Count to X before X posts

[Stijn]

We're not going to close anything. (at least, I hope we don't :/)
What I was suggesting is possibly a way to make posts on those threads not count to your overall total post count.

The only thing the total post count says is how active you are on the forums. Not how many useful posts you made. I think the total post count should stay the same. Not because I think I will lose my #1 spot Because I will keep that position with my posts in other sections.

 

[Vaangel]

Am I the only person that is getting annoyed at these? It appears as if some people are just abusing these threads to get their post counts up, and get into the top posters. It's exactly what some of the top posters are doing, too.

It shouldn't be like that. A good forum member shouldn't have lots of posts because they're spamming numbers in a silly thread, they should be posting relevant things.

I realise this is something minor and almost completely irrelevant, but it shouldn't be the spirit of things around here. Getting loads of posts because you're just posting numbers is not at all the same as a few well thought out and long posts.

I am getting higher and higher up on the "highest posting members list" because of posting my wise opinions on these threads xD

 

[G33ke]

Even saying "I agree" and stopping there on a thread, maybe even "lol" has more meaning than the counting. You are just...counting.

In fact, I've been on another forum before where this became an issue. One person abused it so bad that he gained 3000 posts in one day, and any day now a group of 12 people could come on and do the same thing here taking over every spot in the top posters if they really wanted to. Almost every single one of this guys 3000 posts contained no content and was just spamming random numbers. He then took the lead of the number 3 spot in posts, only behind another forum gamer, who was behind the owner of the forums, and this guy wasn't even nearly done yet, he was just going to get another 3000 the next day (The person with the most posts had about 8000 and was the owner of the year and a half old forums) ...when I look for post counts, you know why I'm looking at them? To see who is active in the community and has a lot to say, but if what they say means absolutely nothing and doesn't even contain any of your personality, anything of the like, possibly even a 1 letter post, then they don't really have a lot to say and aren't "active"...it's just spam. Fun spam, but still spam. (For example, when I say "1" on it's own, I'm not saying it any differently than the last guy. I'm just a robot, no personality, and that's not what I came to the forums to read.) Oh, and I'll say this now - if I did what the guy in my example did, I could easily spend a week here and have the most posts for months to come without posting a single letter, that does not stand for "activity". I would not have been capable of doing this in any other section, but in forum games it'd have been a piece of cake.
Edit: Do you guys think we should have an "accurate number" or a "helpful number"? Even if you refuse to believe posting a single number doesn't count as activity, you should at least know that a lot of people don't care who spams the forum games, as proven by this thread, and it showing who actually posts lots of larger, at least slightly meaningful posts would be what we want.

Likes can be...biased to say the least. If I wanted to, I could ask my friends to just like every single one of my 300+ posts, and for each person who does it, I'd get 300 likes, something next to impossible to achieve in a day without a like for a like thread. Just as the top posters is filled with forum games players now, the top likes received people will also have not gotten there legitimately...more importantly, it's as I said - what I want to know is the top posters, not the most liked people. I want to know who is being a truly active member of the community, not who is liked by a ton of people and "popular". (In fact, making a list of top liked people would encourage people to abuse the like system...and possibly even spam all the other parts of the forum as well as the forum games so they have more posts for their friends to like...it'd make the current problem even worse and cause a new one.)

As Zeno originally suggested, the forum games section should not contribute to post count. The only thing this will harm is dramatically changing the top posters currently up there, and possibly causing a little spam in other sections in an attempt to get a high post count, but those can be easily taken care of, or it can cause people to be more active and interesting in them with real posts instead of numbers...that's about it. Honestly, there is no good reason not to do it. Sure, one could argue that we should do the same for all the "lol" posts and that that's impossible...but that doesn't mean we should make posts still count in the forum games.


TL;DR: Zeno is right. Posts in the forum games shouldn't count - it would almost completely solve this problem, and people can still play their forum games. Honestly, adding likes into the mix will only make things worse than they are right now.

 

[Stijn]

TL;DR: Zeno is right. Posts in the forum games shouldn't count - it would almost completely solve this problem, and people can still play their forum games. Honestly, adding likes into the mix will only make things worse than they are right now.

How would you abuse the like thing? I don't think someone will be able to find a friend willingly (without a gun pointed at them) to like all their posts.
And about the "like for a like" threads they can be closed and deleted and against the rules.

