Post your... Rate that...

[Animaniac]

Given the large number of Post your x and Rate that y, I would love to see a separate sub-forum to General Discussion that houses all these posts. It's really annoying to wade through all of these threads, which usually number several pages long and sit at the top of the thread list, to get to real "General Discussion." Thanks.

[gravitation]

im not to bothered by it but i guess that would be kool and it would make it easier to get to threads and stuff ^__^

[dot|hack]

Yes i agree!

[Animaniac]

I don't think these discussions are annoying, it's that it's really a different type of discussion, and I think it would be easier for everyone to have a special forum that allows us to differentiate between the two types.

[boneyjellyfish]

I agree! And make it so that none of the posts in this subforum add to your total post count.

[Imazul]

I think general chat should be more strict too, even if its general chat theres alot of out of topic post that has been sprouting these days ( since 2 weeks before the forum changed)

[Timo]

Originally Posted by boneyjellyfish

I agree! And make it so that none of the posts in this subforum add to your total post count.

Then you might as well do the same for the Naruto forum.

I can understand why you would want to disable the post counter in such a forum, but isn't the purpose of the counter to count someone's posts?
All of them. (The good, the bad and the spam.)

If you want to disable it, then apparently you add some value to the post counter of others.
Why?
I don't care how many posts others have.
For me it's a way of seeing how much someone as posted on this forum (all of it) and nothing more.
Disabling it for some forum won't make the spamming go away.
It might even get people to spam more in the other forums.

I think the idea of a separate forum is a good one, but keep the same rule as we have them now.
No useless threads, spamming and such.
It's a great way to keep the busier / repetitive threads away from the other threads.
I personally don't have any problems with the way it's now, but I can see why someone would want it changed.

[boneyjellyfish]

Originally Posted by Timo

Then you might as well do the same for the Naruto forum.

Nahhh. Naruto forum people hang out in the Naruto forum. If I go there and see somebody with 5000 posts by this weekend, well... apparently they're somewhat helpful to the naruto forum. Now, I'm going to be very discrimatinating here so bear with me. From my knowledge, most, if not all, people in the Naruto forum have either a Naruto avatar, a d00d name, or a name from Naruto as their name along with several alpha-numeric characters. If one of these "people" go to the General Chat forum or the DVD & Licensed forum, for example, it would be pretty easy to spot them.

I can understand why you would want to disable the post counter in such a forum, but isn't the purpose of the counter to count someone's posts?
All of them. (The good, the bad and the spam.)

I view the post counter as the amount of useful posts that the user has done. Some people like to compete with others, driving their post count upwards with spam messages and useless threads like the Rate that and Post this threads. I admit to posting in those threads as well, but not for purposes like that. I would like to keep a post count, but I don't really care for the other part of the post count: the posts per day count. I'm pretty happy the members area isn't sorted by that by default anymore...

Alright, I know that having a post counter with my ideals is not a very possible thing to do since many people post spam in perfectly legitimate threads. It's just a dream within a dream of mine to have the post counter actually have a meaning, as something like this rarely works. However, I think that if we at least filter out MOST of the spam, it will come pretty close to what I'd like to view the post counter as.

Anyway, that's just my two cents on this whole matter. Also, I'm really tired right now so I'm sorry if I wasn't very good with my grammar in that post

[Akiace]

I think we shouldn't get carried away by this post counter thing. I don't think a person who's posted dozen times everyday is any different from one who come by regularly but don't post much. The no of posts don't make the person any more popular. So the 'to be or not to be' question about post counter is not a significant issue here.

[Megane]

Originally Posted by Animaniac

Given the large number of Post your x and Rate that y, I would love to see a separate sub-forum to General Discussion that houses all these posts. It's really annoying to wade through all of these threads, which usually number several pages long and sit at the top of the thread list, to get to real "General Discussion." Thanks.

I'm not entirely sure whether I would second this motion. On the one hand, I also find "Post your x" "Rate that y" posts mildly annoying. There have been some excellent topics of conversation in the General Chat forum, and having to navigate around the popular hundred+ post theads to find the real gems can be irritating sometimes. On the other hand, creating a second forum for a certain kind of general chat removes the "catch-all" function of the General Chat forum. That being, if you have something to say and it doesn't fit any of the other forums, it will probably be safe in General Chat. A sub-forum would mean a slight re-definition of general chat, which might go unnoticed by some and we'd still have posts in the main General Chat forum that would have to be moved/deleted by mods.

Whether these posts are worth contributing to the post count or not is a slightly different matter. If for instance we had a forum where we should post the kind of threads mentioned above, and the post count for this forum was disabled, what would stop it from becoming a flame/junk/spam forum? As has been mentioned elsewhere on this forum, such a thing would be undesirable.

Also, I'd like to say a few things about the post count. I would definitely say that there are too many people on this forum who are confusing the post count for meaning anything other than how many posts this person has made, and not say, how valuable this person is to the community. While I don't mind the existance of either the "number of posts" or "posts per day" values, there are clearly those who do. I can really only see only two ways to solve this: by having either less stats or more stats.

Less stats would mean hiding your post counter and posts per day from other members of the forum, and maybe even from yourself. That would be a quick and dirty way to stop one influence of spam. I think it's clear however that there are some who think it is necessary to appraise and value other members of the forum. Some might feel that if two pieces of advice are given, the one from the poster who has contributed more to the forums has given the more valuable advice. To avoid such a misinterpretation of the post counter, perhaps more stats should be introduced. It is not an easy thing to measure someone's "worth" on a forum (not considering if such a thing ever should be done). I've seen systems that try to do it before, but they are complicated, and would give the administators more headaches than they deserve.

I don't think the forum needs such a major change. Perhaps it could do without showing the post count under everyone's avatar, that way it is hidden from those who don't think it means anything, but it would still be available (through a member's profile), to those who really cared. If we start trying to manage the post count and configuring certain forums to not count towards it and such, a lot of work will be needed to make that number actually have any meaning at all again.