Notice: Please avoid leading new readers with questions

[Aspirety]

We’ve been getting a lot of flags recently regarding veterans posting leading questions in response to the deductions of new readers, particularly for Umineko. While these aren’t strictly spoilers and aren’t against the rules, I believe that we should be discouraging leading of any kind unless it’s very necessary. I’ve been guilty of leading people in Bookclubs, but mostly to make the podcasts more entertaining. That doesn’t mean we should be leading people too much though, it seems to be becoming a problem lately.

Be like @MagusVerborum. Comment on validity, praise interesting discussions, but avoid leading people with questions. If we lead them to answers, they’ll feel bad that they weren’t able to figure it out on their own. Have some faith! Our community are very smart, they probably don’t even need our help to solve the mysteries~

[MagusVerborum]

Be like MagusVerborum? Oh my

If you want pointers on how to talk to new readers coming up with theories, go look at Umineko and see how the characters go about it. Ryukishi writes characters intelligently, we can learn a lot by looking at the way they interact with Battler.

And when in doubt, neither confirm or deny anything.

[Blackrune]

Agreed. Veterans should be careful, even if it doesn’t look like they’re giving anything away.
Just gonna leave this here:

[…] When I was about to read one of the greatest detective novels of our time, my present collaborator said to me, ‘I wonder if you will think it fair?’ - no more than that; and I, greatly to be pitied, solved the problem at the first sentence. I will be silent, and let the reader cut the pages for himself with the sharper edge of his own intelligence.

[Jokrono]

I can’t speak on much because I’m still a mere scrub here; but maboi @MagusVerborum gave me a great tip on how he’s been doing it for our video series, in addition to what Aspi said; try ask questions relevant to what you were thinking when you read through the stories. You can lead them in new directions, mislead them ever so slightly and it gives you an opportunity to think on why you came to those conclusions in the first place.

Once you’ve read through any story, or played any game, it can be hard to go back to the beginning, but often the most fun when playing with new people is to go make a level zero character and play through that RPG with your buddies, rather than joining them on your all-powerful max-level fashionista character.

[Aspirety]

Hahaha, that’s a very interesting analogy. For sure, I always try to put myself back in the mind of ‘when I first read it’ when participating in Bookclub discussions.