Diving Into The Archives - edited and updated.

The first advice ever written was by Matthew in February 2006, titled "Sleepy in the car".

I've noticed that a lot of members that like spending time reading and voting on advice articles seem to only read the latest advice, or they just read advice that comes up in a search they are doing for a particular subject. If you are in the mood for reading articles on various subjects for the sake of curiosity, consider taking a dive back into the archives and read some of the advice of long ago, as it can be rather interesting to see how much things have changed, not just in parenting techniques but also on Minti. It can also be informative and entertaining.  There are definately some real gems to be found back there. I would link a few that I feel are definately worth reading, but I'm inclined to say, go on the adventure of exploration and find them yourself.  It's really quite amazing what you can find.

I was surprised that some that were quite old weren't advice at all but a question - was there a Q&A section back then?  If so, I assume that reporting advice that wasn't actually advice was not as fashionable back then as it is now, it just received a low vote.  When I'm in the mood for just reading random articles and voting on them, I often come up with some more ideas about some things I'd like to write about as well. I always learn a few things along the way, and I find it very enjoyable, as I often find some articles that really have an impact on me.  Doing this also brings up old articles, that had probably been long forgotten, back up on to the recent activity list for other curious people to see.

So how does one go about diving into the archives? It's simple. Click on "Read Advice". Then click on "Most Recent". This brings up the advice in date order from the most recent to the oldest. Click on "Date" and it will reverse the list and go in order from the oldest at the top to the most recent at the bottom. There you can start reading the oldest articles on Minti.

Another interesting thing to note about the older advice is the pattern of voting and comments. It seems that when Minti first started, voting was tougher. Only the best of the best were ranked at 5. Nowdays more and more articles that are of the same quality as these older ones are getting higher votes. Yet the total number of votes on the older articles are usually no more than the number of votes received on the newer ones. The older comments are often more comprehensive, giving information that either supports or challenges the information given in the advice. The more recent advice tends to attract comments that are more just a line to say "great advice, good work". The older comments like this usually didn't get voted on at all, now these comments readily attract votes of 5 stars.

Things change over time. Parenting ideas and techniques change, and the way people communicate changes as well. These things are reflected in the archives of Minti. When you have time, take a look and see if you learn something you didn't know before.