 

[G33ke]

How would you abuse the like thing? I don't think someone will be able to find a friend willingly (without a gun pointed at them) to like all their posts.
And about the "like for a like" threads they can be closed and deleted and against the rules.

I've seen it before, like systems being abused...seen a bit of it on these forums in fact, just not by anyone who still posts actively these days. (That could change if likes actually contributed to something.) Two friends join the same server, follow each other on the forum, and read/like all of each others posts. I've even seen one guy like his friends post, then continue to argue how he was actually wrong in every way. There wasn't even a humorous remark in there, he disagreed with every little bit. (That wasn't something I saw here though.)

And trust me, if my friend asked me to like all of his posts that he made from then on and I didn't have common sense not to cheat the system, I'd do it. There is nothing stopping me, it takes the click of a mouse every 30 minutes or so to like his post, and I'm just one person.

 

[Stijn]

I've seen it before, like systems being abused...seen a bit of it on these forums in fact, just not by anyone who still posts actively these days. (That could change if likes actually contributed to something.) Two friends join the same server, follow each other on the forum, and read/like all of each others posts. I've even seen one guy like his friends post, then continue to argue how he was actually wrong in every way. There wasn't even a humorous remark in there, he disagreed with every little bit. (That wasn't something I saw here though.)

And trust me, if my friend asked me to like all of his posts that he made from then on and I didn't have common sense not to cheat the system, I'd do it. There is nothing stopping me, it takes the click of a mouse every 30 minutes or so to like his post, and I'm just one person.

Well as you might know with some good forum moderators these kind of things can be stopped.
And as you maybe knew I have a lot of experience on different forums and I've never seen abuse on a high scale due good forum moderators.

 

[G33ke]

Well as you might know with some good forum moderators these kind of things can be stopped.
And as you maybe knew I have a lot of experience on different forums and I've never seen abuse on a high scale due good forum moderators.

To stop abuse of the like system?
Yeah, maybe the obvious abuse...but some abuse is invisible. For example, his friends can instead of liking all of his posts, just like certain ones...still undeserved likes, maybe a lot fewer, but still some.

It'd still be easy for a few friends of mine to come in and give me 100-200 likes without getting caught. That can make a big difference, but is hard to catch. :/


I've seen a like system on said other forum from my earlier that had this exact same problem - people abused the system. It's really not as easy to enforce as it may seem...you see them catch all of it only because they only catch what is easily seen. There is more than just what you see, trust me.

 

[ShaunDepro]

As long as forums have existed there has been these games. Another forum I've been on had counted way past 50k 3:

 

[Diar]

If posts in forum games cease to add to your post count, I'd recommend also adding a 10 character limit to posts (leave it as it is on profile posts). It may not be much, but people wouldn't be able to simply type a few letters to get their post count up quickly.

If people use fillers to bypass it, that should be reportable as spam.

 

[Stijn]

If posts in forum games cease to add to your post count, I'd recommend also adding a 10 character limit to posts (leave it as it is on profile posts). It may not be much, but people wouldn't be able to simply type a few letters to get their post count up quickly.

If people use fillers to bypass it, that should be reportable as spam.

I think this is the best solution.
But I would make it a 5 character limit. Or there might be some problems on other sections. For example if someone wants to reply "Nice map".

If people use fillers to bypass it, that should be reportable as spam.

Well except it is only an image. I use images to show my reaction sometimes without typing a letter.

 

[Diar]

I think this is the best solution.
But I would make it a 5 character limit. Or there might be some problems on other sections. For example if someone wants to reply "Nice map".

Nobody that makes a map would want to hear that though. I get annoyed when people just say that, because no map is perfect, and I'd either like what's good about it, or what's bad about it.

Well except it is only an image. I use images to show my reaction sometimes without typing a letter.

Allow BBCode to stand for it, I guess. But people using bold to add an extra 5 characters would be using filler, so that wouldn't be allowed either.

 

[Stijn]

Nobody that makes a map would want to hear that though. I get annoyed when people just say that, because no map is perfect, and I'd either like what's good about it, or what's bad about it.

I sometimes reply with just 2 words if I'm tired but want to share my opinion. Then the next day I will post something again.