Post Counter

Community Talk , Bug Reports & Site Feedback
#1

I believe that the post counter should be closed as it promotes spamming. As long as there are users that have higher amounts of posts, some users will feel unequal and not as important or not as “cool” as the higher posting people.

As experienced in the Living Room over the last few weeks, the spamming is growing. It is not uncommon to see users increase their post count by over 100 posts in under a week. Now, I am pretty sure that not all of these posts are “helpful” or even funny. Most of these posts are filler posts used to boost the posters number of posts.

By having the post counter, CDFreaks in effect states that some users are better than others. Although you might disagree, that is how it is seen. By eliminating the post counter users will not have a goal of 500, 1000, 10000 or whatever number of posts. THe motivation for spamming is increasing you post count that way you will be seen as more important by other users who stare at your counter. It is sort of like decorating your house in Christmas lights and then showing it off. Other people will look at this “house” and see all the lights and feel ashamed that their house is not as decorated as their neighbors. They will go to the hardware store and buy and buy Christmas lights until every corner of their house is decorated in lights.

The same with the living room. As long as people continue to post for the sole reason of having as many posts as their fellow users, the content of the living room will continue to decrease in quality.

When I first joined the forum as a member none of this was a problem. Sure there was spamming, but the user was usually told to stop by one of the mods and the problem was solved. Even when the longest thread was created, spamming of todays quantity did not exist. It took us 4 months to get to 2000 posts. Now we got around 700 in the span of less than two weeks.

I am not saying that we should close the thread or anything like that. THe thread is a good place to rant. The problem of spamming would be eliminated if we got rid of the post counter. No longer would the thread be used to rack up posts like it is now. The elimination of the post counter for each thread would also eliminate the semi-competition to be the #1 poster in the thread.

I am not sure what to replace the post counter with or even if we should just get rid of it and leave nothing there. That is up for you mods and administrators to decide. I am just voicing a concern.

#2

The only fake-safe method would be counting the “lifetime” of a member. So take the time from signup to present and assign it a rank instead of assigning it by number of posts.

#3

I used to worry about this too, but if some people want a high post number, let them have it. There are other things to think about in this world.

#4

The sign up time doesn’t matter in any way :wink:

#5

How about this: Keep the post count but do not display it. So nobody really knows how many posts he/she has, and nobody knows how many the others have.
This will ad to the mystery of the various designations.
Just a thought…

#6

This would cause polls “how many posts do you have” :Z

#7

I don’t know if it is possible, but i think that the best solution would be to disable the post count in just the Longest Thread. I don’t think that spamming happens elsewhere in the Living Room.

This will leave us with people that really wanna post in the Longest Thread and help raise the level of discusion over there. I always enjoy Airhead’s mysterious linked photos/urls there. It is with the addition of specific members the last few weeks that things have gotten worse…

#8

Originally posted by Hemispasm
[B]I don’t know if it is possible, but i think that the best solution would be to disable the post count in just the Longest Thread. I don’t think that spamming happens elsewhere in the Living Room.

This will leave us with people that really wanna post in the Longest Thread and help raise the level of discusion over there. I always enjoy Airhead’s mysterious linked photos/urls there. It is with the addition of specific members the last few weeks that things have gotten worse… [/B]

That will also cause all the spam that was in the longest thread to spill over to the rest of the forum. If the users cant raise their post count in that thread, they will try and raise it in another.

#9

Originally posted by FlyingDutchman
[B]

That will also cause all the spam that was in the longest thread to spill over to the rest of the forum. If the users cant raise their post count in that thread, they will try and raise it in another. [/B]
Well maybe, but then there would be no excuse for not banning them :wink:

#10

Originally posted by Hemispasm
Well maybe, but then there would be no excuse for not banning them :wink:

The longest thread doesnt have long left…im going to close/delete it soon.

#11

Will get back on this.

We are discussing this at the moment.

#12

Originally posted by alexnoe
This would cause polls “how many posts do you have” :Z

Though i’m the POLLuter , i won’t do such a thing… most polls i make have some food for thought and/or friendly discussion.

I admit a lot of the postings lately are very very useless , but somehow they are organized in uselessness… i don’t see other forum sections polluted with thse kind of postings.

#13

It is like a cafe…
You will always see people posting nonsense, as they would talk jibberish when drunk in the cafe.

It creates a club-feeling, fun to belong to. And, you can choose to ignore the forum as a whole when you are only interested in the technical aspects, or simply ignore the threads which clearly indicate nonsense subjects (mostly the mods/admins take care of topic titles that are incorrectly formulated).

When people only post to get the post counter up because of a new status that comes along with a certain number of posts, then there is something wrong with those persons and they should be handled appropriately…get the same title as I still have for example :wink:

#14

I feel, spam or not, the post counter is still just doing what it’s meant for. It’d be better to talk to the appropriate Mod/Admins if there are posts that do harm to the forum/members.

Most people will respect more those who post the largest number of valuable and helpful things. It does not matter much whether one has over 10,000 posts largely composed of private things rather than to help other forum users in technical matters.

I believe it is best to direct everyone to contribute to the public forums. Calling other people’s posts spam sometimes only leads to resentment.

#15

As long as “spamming” is within the Longest thread (I way “spamming” becuase that is one of the thoughts with the longest thread :)) I do not see any problem with it.