Remove postcount

[Overlord Nadrian]

It serves no purpose other than to make people spam to get it higher and higher and thus increasing the already immense size of their penis.

Seriously though, my idea is as follows: post count no longer shows on the forums (maybe on one's profile, or just for that specific person, kind of like the warn bar), but you keep the medals. I say keep the medals (or whatever you call them), because some newbies will always have the tendency to only read the advice people with a higher 'status' give, and just hover over that of someone with a low 'status'. It would also be more of a surprise if, all of a sudden, you received a completely new medal, rather than the way it is now, where you simply check your postcount and see "Oh, only 3,500 posts to go until I get my next medal". If wanted, the postcount could still be displayed privately, but I'm pretty damn sure even the postcount whores lovers here wouldn't want that. Unless the private postcount would show exactly how many posts you made in every section (which is, in fact, pretty interesting to know). Now, you can only see the section in which you made the highest amount of posts, and you have to go to the old-style profile to find out, which can be a small hassle at times. And if it tells you you've made a shit ton of posts in the EoF, you really are curious as to where you got those other 5,000 posts from.

Hereby, a voting system would actually work, but in a different way than it most of the times works: every post gets two little icons on the bottom, one if the post was useful in any way, and one if it is thought of as being useless. Then, there could be a small bar (where at this moment, the postcount is situated) with 5 different icons, but only one is shown at a time (an emoticon would fit best, I suppose). The lowest emoticon is for when a user has at least twice as many 'bad votes' as 'good votes', the second lowest is for when a user has more 'bad votes' than 'good votes', but not twice as many, the middle emoticon is for when a user has no votes (yet), or when he/she has the same amount of 'good' and 'bad votes', the higher emoticon is when the user has more 'good' than 'bad', and the highest emoticon is when a user has at least twice as many 'good' as 'bad'. Now, you may be thinking this will encourage people to instantly give someone they don't like 'bad votes' on all of their posts, but to fix this problem, a user needs to give a specific reason why he/she gave the post a 'bad vote', et vice versa. These reasons will then be displayed on the bottom of the post, in a small pop-out box (similar to a spoiler tag) or just a pop-up, so others can read them if they're interested in the remarks of others. If the user is found to give bullshit reasons, he/she will receive a warning, and if he/she continues to do it, he/she gets another (6th) icon, next to one of the other 5 icons or just replacing it, which states that he/she shouldn't be trusted. His/her votes will then also no longer count and the bullshit votes will be removed. No total 'good votes' or 'bad votes' are displayed anywhere, but on a post, the total of 'good' and 'bad votes' for that specific post will be displayed.

You could also incorporate Ask GBAtemp in this, by having it set so that, when a user's answer is picked as the best answer (unless that answer is a reply of the user to his/her own question), it adds one to the 'good votes' count of the user. If need be, there could also be a "What the fuck kind of answer is this?" thing next to every answer, with the same punishment for misusing it.

Trust me, this will work, and it will severely cut down on the spammy posts. And if you don't trust me, you'll never know until you try, no?

As for the other thoughts:

Similar to NeoGAF's rules to signing up, members should be asked to sign up with a 'true' email address, not a free email address like *@yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc. This would reduce the amount of duplicate accounts (alright, there aren't many, but still), because it's not that easy to get a new ISP-provided email address compared to spending half a minute to make 20 new Windows Live email addresses. It also prevents people from just making an account to say 'GIMME ROMS PL0X KTHXBAI' and then piss off when they find out there aren't any.

Get rid of the 'likes' on the front page articles. Nearly no one clicks on them and they do nothing but that anyway. Now, it just looks silly. It's a good idea, but doesn't work, because the buttons blend in too well with the background. Make them orange or something if you really want to keep them.

The shoutbox errors. Loads of icons do not show up correctly in one shoutbox, but do in the other one, other special characters just don't show up at all (e.g.

 

[tj_cool]

Just block the 10 min mail things.

