Originally Posted by
bdjohns1
Personally, if I ran the zoo, I'd take post counts out of the thread view, and leave post counts on our profile pages (but count every post), and get rid of the "FT Evangelist" custom titles as they are right now (maybe make it a nomination program if we feel the need to recognize people). koko's right - all RP's done is make more headaches for himself and the moderator team - post padding will just migrate to other forums, cluttering them, as long as post-count is a metric that's right in our faces. Put "reputation" in our faces, and people will game it. Same with thread ratings. If you just make the metrics less visible, people will stop caring.
Both
bdjohns1 and
NickB have interesting points about this. Just as we love miles & status, we love our FT stats. At first I agreed that moving the post count off the post might be a good idea, but NickB raises the good point that it really is an indicator of how to respond or take someones post. I know that I will take it much easier and repeat easy to find info to a newbie with a low post count.
I'd be curious to see if there could be a "score" in place of post count on the profile section of each post. The score could be a set algorithm of length of time registered, number of posts, number of threads started, referrals, suspensions, etc. A newbie would have a low score that would grow as they participate and time goes by without any suspensions.