Originally Posted by
amunter
There will always be a (reasonably small, I think) subset of people who - for either competitiveness or self-worth reasons - will take a new metric and make it their mission to game it. I don't think that's a reason to avoid change, although it is an argument to proceed carefully (e.g., with a limited rollout) and observe the results.
Great points.
Originally Posted by
amunter
My comment about self-policing is that anybody who has done some reading on FT for some time starts to build a list (or a fuzzy sketch or a hazy image or however your brain works) in their head of who is reliable/helpful/thoughtful/funny/"a good poster" - however you define that - and who is not.
I'd agree, except I'd say you have to pretty much be a forum "regular" to understand that. Post count & titles are prominently displayed. People think the titles mean something. The more casual FT user - which I'd probably say is someone that has maybe a couple of posts per month - probably wouldn't notice that. So if they make the votes/# of "helpful" threads visible to the community, then there will be yet another misleading metric presented to people.
Originally Posted by
amunter
Heck, just reading through a couple of hundred messages in this one thread can give you that sense.
Or it gives you a great appreciation for the "ignore" list, as you can scroll through the thread and skip hundreds of messages and not really miss out on anything
