A thought about post counts. Options

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In my short experience as a CreateBlog community member, I have realized post statistics do play a significant role in the user's experience since they grant access to extra features and are a requisite (that can be bypassed in exceptional occasions) to apply for staff membership. This is the not the first place where I have seen this system being used, and thusly it is not the first time I pass this thought to the community to consider. Without further ado, I'll proceed to explain my position about this subject.

In my opinion, post quotas only manage to make users work enough to meet them in order to enjoy the benefits they get for reaching the 50, 100, etc.., post mark. Such acting is not necessarily linked to making users involved in improving the community, but rather in seeking personal goals that may or may not transcend (positive or negatively) onto the rest of users.

That is mainly because apart from the site's general rules, there's not a standard establishing how a person should fill the demanded rate. Since it's pretty easy to maintain a high PPD ratio without adding anything that contributes to the site in general while avoiding the violation of any general rule, the point of having a posts limit becomes kind of moot, in the end.

Lastly, keeping a post count policy seems to have stemmed an underlying rivalry between users based upon the number of posts when it comes to, for example, hiring sessions. Despite knowing it's not a must-meet requirement, people seem to focus first on their PPD then on evaluating whether their skills can be of any help to Createblog or not. And that is pretty counterproductive to the purpose of selecting people willing to sacrifice time and efforts for an online community.

[*Libertie*]

I'd rather remove the post count from the mini profile which appears next to every post than get rid of the display altogether. For example, if you click a person's name to view their profile you can still see the number of posts along with their ppd.

However, I don't think removing the post count is the issue Jordi's trying to bring up. This goes more along with this topic, as this is what got us started talking in the first place. The topic Anna started talks about having a minimum post count requirement in order to request a layout. I see the basic idea behind this, but after giving it some thought (which I would never have done if not for having this discussion with Jordi) I realize how silly the idea actually is.

In any case, there is no way to stop people from posting around the forums, getting their 50 posts, getting their layout, and then never coming back again. And to be honest, who cares? CB is here to offer free resources, and if a designer wants to make a layout for someone, knowing that they probably won't be grateful enough to continue posting as an active member, that's the designer's prerogative. It should be the designer's decision as to whether or not he/she wants to take on the task of completing a request. If it bothers them, they don't have to do it, right? Most designers, or at least this applies to me, would go into a request thread, and if the person has been an active member or if they recognize the username, they'll agree to do it. Otherwise, they choose to ignore the topic altogether. For this reason, I don't see why we can't get rid of that little rule that says you have to have 50 posts in order to request a layout. I do realize that it was my rant with Anna which brought up the discussion in the other thread, but upon giving the issue some thought, it's my fault that I agreed to make a Livejournal layout for a guy, knowing from the very beginning that his sole intention was to make it to 50 posts and then stop coming to the forums altogether.

That having been said, I like the requirements we have set in place for Official Members. It's kind of a fun thing to work for that adds something rather unique to the forums. The Official Member title shows dedication and an interest in the forums, and why wouldn't a potential staff member want to work hard for that title? However, if a person doesn't make 200 quality posts in order to acquire Official Member status, to me they haven't earned it. This is another point made in Jordi's post - he pointed out that reaching a post count milestone is a pointless goal if you can get there quickly and easily by making a ton of useless, one-line posts. In my opinion, that's why the post count requirement was raised to 200 from 50 - fifty quality posts are harder to acquire than 200 spam posts.