Displaying Post Count

[Murder he Wrote]

This is really a question for those with forums on Advanced Hosting, but those on Free Hosts are welcome to share their opinion ~smile~

The psychological side of forums is strange, naturally people tend to respect members more when they have a higher post count and active, as opposed to a new member who may only have 15-20 posts. Now, you may be thinking "What's the problem with that?", well...as I've seen here and on many other forums it casuses the dreaded spam...the Admin's worst nightmare.

Users will post and post to build their post count deliberately reply to every topic even if it doesn't interest them, in order to gain a higher post count. In the majority of cases, the replies are normally short and to the point...being single sentences or even words such as "Nice", "Cool" or "lol".

So, this got me thinking about a forum I used to visit which didn't disable their post count, but simply removed it from the view topic page. The effect of this was great. The spammers stopped visiting, and it filtered out the dedicated members who were there for discussion purposes from those who just wanted to look good.

So, on your forums have you considered hiding the post count, would you, and if you can't would you hide it if you had the option?

Discuss. ~smile~

 

[Callum93]

If you are a stat whore it's a bad idea, if you don't care about stats then it seems a good idea. I never do this because my forums never get post whores -lol-

 

[thedudeman]

I would not ever hide post counts. They're actually fairly essential because on my forum, you get a promotion to Ultra Member automatically at a certain post count. I can look around and see when people are spamming, so I leave them on.

 

[Ste]

I think if I removed post counts it could have a little effect but I think there would still be people who would post spam and other pointless things. I would never remove the post count though because there is no point in removing it and people like to know how many posts they have made.

As for people with more posts I think in most cases it can be right. People with the higher post counts are viewed as the big boys by most new members but that is why when a new member joins you have to make them feel welcome and just because others have a higher post count doesn't mean you don't really matter.

 

[Rich Edmonds]

I love my post count! Jokes, I only post where applicable (which is never -razz- ) and make sure that I am enjoying the discussion, rather then having spam rages to gain post ranks.

 

[Jasonp]

Im favour of removing the postcount, it shouldn't be about how many posts it should be quality lengthy posts, people rush when posting they should take there time fully understand whats going for example on that april fools joke people are still replying now welcoming a new admin -lol- im not saying they did it on that exact post but you get the idea.

Quality > Quantity

 

[SpacewardAsh]

Who cares about post count. This is why I do not offer anything special to users with high post count.

I will only give out VIP status to staff, ex staff or members who deserve it.

 

[Kingmush]

While Rankism is a problem, I still think showing post count is neccessary. Because it does show experience and commitment to a forum and has a sense of accomplishment.

 

[HomerSPC]

Post count on our forums gets you a shiny rank that does nothing. We have it so it may say how long you have been on the forums, but other than that Post count is nothing. It's the personality that matters.

VIPs only got their rank for being Affiliates, or for being very helpful in the community which they only get after being the winning party in a vote in the VIP forum.

 

[Watch Me Sink]

I have it, but I will be running a poll on my new forum to see if they want to get rid of it in the poistbit

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

If efc were to take away my post count i'd have to take away his new name color ~mad~

Nah, I love post counts. It shows whose active in the community, and lets face it, all member's are not created equal. I think a rep system works wonders when applied, but I wouldn't say replace the post counts.

I don't get much spam though >.>

 

[Kingmush]

Forgot to mention though, since I just remembered.

My forum doesn't have post based ranks anyway. Instead we have 'Membergroups' which cover all the topics we talk about (ie; Music Lover rank, Gamer rank, Serious Debator, Blogger, etc.) and you just pick which one you want freely. However, we do still show post counts.