They are already blocked.
Well, some of them

 

[mameks]

how about we adopt a merit system instead of postcount?

Or both. I know that some forums have both.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Or both. I know that some forums have both.

But that never works out well.

 

[Veho]

yes, having both defeats the purpose of a merit system

Or does it? A high post count but a suspiciously low merit count shows that the user is a spammer: posts a lot but very little of it is useful or helpful in any way. A high post count and a high merit count would mean (at least some of) the member's posts are helpful and appreciated. A low post count but a high merit count would mean the member is an all-knowing benevolent deity, basically. That's more information than each number alone can tell you.

 

[mameks]

yes, having both defeats the purpose of a merit system

Or does it? A high post count but a suspiciously low merit count shows that the user is a spammer: posts a lot but very little of it is useful or helpful in any way. A high post count and a high merit count would mean (at least some of) the member's posts are helpful and appreciated. A low post count but a high merit count would mean the member is an all-knowing benevolent deity, basically. That's more information than each number alone can tell you.

This is why I suggested both.

 

[p1ngpong]

The problem with removing the ability to register with email accounts such as yahoo, hotmail etc is that for the majority of people those are their primary email addresses already. Even I registered here with one of those. So that would force people to go through the process of creating a secondary email account with their isp or whoever just for the purposes of registering here. As TJ said the 10 minute email accounts are already blocked here, which is fair enough as people only use them for a day at the most. But to not be able to register here with an email that you have been using for years (potentially) would be so annoying to so many legitimate people that I would be completely against it personally.

 

[Costello]

Nadrian, your idea will definitely be discussed in the staff forum
(the post count removal idea)
that doesnt mean it'll go through, just that staff will debate on this and come to a conclusion.

 

[Hadrian]

Everyone in my house has an ISP email address (though no one except my Mum actually uses them), I honestly don't know why any of you find that so ridiculously strange. All you have to do is ask your god damn ISP.

I live in a shared house, we're not allowed to have our own broadband so I have to use my mobile net which doesn't give me my own email plus why the fuck should I have a separate email that I'll only use here.

I love you and all but this idea is mentally challenged and will fuck over a lot of people.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

The problem with removing the ability to register with email accounts such as yahoo, hotmail etc is that for the majority of people those are their primary email addresses already. Even I registered here with one of those. So that would force people to go through the process of creating a secondary email account with their isp or whoever just for the purposes of registering here. As TJ said the 10 minute email accounts are already blocked here, which is fair enough as people only use them for a day at the most. But to not be able to register here with an email that you have been using for years (potentially) would be so annoying to so many legitimate people that I would be completely against it personally.Fair enough.

Nadrian, your idea will definitely be discussed in the staff forumThank you.

QUOTE(Gaydrian @ Nov 14 2010, 03:32 PM)

this idea is mentally challenged and will fuck over a lot of people.

Yeah, come to think of it, it probably is.

From now on, all my ideas regarding email addresses may be overlooked.

 

[The Catboy]

Personally I disagree with getting rid of the post count, I just see no reason to get rid of them.

 

[raulpica]

The voting idea doesn't work nor it'll ever work, imho. People will start bashing your votes with negatives for no reasons at all, most of the times.
And we would have the forum flooded with threads like "Bawww, why do you all hate me?!1one" and "F**K OFF YOU HATERS IM OUTTA HERE!!!1one".

Not everyone has an ISP email available.

I agree with the likes buttons. And I'm TOTALLY with the shoutbox idea.

I don't like the group thing. We would have people whining for entering in a group, saying things like "I'M FUNNEH TOO, PLOX MAKE ME ENTER!!! IM FUNNY I SAAAIIIIID! PLZ VOTE ME AS TEH FUNNIEST MEMBAR".

 

[p1ngpong]

The voting idea doesn't work nor it'll ever work, imho. People will start bashing your votes with negatives for no reasons at all, most of the times.
And we would have the forum flooded with threads like "Bawww, why do you all hate me?!1one" and "F**K OFF YOU HATERS IM OUTTA HERE!!!1one".

