The post count/avatar thread

[DaBeeeenster]

A lot of thought about this sort of problem is going into phpbb 2.2. You can look at the feature list here:

http://phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=104463

Tho that would mean converting to phpBB2, and that's a totally different can of worms

Personally I reckon we should just hide the postcount from the thread view...

[Moby-Dick]

I must admit that it doesnt worry me a whole lot - I rarely "rank" people by post count , though I remember hitting 500 posts and being quite chuffed at putting my avatar up ( took me a while as I'm such a nub at spamming and have to actually think of stuff to write that makes me sound vaguely intellegent! )

hiding it from view seems ok by me.

[Jiff Lemon]

Option 5 here, though I doubt it'd be implemented - I got fed up with the amount of carp floating around in General discussion that I very rarely visited it. Tig Posted an interesting thread, questioning which Vunerability led to the forums being hacked and what happened? Spammed

For an easy life:
1: Hide the post count, let all members in the first two weeks have avatars, then set the option at 100.

2: Have the comment thing set to "occasional contributor, regular contributor etc.

3: General discussion post counts not included in post count

4: Remove 100 posts for pointless (spamming) replies.

[steve threlfall]

Thats sound reasonable jiff. Maybe general discussion could be cleaned out once a month as there is only ever spam in there and nothing of any use/interest. This would mean that loads and loads of unuded data wouldnt have to be stored i think

[Big RICHARD]

Or we could just spam our way to 500 (AGAIN!) and carry on going downhill!

[steve threlfall]

Originally posted by Big RICHARD
Or we could just spam our way to 500 (AGAIN!) and carry on going downhill!

enough people have already chosen this dark path already

I also vote for hiding the post count

[luke313]

We were discussing this earlier on irc and decided that it would be best that you could change your avatar after a certain amount of time since joining the forums. This would get rid of the need to spam altogether.

[Knoxville]

Originally posted by steve threlfall
Thats sound reasonable jiff. Maybe general discussion could be cleaned out once a month as there is only ever spam in there and nothing of any use/interest. This would mean that loads and loads of unuded data wouldnt have to be stored i think

To say theres nothing of interest is a bit harsh , because there is the occaisional thread that needs saving.

We used to have a seperate forum thing, along the lines of the irc forum you can see at the top for jokes and spammy posts. perhaps the word game could be moved in there and it could be made post count free like introduce yourself or be purged every so often.

Would need someone to moderate and keep an eye on it though, which would be difficult to sort as not only are all the mods extrememly busy at the moment they're not normally sitting around twiddling they're thumbs anyway.

[steve threlfall]

Originally posted by luke313
We were discussing this earlier on irc and decided that it would be best that you could change your avatar after a certain amount of time since joining the forums. This would get rid of the need to spam altogether.

Now that is a good idea. People will still spam tho as there are some people with avatars still posting like crazy

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by steve threlfall
Thats sound reasonable jiff. Maybe general discussion could be cleaned out once a month as there is only ever spam in there and nothing of any use/interest. This would mean that loads and loads of unuded data wouldnt have to be stored i think

Given the size of these forums and the spec of the machine running them I'm pretty certain that keeping GD as is without pruning would make no difference to the peroformance whatsoever.

[steve threlfall]

Originally posted by Knoxville
To say theres nothing of interest is a bit harsh , because there is the occaisional thread that needs saving.

We used to have a seperate forum thing, along the lines of the irc forum you can see at the top for jokes and spammy posts. perhaps the word game could be moved in there and it could be made post count free like introduce yourself or be purged every so often.

Would need someone to moderate and keep an eye on it though, which would be difficult to sort as not only are all the mods extrememly busy at the moment they're not normally sitting around twiddling they're thumbs anyway.

nothing of interest- i should have said relatively mate. If the post count didnt increase in general then that would stop some of the spamming. Can this be done guys?

[Elmo]

the thing is steve, alot of people only post in GD and dont always spam either.

i think the postcounts should be hidden and the idea of being allowed an avatar after a certain length of time, used. This should stop spamming in it's majority cos they wont have anything to build towards and wont be able to compare post counts with others.

[steve threlfall]

Originally posted by Elmo
the thing is steve, alot of people only post in GD and dont always spam either.

i think the postcounts should be hidden and the idea of being allowed an avatar after a certain length of time, used. This should stop spamming in it's majority cos they wont have anything to build towards and wont be able to compare post counts with others.

This sounds good elmo. Things will settle down anyway soon and anyone still spamming then will surely be shot

... where did that red dot come from

[Kilrov]

Another vote for removing post counts and having avatar/custom text after a certain amount of time. I think that among regular users we know who are regular and valued contributers and therefore a post count is not needed.

i.e. we know that while he might not post as much as others Saracen puts forward a lot of valuable arguments in QT.

[Agent]

Originally posted by Jiff Lemon
3: General discussion post counts not included in post count

Problem is, it encourages spamming elswhere.
It could work, as we are going to be coming down on spamming a lot harder now.

Originally posted by luke313
We were discussing this earlier on irc and decided that it would be best that you could change your avatar after a certain amount of time since joining the forums. This would get rid of the need to spam altogether.

Good idea, probably the best ive heard yet. A time based system would mean no matter how much rubbish you posted you wouldnt get any further.

Originally posted by Knoxville
We used to have a seperate forum thing, along the lines of the irc forum you can see at the top for jokes and spammy posts. perhaps the word game could be moved in there and it could be made post count free like introduce yourself or be purged every so often.

The spam forum isnt coming back. We felt it was lowering the quality of GD and people were just posting for the sake of it. We had somone make a thread with nothing but the words "lol" in, and a few other simlar ones which were equaly as stupid. We are teying to encourage usfull posting, this forum would have the oppsiote effect really.

[Shorty]

I removed visible post count from the postbit template to confuse my members

Some spammers just live for post count, if it is taken out of public view and requires searching the forum members list (which David disables) then post count means nothing