Remove Post Counter And Reputation

[Zareek]

I've been on quite a lot of forums over the years... and if there is something I've noticed, it's that having a post count and reputation count, damage the quality of the forum.

 

People spam relentlessly just to get a high post count. Most the time it's harmless, but other times it makes people comment things that shouldn't be commented, like a rude / smartass remark. Another thing is the reputation counter. I think it's absolutely unnecessary. If someone takes their time to make a thread, and the first person to comment, post some smartass remark, chances are that it'll get more upvotes than the actual OP. Just because it's a troll comment. This discourage some people, and also promotes spamming/trolling.

 

Bottom line, I say remove both these forum features. If the post counter is removed, people won't spam irrelevant comments just to get a high post count, and people may actually consider their comments before posting them. Without the reputation feature, people won't post a rude remark and try to be funny, just to get a high reputation count.

 

Feel free to disagree, but this is from my own personal experience on numerous forums, and I personally feel like it would make the forum a better place.

[taiiat]

- people will be idiots and spam either way, whether there's a 'reason to' or not.

 

- upvotes is used by Digital Extremes as feedback measuring as well, meaning reading all 250 pages of a thread isn't necessary to get the idea of what's going on.

and people will be snarky even if they don't get a green number to giggle at.

 

 

youtube comments are a good comparison here, earlier in it's life, there was no upvoting, there was no threading even, and people were still extremely rude and snarky. 

the people that wish to be such things, will be no matter what we do. you don't defeat a hacker by burning your computer!

[DBugII]

You should have been here when you could downvote posts.

 

People got so mad.

[TheErebus.]

Reading this made me go through all my idiotic and childish posts from a very long time ago.

Oh god I feel dirty.

 

[yarash2110]

yeah, and whats up with the thing that they removed the option to delete posts? trying to make the forums more annoying?

[Zareek]

- people will be idiots and spam either way, whether there's a 'reason to' or not.

 

- upvotes is used by Digital Extremes as feedback measuring as well, meaning reading all 250 pages of a thread isn't necessary to get the idea of what's going on.

and people will be snarky even if they don't get a green number to giggle at.

 

 

youtube comments are a good comparison here, earlier in it's life, there was no upvoting, there was no threading even, and people were still extremely rude and snarky. 

the people that wish to be such things, will be no matter what we do. you don't defeat a hacker by burning your computer!

I know it wont make people "angels", but in my experience, the forum quality is better without these kinds of features.

[OrangeIncarnate]

Interesting idea but to play the devils advocate;

Does the post count and reputation not encourage people to post? Without them there would be less posts because people are not motivated by the trivial reward.

Is it not always nice to get feedback as you feel loved and feel that people actually see you post?

(excluding the troll/mean posts that are against against the rules ofc)

 

Doesnt matter to me either way

 

Side note: Should the reputation not have at least some relation to in game level as having a high in game level means that you have experience in the matter even if you havent been on the forums much.

[Zareek]

Interesting idea but to play the devils advocate;

Does the post count and reputation not encourage people to post? Without them there would be less posts because people are not motivated by the trivial reward.

Is it not always nice to get feedback as you feel loved and feel that people actually see you post?

(excluding the troll/mean posts that are against against the rules ofc)

 

Doesnt matter to me either way

 

Side note: Should the reputation not have at least some relation to in game level as having a high in game level means that you have experience in the matter even if you havent been on the forums much.

Well I personally prefer quality over quantity.

[Dtexas]

I strongly disagree. I don't think ive ever seen any of this so called "post spam" to the point its a real problem. Only now and then it happens, and when it does its usually someone trying to get their point across or have something the way they want it to be. That or its someone trolling.

 

Even when that does happen,  the community mods are usually good on fixing it and getting rid of it.

 

I could see your point with the rep system if we still had a downvote button. But that was removed long ago and having just an upvote button is just as good as not having one. Just because someone elses idea gets more upvotes than yours, does not mean that their idea was better or that your idea is bad. It could simply mean more people saw that post as opposed to yours.

 

If someone posts a thread and that person gets discouraged because someone elses thread got more upvotes than theirs, I think thats more of personal issue than it is an issue with the forum itself.

[Meenmu]

Reading this made me go through all my idiotic and childish posts from a very long time ago.

Oh god I feel dirty.

Now we're all reading your posts.