Not everyone has an ISP email available.

I agree with the likes buttons. And I'm TOTALLY with the shoutbox idea.

I don't like the group thing. We would have people whining for entering in a group, saying things like "I'M FUNNEH TOO, PLOX MAKE ME ENTER!!! IM FUNNY I SAAAIIIIID! PLZ VOTE ME AS TEH FUNNIEST MEMBAR".

Yeah I was going to respond to the rest of the suggestion in this thread, but Im pretty much 100% in agreement with Raul on this.

So what he said.

 

[KingVamp]

If you get rid of it now,

!!!! I know there something will always be missing!!!

No,seriously tho...

There no reason to.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Personally I disagree with getting rid of the post count, I just see no reason to get rid of them.

I see no reason to keep it, either. The knife cuts two ways.

 

[Rydian]

Post count is sort of a measure for newbies to see if info they're being given is good or not... but with as big as the site is nowadays it's often a matter of minutes before I somebody comes in to correct misinformation.

Making warn levels public might be a first guess replacement, but people can be warned for stuff that has nothing to do with whether they post helpful information or not.

 

[ProtoKun7]

Oh, and @people saying it is useless to get rid of postcount because you shouldn't fix something that ain't broken: it is broken. Look at yourselves, you seem to care for it enough to still want it to exist. Why do you think images like this ever came into existence? That's also why I thought of the nice replacement for it, voting.

It isn't broken.

In all the years GBAtemp has been around, how many people have seen the post count feature and decided: "Oh, this is going to cause all sorts of trouble, I don't know why this or any other forum ever decided to have such a silly thing; I mean, who wants to know how many posts people have anyway? Oh, hang on..." The image thing is just a joke; there's nothing wrong with a bit of humour, and everyone knows (or should) that it's not a serious statement that should always be taken literally under penalty of public stoning. It's a useful feature, I actually use it, and nothing about it is broken. Look at how much I post in the EoF. I know perfectly well that post count doesn't increase in there, but that doesn't make me want to stop because I know it's not adding anything to it, and removing it won't stop people that spam for the sake of it anyway.

I wouldn't mind, however, some more detailed statistics about how much I post in the other non-counted sections, whether public or private, but at the very least, the post count should stay. I like numbers. Numbers are good. Don't take away my numbers.
(Before you misconstrue that, it was a light-hearted joke too, though I do like numbers and statistics.)

 

[The Catboy]

Personally I disagree with getting rid of the post count, I just see no reason to get rid of them.

I see no reason to keep it, either. The knife cuts two ways.

I find your reason no have no real logic, there for I shall continue to disagree with you. It wasn't a problem om the past, it's not a problem now.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

If a member posts a lot, you'll see those posts anyway, so explain to me again why it is such a nice feature to be able to see exactly how many they made? It's interesting for yourself, but others really don't give a damn.

EDIT: this was @ProtoKun7.

@the other guy: very well, disagree with me all you want. It's not going to change anything, mind you. But postcount has always been a problem, it is just now (or in the past couple of months at least) that I noticed that.

Oh, and by the way: look at the amount of views and replies this topic got, compared to other topics in this section. Surely, that can't be a mere coincidence.

 

[The Catboy]

If a member posts a lot, you'll see those posts anyway, so explain to me again why it is such a nice feature to be able to see exactly how many they made? It's interesting for yourself, but others really don't give a damn.

EDIT: this was @ProtoKun7.

@the other guy: very well, disagree with me all you want. It's not going to change anything, mind you. But postcount has always been a problem, it is just now (or in the past couple of months at least) that I noticed that.

Oh, and by the way: look at the amount of views and replies this topic got, compared to other topics in this section. Surely, that can't be a mere coincidence.

I have a name you know and it seems only you noticed it.

 

[Langin]

Well... I do not know what to think about this. But still they see your medals it would be better to remove those too.

But why not LOWER their post count?


And stfu with isp e-mail accounts. My REAL account is hotmail! lol