V.e.r.y L.o.n.g Profiles

Please donā€™t. We all have a choice: to read a profile or to ignore it.
At the same time everybody have a choice to read pleasant text on a card or to not.
It seems that your respondent chose the last optionā€¦

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Still chance to add something by 291 characters. Cool :upside_down_face:

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actually my profile is quite long, iā€™m afraid.
i simply wrote about what i like, something about my town, i wrote the few countries iā€™ve been to, but not the ones i would like to visit, because theyā€™re too many :rofl:
i wrote something about my relation with postcards, the few categories i would like to receive,(nothing strange, rare or unfindable), and the few ones iā€™m not interested in, but maybe i could cut this part off because i received them anyway :rofl:
i suggested a look at my favourites, but i assured every postcard is welcome, because i respect the senderā€™s choice, even if sometimes i donā€™t understand it, as i think it happened to everyone.
i didnā€™t use my space as a statistic cemetery for expired postcards or for milestones like 10th, 100th, 250th sent/received postcard and so on.
and somehow i wrote 2967 on 3000 :scream: how could it be possible? :rofl: :rofl:
i think everyone writes what he thinks itā€™s important to let the others know and itā€™s good everyone thinks differently about it: woundnā€™t it be boring to read the same things on every profile? well, ok, sometimes it happens :rofl: :rofl:
and what about empty profiles? :thinking:
are they simply lazy?
does it mean they donā€™t mind what they receive?
does it mean you can send anything?
is it an opportunity to give away a postcard your regret you bought and you donā€™t know what to do of?

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My Dears! I had no idea this thread would be so popular! I posted it late last night and have had a horrifically busy day, I come back here and there are 54 replies already without any prompting from me. Excellent. :wave:

Iā€™m quoting from this one as itā€™s the one I can see as I reply:

Well put! :clap:

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I mean, In my profile I literally state that I like writing, which I then confirm by rambling quite a bit, but people can easily skip that part because I added paragraphs and such. (At least I think so?)
I actually like to be surprised, so my profile is more meant to tell something about me than a list of cards I like, and maybe give slight hints? I suppose some people might skip to my favorites to see what kind of cards I like, but Iā€™ve had some pretty nice reactions on postcards of people writing they enjoyed reading my profile, so I guess it must not be too bad?
I personally also enjoy reading longer profiles, especially when they have something interesting to tell me, though what the person who started this thread is describing does sound a bit boring to me and like details I would skim over.

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The other day I re-read the Postcrossing FAQ a little and stumbled on this:
https://www.postcrossing.com/help/what-should-i-write-on-my-profile
Last sentence:
"And last but not least, make it fun! :slight_smile: "

There are long profiles mainly consisting of wishlists and no-gos. In my opinion those are awfully boring. Then there are long profiles without any postcard wishes, but a lot of text about the user - often that gives me an idea which postcard to send and what to write.

I often dislike short profiles that give hardly any information about the user and only a few postcard-likes, because it usually is difficult for me to ā€œconnectā€ with the person (well, the text) so that choosing and writing the card is fun/ makes me happy.

So far all the profiles that were stated in this topic with having ā€œtoo much textā€ were fun to read for me and Iā€™m sure it will be fun (for me) to write a postcard to you :slight_smile:

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Thanks for your inspiration. I went for ā€œPeace!ā€.

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I decided to add a note on my profile about when you can stop reading (as rest of the profile is just random information), in case somebody is tired of reading long profiles. Should be easier now for the poor souls.

Sometimes I like to think they are running a similar experience testing I did a while back; testing out how different profiles affect the cards and what is written on cards. But probably the truth is that either they donā€™t like to share much about themselves (which is ok, I also keep some things as secret), they are not comfortable / canā€™t write much English (I remember sometimes getting thank you messages written in recipientā€™s language instead of English, when the profile has been empty), or they are just not feeling like writing more. Who knows.

The problem with short profiles is that I feel hard to connect with them, so the text on postcard becomes very basic. The postcard itself will be randomly selected from the pile if there isnā€™t any wishes to go by with, so that is not a problem. I feel specifically strange about a short profile asking cards written full. It just gives such an one-side conversation feeling and I find it hard to follow that request.

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I used to feel like that, but just recently Iā€™ve changed my approach and my responses. Life for me, here, is almost unbelievably stressful every day from the instant I wake up until I gratefully go to bed again. People who have never been a carer to another adult would never understand this. Therefore, when I get a new person to send a card to, I choose an appropriate card and write about it. Sometimes I could write an entire novel about the card which Iā€™m writing on. This new approach had yielded wonderfully satisfying thankyou messages. One woman wrote back 'thank you for making me think"!
Sorry if this is rambling on.

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Keep calm :smiley: RU-3436201

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Reading all these responses has only emboldened me to add more details to my profile. Concision be damned; Iā€™m going for verbosity gold! :medal_sports:

The main reason I have tried to make my profile relatively short (operative word: ā€œrelativelyā€) is that I do not want to overwhelm Postcrossers whose English is not advanced. But I suppose I could add more details about myself, as long as I write them clearly? What are everyoneā€™s thoughts on this?

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I think that sounds like a good idea. I kinda like my current profile style; first shortly about the card preferences, and then listing of the facts and at the end direct swap info for those who are looking for one. It could be better though, maybe tidier to make it easier to understand.

I think if you make the sentences short, use easier language (ā€œI amā€¦ā€, ā€œI likeā€¦ā€, ā€œI haveā€¦ā€) and avoid the big words and connecting sentences with ā€œbutā€, ā€œandā€, ā€œthereforeā€ and so on. People often first learn to tell about themselves, so the short sentences making presentation are usually easy to understand and can be quite easily translated with google if needed. I have noticed that adjectives (aka. how something is like) are often the last thing people start to learn so avoiding complicate adjectives and synonyms for describing yourself when you speak with beginners is a good idea.

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I have always assumed most people know how to use google translate, or their browsers would automatically translate for them like facebook does.

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Google translate/browser translation has varying degrees of success, depending on the language. As @Kompis-Ninna has said, simpler sentences do better.

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I have thought of that too but I cannot help making some sentences a bit elaborate. I think the main information (in my profile) should be clear enough and the rest can be skipped. I know how frustrated I get with languages I know enough to interact but still requiring a lot of effort :grimacing:

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Agreed! I never heard about Inge Look or Eurovision till Postcrossing.

I like it too when peopleā€™s profiles ask specific questions or for a quote, for example.

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Another great way to see how well your stuff translates is to stick it into Google, select a random language, for example, Japanese, and then translate it back into English. You will see some of the loss in translation this way.

For example ā€˜Verily, I know not what you meanā€™ into JP and then JP into ENG = ā€˜Sure, Iā€™m sure you donā€™t know what you mean.ā€™

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That reminded me of a famous Portuguese-English phrasebook written by a Portuguese man who probably did not speak English. He likely used a French-English dictionary in combination with a Portuguese-French dictionary to write it, and the results are hilarious.

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Wheeze I need these on a tshirt. Thank you for sharing this.
I think you might be amused by Japanese Engrish.
Years ago, meeting a friend at a stationery shop on the weekend she had a shirt in very large bold print saying ā€˜diarrheaā€™. She had no clue.

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Poor woman; I would feel awful! :sweat_smile: I hope you had a good laugh about it, though!