Thread: Proposal Make post counts public
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Old 2012-12-17, 13:40   Link #40
Ledgem
Love Yourself
 
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
Quote:
Originally Posted by Klashikari View Post
I will ask you this: in what way number of posts and join date have any effect of the personality of a member?
It doesn't affect their personality, it's a "flavor" aspect. How people use it will obviously vary from person to person (which applies to many things - case in point, your interpretation of a user's avatar and signature are apparently different from mine), but it's helpful information all the same. Since you asked, I'll tell you how I use this information.

When I join a new forum I take an interest in join dates. It's a quick way to see who's invested in the community. While it's true that someone could make an account, disappear for a few years, and then return, that's pretty uncommon (and our own forum statistics back that up - or at least, they did when NightWish collected them about a year or two ago). It's also an easy way to spot "griefers" - someone exhibiting a bad attitude with a recent join date likely isn't invested in the community, and if the poor behavior is fairly consistent in a short span, it becomes very apparent what their purpose on the forum is. (This was particularly useful on forums lacking a reputation system.)

Within AnimeSuki, I find it useful as a way to orient myself. I disappear for months at a time, during which new members join and take up positions within the community. Their join date allows me to know whether these are members who joined while I was absent, or if they've always been on the forum but just spent most of their time in areas that I didn't frequent. If they're brand new, I'll occasionally go out of my way to welcome them to the forum. Community feel and all, you know? It can also be a nice excuse to strike up conversation via the fancy visitor message system.

That's my brief take on it (I can probably write up an essay on other uses and interpretations), but I doubt it will persuade anyone who believes that a forum should be 99% focused on the content of posts. I'll say again, scrubbing this information and/or hiding it away in the user profile would be depersonalizing the forum for a concern that doesn't seem to exist in reality. What's the point of it, and is it worth the potential drawback?
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