The Death of Post Counts
 

Many times, many places, the removal of post counts has been touted as a great solution to useless spam on forums. But with the removal of post count comes issues such as how newbies know the regulars from from the occational visitors and such. I propose that we hide postcounts and replace them with an activity metric such as the following:

Where
vw=the number of days in the past week that the user has been logged on
pw=the number of posts the user has made in the past week with a max of 4 per day

vm=the number of days in the past 28 days that the user has been logged on
pm=the number of posts the user has made in the past 28 days with a max of 4 per day

activity metric= (vw*3+pw*2)*2+(vm*3+pm*2)

In this case, the maximum points would be 462 (maximums are good, less incentive for spamming).
If a user were to visit every day but not post, he would have 126 points, or 29%.
If a user were to visit every day and make one post each day, he would have 210 points, or 45%
If a user has not yet visited for the day, it represents 5% of their total possible points.
If a user is inactive for a week, it will result in a point reduction of 50%.

I'm interested in thoughts on this idea, as well as alternate methods of calculating activity metric, reasons why this would or wouldn't be good. I am NOT interested in one or two word responses such as "yes" "no" "fuck you" "this sucks" "awesome", etc.

The idea is interesting. I believe it would do better than post counts.

Just leave it with post counts, much easier to understand.

its a good idea. inventive. but i dont think it would work ny beter. just more complicated.

I like the idea, and I was just messing around with the numbers... I like how you made the numbers work out so that the weekly activity is most important. :)

I was going to suggest making a more rounded number, but this way actually works out nicely.

Quick question: What would happen to Post Count? Would it just vanish into the dark, or would there be a way to check up on it out of curiousity?

I'm going to mess with some numbers now, but I doubt I'll find anything more intriguing...

once a person gets an account, i really dont think that person would want to understand what all that was for. i'm with K_A
good idea though :-P

If a member comes here and sees such low numbers, they will think this forum is inactive. I'm sure my 5000+ posts(along with other people's) will be more initiative to stay here than 462.

wELCOEM TO NAZI GERMANY.

leave it the way it is =\

This is a serious thread.

You should round off the numbers more I think.

As it stands the numbers are not round, but they work great for the purpose, which is to create a formula that emhasizes weekly activity, especially the present week. 462 isn't that bad anyway. :)

Couldn't we have both?

I don't think you (WW) should do this untill I get Cable again :-/

I'm thinking... We get rid of everything, post counts and any sort of value indicating either activeness and senority. A person should be judged upon his skills and personality, not a meter that shows how active they are. If you wanna know active, just search for his last post, and check the date. If a person is active enough you'll see his/her post around.

Well, if you can find another Formula that would incorporate exactly a 50% difference from the max points after 1 week of complete inactivity with a more round number, then please, post it. I tried for about 5-7 minutes when I first read this post, but got bored, and decided that 462 isn't all that bad, LOL.

What's the difference in that and post count?

Post count is a lot easier to understand. We are not all super-computers like WW.

I would have to agree with KA for once ;)

Maybe a pictrure example of somesort would help us better understand.

Like I said... rid of any metric mesurement system

That was me :)

im really confused on how this will work so i think a pic would be helpfull

But i still think Leave it the way it is

Whats the deal with changing it the way it is?

It is an indirect way to alleviate most of the spamming problems that we were/are having... Clever too might I add. :)

You guys dont udnerstand....even fi you remove post count....the spam will continue.....peopel dont just reply to a thread just to get another point

Im pretty sure that taking away the post ccount will be detramental. People will still spam to raise that percentage thingy too

People will spam until they learn that they can't. That's what the new rules are for. Who cares if they spam? That just means they get banned.

Exactly. or maybe as a way to punish spammers, you can take just THEIR post count away.

From personal experience running TAF, I can honestly say removing post counts and indicators affected by user activity will not reduce spam in the least. The only real way to reduce spam is to let people know it isn't tolerate and start handing out warnings and temporary bans, followed by permanent bans for serious repeat offenders.

The hardest part of it all though is determing what exactly you consider spam and what you don't.

I say give it a test drive for a month or so and see how it does. Personally I think its better than posts counts even if it doesn't get rid of spam.

I think we should get the anti spam hack.

If we deem someone a spammer it will count down their post count instead of up.

Adrenachrome - I'm interested in that hack... It might be nice

So the post counts are gone now?

If you would turn your moronic head to the left side (or right side depending on the template you are using) you would see they are still there dumbnut

I really hope you are joking.

This is a very good idea, WW. BUT... people still want to have an inkling of what the hell is going on, perhaps we should keep ranks or make new ranks that change as points increase/decrease. LiveWire suggested picture icons to represent the activity. In fact, another idea is to have this formula but not actually display it, instead just display the rank/icon. That way it's not as confusing to newbies or nonsupercomputers like KA.

In most places where it is visible, it would be replaced with the activity ranking (as a bar, icons, or a percentage, it wouldn't be displayed raw like I described it. You would be able to check post count in the admin CP.

But you see, the whole point of this system is that that doesn't work. Only the first 4 posts of each day are counted. Any beyond that do nothing to raise your activity level.

Yes, I was actually thinking of using tables to turn it into a bar, but I like the idea of having icons for different levels, too.

I think I might implement this system in addition to post count so we can all see how it would work out.

Sorry I was testing something.

Grav, don't spam the Forum Discussion again, especially with posts that are in direct mocking fashion of an Admins request.

That sounds like the best way to go about a transition/test drive of this formula. I like how 4 posts per day is the max counted, so even if you can't sit on the computer all day and pospospost, you can have 'max' rating or whatever.

Implementing this is good, my vote is YAY

I have no idea what WW said, anyone got a pic of how it would look like?

Leave it liek it is.....all you'll get by remove and changign things are people leaving......