Would anyone consider removing post count from their forum?

On one of my forums, an issue came up where a couple members with a lot of posts tried to "pull rank" with those who had far fewer posts.
I find that a lot actually with people who have lots of posts, and they actually think it means something towards website seniority or something. This is exactly why I remove reputation and all those little argumentative aspects so people just view people, not post counts, reputation or any other such tribute of false popularity. Many of my senior members got themselves banned because they turn nasty on new members... typically their tolerance for mistakes lessens over time. Good reason why those type should never be an admin or mod.
 
This is exactly why I remove reputation and all those little argumentative aspects so people just view people, not post counts, reputation or any other such tribute of false popularity.

That's why I'll be removing the "who else liked this post" from the postbit. And reputation was a freaking nightmare, for the reasons you mentioned plus a dozen more.
 
Definitely, don't have post counts on our current forum and never have had ... never gave the ability to give negative rep either. Stopped a lot of pointless posts to get post count up and never had anyone moaning about such and such giving them negative reputation.

A lot of our members came from another place that had both and a large majority have said they prefer it without either.
 
Thanks for the responses everyone, some interesting comments.

I didn't mean stopping post count altogether, I just meant stopping it from being visible, throughout the whole forum.

That way post count based permissions, user titles and trophies would still take effect, but the members wouldn't have a clue what their counts were.
 
I didn't mean stopping post count altogether, I just meant stopping it from being visible, throughout the whole forum.
The post count is information that I will generally keep in the user's profile page, but remove from the postbit (like it is done here).

Consider that whatever you include in the postbit will be an activity that is promoted on your site. So, if you use postcount, you're telling your members that they should post as much as possible in order to have a higher social status. As an alternative, if you wanted to encourage members to create interesting new threads, it might be beneficial to count the number of replies a member has received to threads that s/he started and indicate that in the postbit. This becomes the activity that is rewarded by a higher social status. This example would work better on some sites than others, but I think you get the gist. Overall post count has never really struck me as something I'd like to promote, but it's still an interesting stat for the profile page.
 
For me, personally, I'll enable the option to display a user's post count (I'm so glad it's an option - I would have been concerned it if wasn't!). My audience have grown very accustomed to seeing their post count and, for many of my users, I can imagine not having it there will make 'em kick up a fuss.
 
I think there needs to be options to give granular control over the display of discussion/message/post counts on profiles, as well the home page and forum display pages.

I for instance, and many other forum owners would turn every single one of these off for guests as a for instance.
 
On one of my forums, an issue came up where a couple members with a lot of posts tried to "pull rank" with those who had far fewer posts. And of course arguments broke out. I wrote a script the determined a Post Quality Index. The PQI was displayed directly under their posts counts. It turned out that members with a lot of posts had a much lower PQI, than those with far fewer posts.

The PQI ranged from 0 to 1.0. The script I wrote analyzed peoples posts and determined the quality of their writing.

As my forum was a role playing (play-by-post) forum, members found the score beneficial in determining who they invited to take part in a story. A high PQI usually meant a good story, while a low PQI meant that the member who joined would either not stick around or would not contribute to the development of the story line. Over time members stopped looking at post counts, and focused on their PQI.

It also showed my staff who posted more in off topic than the role playing forums, who only took part in the role playing forums, and who took part in all forums.
Lawrence, i will send you much mental karma and good vibes if you make that script work for XF.
:D
 
Lawrence, i will send you much mental karma and good vibes if you make that script work for XF.
:D

That is something I need to think about. The whole system is the backbone for awarding experience points on that forum. And as far as I know, there is no other system like it. I use the PQI value to award experience points, for leveling your role playing character. No one can figure it out, and I want to keep it that way as post count and post length play no part.

With that said, I may come up with a modified version to release for XF, :)
 
That is something I need to think about. The whole system is the backbone for awarding experience points on that forum. And as far as I know, there is no other system like it. I use the PQI value to award experience points, for leveling your role playing character. No one can figure it out, and I want to keep it that way as post count and post length play no part.

With that said, I may come up with a modified version to release for XF, :)
Thanks Lawrence. I would love to have it work as a role playing system on my site as well... but a modified system for postcount quality would be very helpful too.
 
That is something I need to think about. The whole system is the backbone for awarding experience points on that forum. And as far as I know, there is no other system like it. I use the PQI value to award experience points, for leveling your role playing character. No one can figure it out, and I want to keep it that way as post count and post length play no part.

With that said, I may come up with a modified version to release for XF, :)

That would be really great, Lawrence. :)
 
In line with XenForo's "less is more" approach, I am considering removing the post count from view altogether.

The post count would still accumulate and members would still get user title changes and trophies, etc., they just wouldn't know when they would be triggered.
Well, not unless they're sad enough to keep track themselves.

I just wondered whether this would be an interesting experiment and whether it would remove some of the issues that sometimes arise on forums with regards to members with high/low post counts.

Would anyone else consider doing this?
Yeah I'd consider it!! As you have pointed out on newer posts, it would only really work from the start. But I'd go for it!! If it ever gets made then I'd install it on my forum without a shadow of doubt.
 
I like members seeing other post counts and knowing their own. I run a small enough board that I can control spam so post counts are a sign of activity, membership age and devotion, something to be proud of. I wouldn't take that away.
 
Already considered it repeatedly. A forum I ran was full of very immature and competitive people, which I didn't like, and the amount of crap posted due to wanting the post count boost is pretty unbelievable.
 
On one of my forums, an issue came up where a couple members with a lot of posts tried to "pull rank" with those who had far fewer posts. And of course arguments broke out. I wrote a script the determined a Post Quality Index. The PQI was displayed directly under their posts counts. It turned out that members with a lot of posts had a much lower PQI, than those with far fewer posts.

The PQI ranged from 0 to 1.0. The script I wrote analyzed peoples posts and determined the quality of their writing.
How do we download your PQI addon for Xenforo? ;)
 
How do we download your PQI addon for Xenforo? ;)

It is for another forum platform and I have not converted it over to XenForo. If I do, I don't know if I will release it as it is used to calculate experience point awards and gold (per post in the In Character forums) based on D&D's tables, recommended number of encounters before leveling, and difficulty level. As far as I know it is a unique system for determining experience points for postings and I would like to keep it that way, :)
 
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