Our of curiosity, when you come into this forum, how do you use it? Do you click the "New Posts" button and then read the posts that were new since you were last here? Do you read all of them or just the ones in threads that look interesting? Do you use the Alerts feature to see which posts have been replied that you have participated in, as well as people who have liked your post, etc. and read those first? Do you look at the forum list, and click into any forum or sub-forum that has had new posts, which are flagged by their coloring? Do you only have a few threads that you are following?
When I enter this forum, I check alerts first to see who has recently been posting, and what is of interest to the group. Then I check to see if I need to reply to anyone that has directed a post to me. Then I check new post, and I reply to the threads that look interesting to me. If all that fails I'll browse the forums.
Thanks. Perhaps because it's my forum, I try to read every post here and, with some exceptions, I do. I've noticed that some threads receive very few views so I was interested in how people decide what to read, etc.
Looks like most of us follow the same routine that Ina described. I do it as well, but happens that not all the time are new posts nor alerts to reply. When this happens, I scroll down to watch the topic displayed for every category in the forum main page and, if any of these is brought to my attention, I go into the thread. Yet, if no appealing topics are displayed in the forum index page, I click on the link that opens the list of topics withing my preferred categories and go onto these. I don't subscribe to topics because sometimes subscriptions deliver emails that I will not read until many, many time later. I rarely check my email, unless I'm expecting to receive something in particular.