The Death of Post Counts
 

Many times, many places, the removal of post counts has been touted as a great solution to useless spam on forums. But with the removal of post count comes issues such as how newbies know the regulars from from the occational visitors and such. I propose that we hide postcounts and replace them with an activity metric such as the following:

Where
vw=the number of days in the past week that the user has been logged on
pw=the number of posts the user has made in the past week with a max of 4 per day

vm=the number of days in the past 28 days that the user has been logged on
pm=the number of posts the user has made in the past 28 days with a max of 4 per day

activity metric= (vw*3+pw*2)*2+(vm*3+pm*2)

In this case, the maximum points would be 462 (maximums are good, less incentive for spamming).
If a user were to visit every day but not post, he would have 126 points, or 29%.
If a user were to visit every day and make one post each day, he would have 210 points, or 45%
If a user has not yet visited for the day, it represents 5% of their total possible points.
If a user is inactive for a week, it will result in a point reduction of 50%.

I'm interested in thoughts on this idea, as well as alternate methods of calculating activity metric, reasons why this would or wouldn't be good. I am NOT interested in one or two word responses such as "yes" "no" "fuck you" "this sucks" "awesome", etc.

The idea is interesting. I believe it would do better than post counts.

Just leave it with post counts, much easier to understand.

its a good idea. inventive. but i dont think it would work ny beter. just more complicated.

I like the idea, and I was just messing around with the numbers... I like how you made the numbers work out so that the weekly activity is most important. :)

I was going to suggest making a more rounded number, but this way actually works out nicely.

Quick question: What would happen to Post Count? Would it just vanish into the dark, or would there be a way to check up on it out of curiousity?

I'm going to mess with some numbers now, but I doubt I'll find anything more intriguing...

once a person gets an account, i really dont think that person would want to understand what all that was for. i'm with K_A
good idea though :-P

If a member comes here and sees such low numbers, they will think this forum is inactive. I'm sure my 5000+ posts(along with other people's) will be more initiative to stay here than 462.

wELCOEM TO NAZI GERMANY.

leave it the way it is =\

This is a serious thread.

You should round off the numbers more I think.

As it stands the numbers are not round, but they work great for the purpose, which is to create a formula that emhasizes weekly activity, especially the present week. 462 isn't that bad anyway. :)

Couldn't we have both?

I don't think you (WW) should do this untill I get Cable again :-/

I'm thinking... We get rid of everything, post counts and any sort of value indicating either activeness and senority. A person should be judged upon his skills and personality, not a meter that shows how active they are. If you wanna know active, just search for his last post, and check the date. If a person is active enough you'll see his/her post around.

Well, if you can find another Formula that would incorporate exactly a 50% difference from the max points after 1 week of complete inactivity with a more round number, then please, post it. I tried for about 5-7 minutes when I first read this post, but got bored, and decided that 462 isn't all that bad, LOL.

What's the difference in that and post count?

Post count is a lot easier to understand. We are not all super-computers like WW.

I would have to agree with KA for once ;)

Maybe a pictrure example of somesort would help us better understand.

Like I said... rid of any metric mesurement system

That was me :)

im really confused on how this will work so i think a pic would be helpfull

But i still think Leave it the way it is

Whats the deal with changing it the way it is?