Interesting thread. Do you ever worry that having post count requirements will lead to banal and repitive posts?[/

No.

Definitely not.

Not a chance.

As a relative newcomer to FT, I find the join date and post count useful when browsing the forums. Maybe that's not the intended purpose but I find it useful as a crude measure of the trustworthiness of the poster.

Sites like ebay and Amazon.com provide similar counts about # of sales, purchases, etc. along with feedback ratings, so I don't see why FT should take a different path.

I just find it strange that on a thread about post counts most of the posters have thousands of 'em already. :D

I find this an interesting concept. What are the requirements anyway? (I know I should probably try to find it on my own)

On- and Off-Topic Counts, Any Consensus Yet?
 

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I second to the motion/idea for on/off topic count. Maybe we can have a FT poll on forums that are on- and off-topic. So the FT board can have the final say on this issue.

On a personal note, if someone is really (aggressively) paddling the post count in order to gain the secret privileges, it should be easy for the moderator to spot the plot and take proper action/sanction, I think.

And, again I say, YOU CANNOT SPEND POST COUNTS!!!!!

I would say that we should not only do away with Post counts, but in all fairness we should also do away with Kellogg’s counts, General Mills counts (including Count Chocula) and Quaker Oats counts.

Yes, I would say all of the above, but I do not want to do so, for I would risk gaining the unwanted reputation of being a cereal killer...

I think we should always Count Cholula posts.

Exactly.

Personally, I see no reason to get rid of post counts. It's interesting for me to come across a username I've never seen and say, "wow, that person has thousands of posts, but I've never seen him before" or "hey - there's a new member - welcome!"

A la TripAdvisor, I think we should add a "Did you find this post useful?" box to each post. For each "yes" vote, we can add 1 post to that poster's post count; for each "no" vote, we can deduct 1 post. We can even add incentives, such as for every 25 votes, the poster receives/loses 1000 bonus posts.

If we see a poster with 1,000,000+ posts, we know we are in the presence of a FlyerTalk Master and should read carefully. If a poster has a really low count, or, heaven forbid, a NEGATIVE post count, we can ignore him altogether. Then each anniversary we can have a "post count" party in which we celebrate the posters with the most impressive post counts amid much fanfare and unrestrained frivolity. The following day, with our migraines at their peak, we can excommunicate all posters with negative post counts amid much hissing and booing. And pyrotechnics.

I propose we implement this new system on the post following this one.

Say what?? :D

I'd have to give this reply a NO then... :D

We used to have a "reputation"feature that worked like this, but unfortunately some childish members were going around "dinging" (that is, giving bad marks) to other members because they didn't like the other person's politics or opinions on FF miles :rolleyes:

So the feature was turned off.

This system sounds good in theory, but never works out in practice. There will always be people who abuse their power to rate a post.

Ka-ching! ;)

Just to keep FT interesting, I say we bring anonymous reputation and thread ratings ;)

Otherwise, how boring this board would be, full of pleasantries, people being nice to each other, especially newbies, don't mind answering the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000th question about the AA challenge, everybody understanding that Expedia had the right to cancel an erroneous rate, and no black helicopters, star chambers, super secret batcaves, OBB, etc, etc, etc.

:p

Post counts :-(
 

I just wanted to add my .02. I think post counts should be done away with. I think new people, like myself, should be able to ask appropriate questions and also get CC access (esp. when we go premium). I am going to Europe (CDG) and China (BJS/PEK) in December and the CC could have helped me maybe. I won't know until Jan/Feb.
Just venting (& adding post counts! LOL)

I don't mind the post counts........what I don't like is the term "Flyertalk Evangelist".

Some of the so-called 'evangelists' have a habit of posting "fluff" replies, and one in particular seems particularly fond of posting three and sometimes four replies, in succession, when they could really have replied in one post.

What really got me, however, was that when Randy took the RV out a couple of months ago for it's little 'vacation', I believe at least 3 'evangelists' were on the trip.

:(

If it were up to me, I'd can the bestowing of the 'evangelist' title upon making 10,000 posts, and save it (or some other chosen phrase) for those FTers who have gone above and beyond, year after year, to offer help and information, not just opinions and arguments.

IMHO it is not the post count but the quality of the posts. I would like to see the breakdown of users posts i.e. among different forums without having to do a search for users history and count first few hundred posts.

90 days or 90 posts? both?
 

Ok, I am over 90 posts, but I have to be a member for 90 days? I dunno....

I think Cholula's initial post gave the best reasons for maintaining the post count. Others who might use the count as a metric on "worthiness" are at least occasionally missing the boat in my opinion. I log in every day, several times. There can be a certain cliqueishness (is that a word?), or if not that there are clear alpha dogs in the various forums. Further, there are some people whose posts are almost always the same (e.g. "go do a search", etc.), and thus post counts don't truly measure their worth.

