This suggestion is prompted by the AS Moderating Staff's recent decision to disable rep, as announced
here.
Now, I didn't put
a lot of weight into rep points. I knew some members with "one green dot" that made some great posts, so I wouldn't assume something about the quality of a member's posts or anime knowledge based on how many green dots they had or didn't have.
However, I did see, and continue to see, rep points as being a good indicator of at least one thing - AS Veteran status.
What I mean by that is that if I saw someone with several green dots (5 or more, say), I could safely assume that this person has been a regular and active member here on AS for a fair bit of time. While some people build up rep quicker than others, I think it's nonetheless true that a certain number of rep points indicates a certain longevity of posting here on AS.
Now, back when I myself was fairly new to Anime Suki, recognizing such veterans on the basis of their "green dots" was helpful to me. I remember noticing Vexx, Irenicus, TinyRedLeaf, and some other members as having lots of green dots. One thing that conveyed to me was "veteran status". So when trying to learn the ropes around AS, and in trying to get used to the sort of community culture here, I found it helpful to pay attention to their posting style and in some cases to ask them for advice directly.
With this in mind, I think it might be good to make post counts public, now that the rep system is going to be removed. Public post counts would enable future new members to the boards to recognize current veteran posters, which can be helpful to them in the same way that those little green dots were once helpful to me.
Now, I know that some might be fearful that this could lead to a sort of elitism. But honestly, on most boards I've been on, that's not the case. People recognize those with large post counts as veterans of a particular online community, but that is it.
Public post counts is a suggestion that was made before on this subforum, but I saw such a thing as redundant at the time precisely because we had the rep system. But with the rep system going away, I think that one of the benefits it provided could be captured by introducing public post counts.
To be clear, what I mean by public post counts is that under your avatar picture would be a display of how many posts you've made since joining Anime Suki. In fact, we could put this display precisely where those little green dots are now. It may be fitting.