[izzatuw]

yeah, and whats up with the thing that they removed the option to delete posts? trying to make the forums more annoying?

No. It was to let moderators moderate properly.

[Nkomo-Sama]

You should have been here when you could downvote posts.

 

People got so mad.

Good times.

[Zareek]

If someone posts a thread and that person gets discouraged because someone elses thread got more upvotes than theirs, I think thats more of personal issue than it is an issue with the forum itself.

That's a bit off from the point I was trying to make. Say for instance, that someone who is bad at english, makes a topic about something he thinks needs to be changed. Maybe he sits there for 2hours trying to translate and make a good thread. Then he posts it, and await peoples opinion on the topic. First comment: omg learn english. That comment gets 205 upvotes, and the OP gets none.

 

Sure it's a personal thing to take that serious, but I think its unnecessary to have these features and let stuff like this happen in the first place. Personal or not, some people gets hurt. It's up to you wether or not you want to judge them for being sensitive.

People make these kind of comments and the moderators don't always do something about it. I know the moderators are trying their best, but they can't catch everything. And I feel like removing these features would at least decrease these issues.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Zareek

[izzatuw]

So OP what about Warframe idea threads that are good and well detailed? Lots of people like it so I think leaving an upvote would be better than seeing the first page full "yes". Or at least the OP of the thread would feel encouraged to know people actually like his/her idea.

[Zareek]

So OP what about Warframe idea threads that are good and well detailed? Lots of people like it so I think leaving an upvote would be better than seeing the first page full "yes". Or at least the OP of the thread would feel encouraged to know people actually like his/her idea.

They could make a poll

[--Q--uaint]

They could make a poll

 

No, they can't. Or rather, they're not allowed to.

[taiiat]

No. It was to let moderators moderate properly.

though, i saw users self moderating just fine :s

deleting posts that were incorrect or didn't belong, deleting threads if a double was posted (30 second delay between posts can get annoying when i have a lot of tabs open! >:c), or any other reason to want to moderate one's self. 

infact, self moderating, in my eyes, is a positive thing. realizing that something that was said is so inappropriate that they wish to just delete it.

 

sure, bothering a Moderator also works, but it's much more efficient for people to handle things themselves.

 

i was quite happy to be able to delete Posts or Threads, it came in handy from time to time for me. i don't recall if i ever needed to delete a thread, but i deleted posts from time to time to rewrite them with more quotes in them, since that was the only way around the absolute demon spawn cancer that is WYSIWYG autoformatting editors. since i couldn't just add in another quote that would source properly, the only way around this was to copy my post, delete it, and then requote everyone again, and add in whatever extra quotes i wanted to add on, and re create the post.

among other uses.

 

to me, it's like a child correctly teaching hiself to use a toilet, and the parent punishing them by removing the toilet.

They could make a poll

polls on Forums are also often used in the same manner you're suggesting that upvotes and post counts do.

with the extreme comparison i made, the best solution to a problem is usually not the most drastic one, like avoiding viruses by smashing your computer.

making the Forums less effective at giving constructive feedback in an easy to read manner, doesn't defeat 'trolls' (if we assume everyone in that category is one, but that sort of litigation isn't on topic), instead, makes them win. if their only point of posting or doing whatever is to disrupt the Forums and make it a less effective place, us doing it ourselves is like being told to shoot ourselves in the foot and us obliging. it doesn't hurt them, but they got what they wanted, it's like a double win.

[[DE]Rebecca]

We've had no reputation, positive and negative, and now just positive. I always think about what kind of changes could pay off in terms of posting, and you've raised some interesting points to think about! RE: Self-deleting posts was a paper-trail nightmare for trolling/abusive content. Thanks for the discussion. 

[DellSalami]

People like archistopheles are the reason the post count exists.

[Brynslustafir]

But I like being able to see how many posts I've made.  

[izzatuw]

though, i saw users self moderating just fine :s

deleting posts that were incorrect or didn't belong, deleting threads if a double was posted (30 second delay between posts can get annoying when i have a lot of tabs open! >:c), or any other reason to want to moderate one's self. 

infact, self moderating, in my eyes, is a positive thing. realizing that something that was said is so inappropriate that they wish to just delete it.

 

sure, bothering a Moderator also works, but it's much more efficient for people to handle things themselves.