So, as a (mostly) lurker, I have a pretty good feel as to who knows their stuff, and who "contributes" in the forums I frequent. I can appreciate that the frequent posters would be unfamiliar with me and my opinions, so I suppose my 180ish post count tells them.. something. Leave it be.

Unless I'm really slow, I've yet to find the qualifications for any of the special forums posted anywhere.

The last time I did a search & read was last the other day, and I didn't find much information (The search criteria I used, btw, was OMNI Qualification, so that could be why?)

Could someone let me know what they all are?

Thanks!

Post Count does not equal wisdom
 

Personally, when post count goes into the thousands I wonder whether the poster is some kind of crank. I think the huge numbers are jsut an attempt to show off.

Just like all low numbered posts are simply an attempt to access OMNI. ;)

There is no set criteria for OMNI, hence the lack of defined rules. It is roughly 6 months of quality posting on FT and 180 posts I believe (i.e. 180/180).

Your best bet is to PM Randy Petersen as he is the moderator of OMNI and he can give you the definitive answer for qualifications. Sorry I have been part of OMNI before rules, so they didn't really apply to me.

sounds like a great topic for the TalkBoard to consider. I'll pass this thread along.

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Yes, I agree and I'll be pleased to bring this up for discussion! :)

As many of you well know, my opinion has been well documented throughout the history of FT, and I think this is a fine idea!

Mark

:):):):)

Why is it silly? Don't you have something to contribute here, versus just being an observer? If we all sat on the sidelines and watched, there wouldn't be a FlyerTalk board.

They is the FT board owner, who prefers the main purpose of this board be discussion of miles and points. He's been pretty clear about that for years.

Perhaps there could be some composite metric incorporating several quantitative and qualitative measures including: length of FT membership, frequency of site visits, number of postings, quality of posts (as rated by peers), etc. Perhaps there should be a way to "rate" the quality of a post like on cnet and other websites.

You do know that FT has over 80,000 registered members? What you suggest sounds like a major undertaking (i.e. involves money and support personnel and new software). How would you distribute these members among their peers? Doesn't sound very workable.

A rating system was tried once before (prior to your joining FT). It didn't work, and FT management turned the feature off.

I'm not sure how this would take a lot of money and resources to do. The metrics I spoke of, 1) length of FT membership, 2) frequency of site visits, 3) number of postings are already tracked by FT and/or easily obtained. All the work that is involved is to take those variables and develop some sort of composite metric that would more fairly allow users access to CC and OMNI.

The qualitative metric might be more difficult to do and perhaps this might be something that would take more time to figure out. Poo Pooing something has "too difficult" and "too costly" might not exactly be the most productive way of improving FT for everyone. Instead, perhaps we can work together to find ways to achieve things cost-effectively.

I have only 82 postings and you have over 8,000. Thinking of the FT community as a whole, what limits should be placed on my participation on FT? What is a meaningful metric can be used to describe how your postings and contributions are different from mine? If FT limits access to certain parts of the FT community, then I think absolute transparency regarding the reason for the exclusion and the criteria for entry should be explained and posted.

I think everyone here should have access to each and every forum from the day they join FT, but I don't run the place or make the rules (of course, that would likely mean a lot more work for moderators in some forums that have posting restrictions now- OMNI and CC - as there would be many more posts to manage). There's been suggestions by some posters that Mileage Run have restrictions placed on it, too, to keep out new members.

Most bulletin board systems track and display the post count -- its fairly standard. It true that not every post may be of high quality, but in general, those members with higher post counts have at least shown some level of dedication and loyalty to the FT community. I think most members of a bulletin board community would appreciate this.

Tracking only the join date or membership date is not sufficient as there are undoubtedly many members who have joined, but only lurked since joining.

FWIW, there is, sadly, next to no support among current TB members for eliminating post counts.

I'd suggested, since the question has now been raised numerous times, by various members over the years, that we might abolish counting and/or dropping the prominent display of the member post count.

Like some others, I personally feel it has little, if any, meaning. I also note that it is a real "bone of contention" among certain members. IMHO, the benefit vs risk analysis equation suggests that we can easily do without it.

In the spirit of compromise, I'd also suggested that we, rather then eliminating an individual members post count entirely, instead consider having it appear only when a member actually clicks on the member profile in order to see it. This would be an improvement, IMHO, and a very nice compromise, I thought.

Again, even if we're not going to be rid of post counts, I thought we might try to subdue them somewhat.

Yet again, it seems that there is essentially no support from the TB for the idea of eliminating post counts, nor is there any support for simply moving post counts off the front page to the member profile. Thanks to all for your input.

Mark