New Activity Bars?

I've been looking for a thread about it, but I guess I've missed it...I understand the arrowheads, but I have stars under my name...and it seems that I'm the only one to have stars under my name...Is this something only I can see or am I just "special"...????

Well, the activity bars show how active you have been over the past month, or 28 days rathers. The stars are only shown on you account and only so that you can see it. The first red star means that you have logged in for the day and got credit for that, and the other 4 are for the amount of posts you have that day, with a max of 4 posts per day for max activity level percent raise.

If you put you mouse over the activity bar it will show you what your activity level currently is to date.

There are threads about this in Forum Discussion, entitled Death of Post Counts made by WW that explains this more thoroughly if you want to know more.

The Death of Post Counts

AHHH! How come I have stars above my acctivity?

Basicly, people thought that posting should have an immediate effect on the activity bar, which it does not for a number of good reasons, and were infuriated that their attempts to spam it up were unsuccessful, so I added the stars to show immediately what the effect will be. The reason they show up on the posts is because that is where the activity bar is, and most people are too lazy to go somewhere else to find this info.

Edit:

Also, it's interesting, the psychological effect this has on myself, the creator of this system...before I couldn't care less about my post count, but with the easily achievable goal of just 4 meaningful posts per day, I find myself posting more...of course doing the news stuff may also have something to do with that.

I have a question, but instead of posting in the other threads, I'll put it here:

You said, "With a max of 4 post per day."

Does that mean I can post 3 times one day, then 5 times the next and be caught up, or do the 4 posts max per day have to come each day?

The former used to be the case, but I quickly corrected it so that the latter is true; this is one of the reasons that the activity is only calculated once per day: it has to cycle through each day in the past 28 days and count posts to work properly.

This does mean that people like me that only access from work (at a 8-5 M-F desk job) can never rise above 71%, but hey, that's an accurate reflection of my activity.

*Ahem*

71%? You, my good friend, only have 50%.

But yes, I must agree with the effect this can have on people and how it affects the way they post. This is the exact reason I posted when this first came out that it might be counter-intuitive of the initial outcome.

*Ahem* 71%? You, my good friend, only have 50%.

I said that 71% is the max. Considering that visit-onlys aren't counted before Friday, 50% is surprising.

Edit:

But yes, I must agree with the effect this can have on people and how it affects the way they post. This is the exact reason I posted when this first came out that it might be counter-intuitive of the initial outcome. Perhaps, but truely, just how hard is it to make 4 meaningful posts per day? I see this working two ways. On one hand, it serves the primary purpose of removing incentive for the spammers to post more than 4 posts a day. On the other hand, it encourages less active users to become more active; of course, when I'm new to a forum, I have a strange urge to get my post count above 100, then I don't ever care again ... then again, this sytem also requires you to stay active as activity drops off if you stop posting...I guess we will just have to wait and see how this all pans out.

I think it'll be an interesting social study.

or not

The stars in otherwords are clientside only

[yes we know]

This does mean that people like me that only access from work (at a 8-5 M-F desk job) can never rise above 71%, but hey, that's an accurate reflection of my activity.

hey thats what i also do.....that sucks only 71% :-(

Okay even I don't spam this much. Shit.

Hrm... so She's not special? And i'm not either? *cries* Heh yeah I like the new system

Heres a good question i dont think was asked. Would i i changed my time zone? Will that have any affect on cheating the new system

Nothing, as previously mentioned, or so I believe it was, the days starts for everyone, no matter of personal location, at 12:00 AM, Central Time, US.

So... for someone say in germany his day resets at noon or something?

That is my understanding, yes.

Nothing, as previously mentioned, or so I believe it was, the days starts for everyone, no matter of personal location, at 12:00 AM, Central Time, US.

This is mostly because of the possibility of cheating, but also for the sake of my sanity. Actually, the only cheating problem is the visited today feature. Due to the way that it works, if it were time zone adjusted, one could rack up 24 visits in one day, exceeding 100% activity.