Welcome to Pinside. I recommend you peruse the Front Page. See a thread that interests you and have a read. If you aren’t interested in reading many pages you can skip to the last page. Over time you will see that Pinside is about more than just technical or game specific thoughts. It’s a community, a soap opera and fun. Try lurking for a while and you will get the feel for how the threads flow. It looks more daunting than it plays, just like Hercules pinball!

Don’t start with LIONMAN thread, you won’t like it for sure

Welcome to Pinside!

Key posts are one way Pinside manages the clutter. If there are key posts in a thread they will be linked at the top of every page in the thread. You’ll most often find key posts in a tech thread.

See this thread for an example: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-ultimate-playfield-restoration

So your complaint is this forum is well established with hobbyist that frequent the topics often and posts are beyond the volume that you prefer to read through.
I'm not sure what to think of that. Maybe some of us are more addicted in the hobby or just like communicating with our friends.
-Mike

It's a forum, its entire purpose is to foster conversation. You don't have to read all of a thread, if it's a topic that interests you and you want to participate just jump to the last few pages. You don't have to read through every thread. I have a stupid amount of posts here, and I barely keep up with even a handful of threads myself.

It takes a little bit of commitment to be part of a community, but that's not a bad thing. It keeps people invested.

If you're simply looking to suck up news and not discussion maybe try https://www.pinballnews.com instead?

Pinside is the biggest and most active pinball forum on the interwebs
there is a lot of information and help available to you
you don't have to read every thread, but most topics have been covered and the search function works

Best feature on Pinside? the 'Ignore' button---use it well and use it often, as it will make your experience here more enjoyable! Oh, and welcome!

Welcome to Pinside!

There are so many different aspects of our hobby - events, comps, modding, owning, maintenance, restoration, buying/selling, ... right down to circuit board repairs; and Pinside covers all these areas, so it can be quite daunting at first. To start off, it depends upon what you want to learn or read about, if it's just keeping up with what going on in the industry as a whole then https://www.pinballnews.com might be better as Aurich has mentioned above, however if you own a machine then following that machine's Pinside owners thread (mark it as a favorite) is a great way to learn about your machine and to ask people for advise that are familiar with your game. You may not ever branch out looking at the other areas of Pinside, but over time you may find yourself looking to buy or sell on the Pinside Marketplace or looking at other threads.

So do you own a machine, or are you looking at purchasing one or what are you interested in learning about?

Very good first post; many of us have felt the same way at first. My advice: *-Use the search-*- post new threads, and start to favorite games/threads you are interested in.

Pinside has far more logical, user-friendly desires than ANY other forum, for any purpose. Prove
Me wrong - I would love to see a better alternative, but I am pretty confident this is the ultimate.

That said, the best part of Pinside is the other users. So ask questions! Sure you’ll get a couple of d-bag answers - this is the internet! But I learned, we learned, you will learn by asking questions and getting involved.

This... the simplest way I reduced complexity and confidently went from one to many pins... Best Pro Machine? Batteries? Best Anti-reflection? Does a pin fit in my XYZ? Useful and low noise access to knowledge.

Have or getting a pin? Find the owners thread, read the prep/repair/tech Key Posts, search ‘pitch’ in the thread and you have a ready made checklist of common things identified for your collection. Bookmark posts to keep your own library.

Follow the mod makers in the Market. Follow the least abrasive and more erudite pinsiders. Add spice/variety here to taste...

Also, you are certain to expand your local network. So start there... Regional for sale threads, local machines and mods in the Market, and if you use the maps on the Machines page to look around you for pins on your wishlist or want to play, you can see what arcades have them, or pinsiders that publicly share what they post or own or want to potentially trade. Follow those local pinsiders too.

Read the ‘Don’t get scammed’ post on the Home Page.

Welcome.

We do not seem be be experiencing any issues in the areas of new blood, nor do I think it's really needed.

You can’t really go wrong either way. A game specific question, like about rules or how to adjust something on your pin that needs adjustment, is often something you will want to post in the “club” thread because you will get pretty quick feedback from a number of people.

If you are trying to fix something that just broke on your pin and are not sure what the problem is, starting a tech thread is often better. Lots of people read those and offer help. And, if someone else has the same problem down the road, it can be easier to find the solution by searching other’s tech thread which tend to be a lot shorter — anywhere from 2-3 posts to 40-50. Much easier to handle.

But either way, you’ll be fine. There isn’t really a rule about where to post. It is just a question of what is more efficient.

Another great tip I would suggest, pinside search is great but does have some restrictions and intricacies, so you can also use google.

If you had a question about Dialed In, for example.... Literally "ask google", type the long-winded question into the google search bar. There is a fair chance someone else asked a similar question with some common key words. Choose from results at pinside.com, which will take you straight to the page where the search had some kind of match. Googles search engine is very strong. I have solved many obscure game specific issues exactly this way, without even needing to post!

Yeah - with the game specific questions it’s usually always better to ask in the club ‘mega’ threads - otherwise they can get lost down the main page pretty quickly and many owners of the game would/could miss it easily. It’s ok to duplicate questions on the club threads.. it happens all the time with common issues on the games and new owners coming in

nothing pinball related is enforced on Pinside

moderators are pretty laid back

Yep good point. +1

Common questions do repeatedly come up on the owners thread, so worthwhile doing a quick search in the thread for what you want but if you can't find anything reasonably quickly then ask away

Also, the Dialed In club thread has one of the better key post indexes at the front. You can check there for common issues and how people resolved them. When I first got the game, it was very useful to just go through those key posts rather than try to absorb the whole thread.

Welcome to Pinball and Pinside. I recommend the favorite button to the right of a thread topic.

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To switch back and forth between your favorite topics list and the whole list is easy.

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I'm new. I have no complaints or suggestions for how the site should be run better. I'm enjoying reading about pinball machines. Down the rabbit hole I go.

Welcome to Pinside Mr. Marino! Big fan of your NFL work. Stop by for a beer.

Uh oh. We’ve done it again. If too many people comment on a thread it will go “on fire”. There’s an icon showing it’s popular right now. The problem is that if you’re not confirmed as a real person you can’t comment on it anymore, even it is your own thread. This was started to reduce spamming accounts years ago.

I forget the process to get confirmed but remember it was simple to do. Check your profile page.

Then you will get a little check mark beside your name in the forums. It helps to weed out trolls.

Turn off what you are not interested in just by turning off clubs is a big help

This! The Front Page will be constantly refilled with all the club threads otherwise.

Be aware that turning clubs off also hides the ones you want, so favorite them first and access them via the favorites page.
(I tried asking for a feature whereby being in your favorites overrides the Front Page categorical turn-off, got crickets...)

Just remember: your membership isn’t official until you start a pinball pricing thread.

I can issue a wiaver for a "problems with top 100" also.

Yah I haven't been on here all that long but this seems to be the case.

That being said make sure you realize this is the internet and you may need a thick skin on here once in a while.

and the top 100 is bunk.

Ha, your post makes it sound like you like those.

The only reason there are megathreads is because, as you say, people ask the same question over and over again, as they can't be bothered to read the thread in its entirety, look at the key posts, or do a simple search.

Don't be one of those people, and certainly don't preface your question with "I haven't read the previous 'x' pages, but..."

I adorbs this forum. I don't post much but have spent hours and hours reading these threads and learning about machines and who the drama queens are. Pinside is fanfreakingtastic......