Forum Moderators: open
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Has post count reached the point where it is no longer universally relevant as a rating of a members worth across the entire set of forums?
Although post count clearly serves to show the commitment of an individual to the forums and as such it can't easily be beaten as it takes time and effort to build it up, there is a down side.
Post count, and to a lesser extent the stylised title, is *very* promenantly displayed and tends to suggest a rating of the members worth - if there was only one big forum focused on one topic this would be fine but there are a number of very focused and diverse forums.
Unfortunately the single post counter leads to a situation where my worth in one area should not necesarily carry over to other areas. For example I'd like to think I'm great at SQL & ASP and while I know a little about Google you'll nearly always find a little uncertainty in my posts on the subject.
The current system is totally unable to cope with anything more than an absolute answer - it's geared towards me being an absolute - my quality cannot vary - I'm limited to having my worth represented as a single variable somewhere in a database no matter what I'm talking about.
Where am I going with this?
Well really I'm just wondering out loud how best to convey to users (particularly the newer users) that the person you are getting the answer from may have posted a whole lot of stuff but *none* of those answers covered this subject area and so you might want to treat what they are saying with a pinch of salt.
We've all seen topics which have featured an answer or two which you have seen and *instantly* know that the person answering the question just gave the wrong answer, sometimes it's a little wrong, other times it just ends up worse.
Sometimes these do get missed despite the best efforts of the various forums mods, as is the nature of any high-traffic forum (as much as I'm sure the mods would like to, to they can't be expected to verfiy, read & reply on every single thread).
Why not keep the post count but make it a private thing so that I can know but it's not displayed to the world - we can still have the stylised titles but simply without the number of posts trailing it.
Why not introduce a system whereby whomever starts an "answer my question" type of thread gets the ability to rate the replies he or she recieved, so if person X gets a good rating in response to their answer their profile will reflect that for that particular subject area.
Think about the ebay rating systems and how that works - it might not be perfect but it makes a lot more sense than "how many items have I bought & sold".
<ponders>
Guess I might end up with a lot of reading to do tomorrow, or maybe none depending on how this goes.
</ponders>
- Tony
very good. i wouldn't worry about. i've read a few of your posts. 5 more posts to seniority
JOAT, what about FOO, you don't pick up post increments on that one. Some of the members could easily clear a few thousand with that alone.
It would just make everyone FOO-ITES post count: xxxx
"Itīs not about post count", everybody but the rest below says.;)
I had to look at your profile next to the quote to realize you fell into that category :) Personally, I see the post count as a fun novelty, but that's about it. I do tend to find your posts sufficiently useful that I simply assumed you had "senior member" status.
Rumbled!
JOAT :)
That was a Foo-ish comment and should not count!
Troels
You're Foo "prefered member" I see!
Good comeback.
Im out of my league....
JOAT ;)
[/quote]Mumbling in front my notebook: Today will be the day that I will become a senior member and everybody will value my posts that much more.[/quote]
All messages, new and old, give the *current* status and number of posts for that member. I don't know how this affects the avarage new user's judgement that's been advised to search the archive..
Btw: being a new poster in this forum doesn't necessarily mean: new to the industry. I've seen insight answers to specific questions from first time posters!
Astrid
