine vehicles because loose awareness of life cycle assessment. people state this all the time as if it's some kind of philosophical point about the impossibility of technological solutions to climate change, when in actuality it is a quantitative falsehood that is easily disproven with very cursory research, like you can pull up the relevant data from the IEA in like five minutes. ive told this to probably like fifty people, including at my job at an EV company, and it has never once changed their mind, i guess because again people are actually not looking to engage with this point quantitatively. but it still takes me a little while to disengage from my natural inclination to be helpful about something that on its surface is a math question.

Every now and then I write a well thought out post, make sure my grammar is good and that my point is clear and that there is no context missing. Then I sometimes rewrite a 100 word section because I thought my thoughts were too jumbled up in hindsight.

Then I realise I don't care enough to finish it.

To answer your question, my ratio is around 80% send 20% delete.

I cancel maybe 10% of the time

For me, almost….

9 times out of 10 I realize I'm dumb and in the wrong and stop the post.

I... nevermind...

Rarely. I made it a point to finish my thoughts here, since I have a tendency to abandon what I write halfway, and I'm going to stop making excuses for myself.

I have had some misses, but people seems to like to read my random thoughts and corny jokes here. Mostly.

A lot of the time.

I often don't comment on things in the first place, because someone else already covered the points that I want to make. So I do an updoot and leave.

Then there are times I want to write something funny, realise it's only funny in my head and doesn't translate to text at all, then just leave it.

Then there are the many times I'm thinking of putting a lot of research and effort into a response to some really stupid take... But I realise it would just be a complete waste of time. Efforts wasted to try and educate someone on science when all they want to do is continue believing in whatever nonsense they believe in.

I'm bad at wording things so sometimes it comes out way worse than I intended and other people can't read my mind and know what I meant so I tend to delete most

I'd say a third of the time. I catch myself writing and revealing too much.

I get pretty terrified of people attacking me for saying something wrong, so I tend to delete something I was about to say. I don't exactly have the greatest way with words, so an anonymous post where no one knows I'm not trying to be a jerk can be a bit difficult to handle.

Whenever I have a train of thought that suddenly stops and I don't want to spend time thinking how to finish the message

Something akin to 10% of unwritten comments here. 5% are shared between cases when I write it for too long and still can't see it as a complete thought, or when I get distracted half-way through and can't care to continue. Other 5% is my stupid phone optimi... pushing apps from memory when I switch to something else (even if it's for fact-checking this exact comment), so I lose whatever I wrote and the thread itself.

I'd say I post about 1/30 responses I make.

I still catch myself in the process of replying to someone who is Wrong On The Internet, but for the most part I just let it go. It still bothers me, but I've accepted that nothing I say on a webforum is going to change any hearts or minds. Nowadays I mostly post to try and give people a cheap laugh.

I find people online tend to have a lot more passion for arguing than I do so I often rethink posting any responses I come up with.

Less now that I've learned to give up before I start.

All the time. I could have typed a multi-paragraph masterpiece but then I realise I can't be bothered offering help in a world full of people that know everything about everything and are never wrong.

I used to do it a lot.
Typically this would be responding to someone being provocative.
I decided that they were angry people just trying to make other people angry.
So now I write articles mocking them.
I am much more relaxed now.

All the time but not as often as I should.

Maybe one in 20 or so, mostly I've realized I misread the comment, or I just don't really feel like arguing any more.

You gotta pick your battles.

I do it sometimes, when I realise midway that I was wrong/don't care enough (usually when I feel that someone hasn't done enough research, but I should likely tell them that instead of just stopping my reply).

I someti

Rough estimate, 30%. Either because my point ended up not being worth making, I ended up being wrong, or the message was dumped at some point between switching through 4 apps and 12 websites gathering information and I can't be arsed to write 400 words again.

Often.

i do this increasingly often lately.

Yesn't

Increasingly more often in the last year or two. Makes social media use for me a lot more pleasant. But sometime I still can't resist.

I can't think of a single time I've-

One in five, I'll guess. I am prone to TMI, not as much intimate sharing as wanting to write about things that are too far remotely related.

I'm also prone to seguing into a rant as I have much to say I wish were said more often. Sometimes I edit those out. Sometimes I mark them as rants.

And then I am prone to mobile keyboard fatigue, and will wear out if a short explanation won't do. I get back to it at a proper keyboard less often than I don't.

I wish more people on Lemmy and everywhere else were like you.

Can't put a number on it, but I'd wager it happens the majority of the time