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 postcountwhores 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.
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
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.
