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*]

Well, we do have a separate title for those who gain the same extra features based on their submissions to the site - Official Designer. It's actually how I started out, I met the quota by submitting Livejournal layouts and applied. There's not a difference between the two other than the names, really.

And yes, while this community is driven by providing tools for bloggers, a good deal of the members came for the free layouts and stayed for the community. Many are not designers at all and never even venture into the resource center. For this reason, I feel that official membership should be awarded based on community involvement (posting); however, I also feel that it shouldn't be something that is handed out mechanically the way it is now. I agree with you on the idea that it is very easy to reach 200 posts by simply hopping around to the topics that ask for a one-line response ("What are you listening to?", "What are you eating?", "What are you wearing?", "How are you feeling?", "Anonymous Shoutouts", "Official Confessions") - there are tons of these, and that's just off the top of my head.

While these are all legitimate posts that are not against the rules, the person making the posts isn't doing anything to prove himself as a contributing member of the forums by posting only in these topics. In a way, I think the review process should be a bit personal - doing a quick review of post history and looking for quality rather than quantity. If this were the case (and I'm guessing this is the point Jordi is trying to make), then we wouldn't really have so much need for a post count requirement. However, since this makes a LOT of extra work for our admins, who are the only two people who can accept Official Members, I do have another idea which will allow for a defined set of guidelines while still discouraging the "single day post frenzy" that many new members go on trying to get OM status as soon as possible.

I can possibly see having requirement in which the user must be involved in the community for a certain amount of time (like a month or so) along with the requirement that you maintain a certain ppd to prove that you've been active, just to give the user enough time to get settled into the community. The reason I suggest this is because while yes, this is essentially the same as having a post count quota, it doesn't allow the person to rack up those posts in a day or two and then apply - it more or less encourages them to acquire the posts over that period of time instead.

Also, as a side note, if a user has his or her warning level raised, Official Members status is automatically revoked (the board is set to do this). The member has to reapply after his/her warning level goes back to zero. I thought it might be nice to know that our Official Members at least have to stay out of trouble.

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I was actually being more anarchistic than that, and what has been in the back of my mind all this time is why should there be an Official Membership for posting, when that can take a lot less esffort than designing/scripting/etc... . That being said, I shall proceed to reply to Dani's post.

What makes a post valuable is a tricky matter, hence why I ruled out the idea of evaluating each user's post history before granting any kind of bonus. It'd demand an enormous dedication from the staff members, since each single posts should be taken into consideration depending on the thread and forum board it's been posted. Even having in mind that Createblog is a relatively small community, it would be an herculean task to put that system to work and to keep it rolling. It would simply collapse on itself if there was another staff disbanding.

What Dani said really looks like a good idea. The time requirement altogether with a consistent PPD rate that encourages continuous posting but lis ow enough to not give as much leeway for rushed messages could achieve three interesting objectives:

i) Give more than enough time for the new member to get used to the site's features and community.

ii) Possibly decrease the ammount of Post count-fodder messages. The posting pace could slow down some, but it's seems more feasible to register better posts.

iii) Possibly decrease the number of flight by night users ?

The only disadvantage I can see to having to wait X ammount of time before gaining Official Membership is a potential risk for a status gap to appear between new users and Official Members. However, I don't know the people here that well to give this thought anything more than its own hypothetical value. You people can obviously say more about this matter than I am able to.

I'd like to thank all of you guys, since this is going a lot better than I expected :). The last time I got in a debate of this kind in the other community I belong to a few bans were handed out; thankfully, none of them directed at me. xD;;

PS: Dani, our dinner conversations will be epic long xD.

Anyways >_>;; ...

EDIT: Included a third objectie that I had originally forgot.