Originally Posted by
NickB
OK. Just elaborating on an example I gave in another thread, let us say that you ask on the Blue Skies airline forum, a forum with which you are not familiar, whether fare class G on Blue Skies is upgradeable. You get 10 answers from various FTers. 5 Fters, each with 1000+ posts, tell you that "No, This has been discussed to death before. G is not upgradeable" and you also get 5 answers from FTers which each have between 5 and 10 posts, who tell you that they think that G is upgradeable. Which one looks to you like the most likely answer?
But see here you are adding more information than is in the post count itself. You're comparing an apple to a Mercedes. On the one hand you're saying you have posters with very few posts. On the other you have posters will lots of posts AND the fact that this has been discussed before.
The example also isn't very realistic since incorrect information tends to get corrected within minutes on FT. I've been corrected on UA many times by folks with far fewer posts
in that forum.
It's not posts that are relevant, it is experience. And posts simply say nothing about flying experience; they say something about posting experience.
Originally Posted by
NickB
It is true that post count, on its own in relation to a single individual and without paying attention to other information, does not constitute a reliable expertise indicator. However, on a more aggregated basis, and taking into account all relevant factors, it is a useful indicator of probable expertise, albeit one one should not rely on blindly (like anything else, for that matter).
This, I think, is very dangerous and wrong. I've been given very bad information by folks with lots of posting experience and very good information by folks with little posting experience.
# of posts, IMHO, has nothing to do with actual knowledge.
Perception seems to be the point you're trying to make. The way to do with this, I would think, is some kind of disclaimer that says:
"Post counts do not and should not convey any information about a user's expertise in a given area."
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Example: Do you think moderators have more expertise than normal users? What do you think the perception is?