 

i was quite happy to be able to delete Posts or Threads, it came in handy from time to time for me. i don't recall if i ever needed to delete a thread, but i deleted posts from time to time to rewrite them with more quotes in them, since that was the only way around the absolute demon spawn cancer that is WYSIWYG autoformatting editors. since i couldn't just add in another quote that would source properly, the only way around this was to copy my post, delete it, and then requote everyone again, and add in whatever extra quotes i wanted to add on, and re create the post.

among other uses.

 

to me, it's like a child correctly teaching hiself to use a toilet, and the parent punishing them by removing the toilet.

polls on Forums are also often used in the same manner you're suggesting that upvotes and post counts do.

with the extreme comparison i made, the best solution to a problem is usually not the most drastic one, like avoiding viruses by smashing your computer.

making the Forums less effective at giving constructive feedback in an easy to read manner, doesn't defeat 'trolls' (if we assume everyone in that category is one, but that sort of litigation isn't on topic), instead, makes them win. if their only point of posting or doing whatever is to disrupt the Forums and make it a less effective place, us doing it ourselves is like being told to shoot ourselves in the foot and us obliging. it doesn't hurt them, but they got what they wanted, it's like a double win.

I don't think that's the reason and I'm not sure what is. But I believe it's because moderators can find trollers/rude posts.

[Chroia]

We live in a post-Facebook world, where everything gets boiled down to just 1 thing: "Like" or not.

 

Simple solution: Separate "like" from '+rep', and you can only choose one.

 

Alternatively, use a Slashdotesque approach. "Informative", "Interesting", "Funny", etc..

[Mokkania]

- people will be idiots and spam either way, whether there's a 'reason to' or not.

Removing the post count will surely not eradicate the problem but there is the possibility that it might reduce it, but before that we would have to ascertain that the situation is such as that there are people that post only for the sake of posting

(and that it is enough of a problem to apply a countermeasure)

 

youtube comments are a good comparison here, earlier in it's life, there was no upvoting, there was no threading even, and people were still extremely rude and snarky. 

In my opinion it got quite worse since that time, but there is also the fact that the people's attitude changed too (the internet...)

 

Interesting idea but to play the devils advocate;

Does the post count and reputation not encourage people to post? Without them there would be less posts because people are not motivated by the trivial reward.

Is it not always nice to get feedback as you feel loved and feel that people actually see you post?

(excluding the troll/mean posts that are against against the rules ofc)

at the bare minimum there would always be feedback posts because it's how it works for a forum, in addition it's better if someone who post feedback is encouraged by pure motive rather than another incentive. (though it still work both ways)

 

I strongly disagree. I don't think ive ever seen any of this so called "post spam" to the point its a real problem.

It's hard to tell actually, there are times where I have doubts about why people are posting their thing

 

/

Well I don't have a solution myself.

[Tulzscha]

I don't think that's the reason and I'm not sure what is. But I believe it's because moderators can find trollers/rude posts.

 

Correct, Rebecca's post in the previous page explains it well:

 

RE: Self-deleting posts was a paper-trail nightmare for trolling/abusive content. Thanks for the discussion. 

 

It was increasingly getting difficult to track down abusive posts when reported because of the users' capability to delete their own posts (and claim they were "innocent").

 

I strongly disagree. I don't think ive ever seen any of this so called "post spam" to the point its a real problem.

 

That's because the mods have probably already cleansed and purged it for you. :)

[Wiegraf]

One solution would be to leave the upvote button in place but remove the count's visibility from anyone not at a moderator or above level. That way, you can still upvote revelant posts and the moderators and devs still can find the most revelant posts but checking their upvotes. It would also let people vote on what content they find revelant and not just vote on something that already has a lot of votes just because it has a lot of votes.

 

As for post count... well to be fair, this forums didn't have much in term of post spam in the past, I think. Only downside is that people with high post counts will often critique people coming to post a negative feedback / opinion if their post count is low with a comment along the lines of "That's a waste of a first post", "Oh, you're new here so you don't know what you're talking about" or "Come back when you've gotten more posts" while some players might have been playing since closed beta and simply didn't want to get involved into the forums until something made them.

 

If anything then, I'd say hide other users's post counts from threads and keep your own visible; if anyone really must be critical of someone's post count as a measure to gauge if another user's posts are valid, then they'd need to visit their profile... which in turn is quite petty if that's the only kind of reply you find worthwhile to answer with.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Wiegraf