Would anyone consider removing post count from their forum?

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
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?
 
I'm a member and I like it.

I mean, there were a couple of forums I was active on, in the past as a member, where they got rid of the postcount. I didn't like it. Had you asked me ahead of time, I would have thought it didn't matter. But there I was looking for postcount numbers. Then again, I didn't think I'd care about likes either. :D
 
I think for an existing forum it might be difficult to remove post count.

I'd really like to try it with a new forum though.
After all, Facebook doesn't count messages, likes, etc. and people don't seem to care with that platform.
 
We need it for the contests ... and XF has a good trophy system :)

(perhaps a remove option via the control panel for those with different needs)
 
I think post count is useful. Even if I wanted to not show it, our competitors show it, so that would be taking things away from the user experience.
 
I've done it before in situations where members were competing too much and judging too much. The only real reason it's back is because people with under 50 post count cannot have an image in their signature.
 
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.
 
I did this on one of my sites, and have had no problems with it. Users can get a general idea of how many posts they've made from their "user level". I've found that by disabling the raw post count, the amount of spam has also gone down because users are no longer tempted to post just to increase their own post count.
 
That is actually very nice idea, Lawrence. I do agree that generally members with high post counts tend to focus less on the quality of their content, and sometimes post in bits and pieces rather than in one single go. Whereas quality posters barely bother with the post count and make sure what they post is a delight to read or contributes to the community as a whole. An awarding system which is based on PQI would be an excellent idea. :)
 
I don't show the count on one forum except in their profile. But it's a small forum and we've all been together for years, so it's less of an issue for us than on some big board full of strangers.

On the other forum, the graphic under your name changes when you hit certain numbers in the post count , but the actual count only shows in your profile.

I'll probably go with a title change per post counts with XenForo. And maybe, the ability to customize your title after you acquire x amount of posts. Assuming that's possible.

I do agree that post counts are important to people - I run the Mod that saves your post count if threads are deleted even though the post counts aren't on the postbit - because they will notice if posts disappear. I would never take them off anything but the postbit, for that reason.
 
Quality is a reasonably subjective item to measure. Sometimes simple answers are best, other times a more complete or longer post is more appropriate.

I am not sure how to measure that accurately.

In addition what one person finds helpful & interesting, the next person may not.

These are difficult concepts to quantify.
 
I agree, sometimes the person whose posts are the shortest is also the person who is first to help someone (or even, just let them know they aren't being ignored if they can't help), or sympathize with them if they're having a bad day, or laugh at their joke when nobody else did. And yes, I'm thinking of a specific person there.

I'm pretty sure any kind of a 'value detector' would devalue her down to practically a spammer, but you know how some people in a forum are the glue? She's the glue.
 
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