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.

[*mona lisa*]

Dani's idea is certainly interesting. I really like the idea of having new members getting used to the community and forums first before gaining the advanced member features, as you call them. It also gives them some time to get used to the rules.Question is, how long before a member is allowed to apply for official-memberdom? I just checked and neither the member profile nor the admincp tells me exactly when a member joined. Only proof of that is the month that is shown in a member profile. :x

I just want to comment on what was mentioned about making the promotion to an Official Member more personal. Not only would it be ridiculous to actually site there counting up to 200 posts (haha, imagine that), but then it comes down to dividing the posts between those that count and those that don't. Should we be that strict on quality of posts?

I'm not sure I completely understand your second objective. I think I do but I want to make sure I understand it completely before responding. Do you mind clarifying that a bit? As for the third objective, I'm not sure how we can decrease the number of users who continually make fly-by-night posts. Posts, perhaps, but not members. It slightly depends on what you mean by fly-by-night posts. Are they the "useless" posts made in such topics as Dani listed or those that don't really contribute to the community? The issue of moving such topics to the Sandbox (which consists of forum games and where posts do not count) but there's always been a division of opinions on that.

Okay, my fingers hurt. :x

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Working on the reply for everybody, sorry for the delay >.<

Question is, how long before a member is allowed to apply for official-memberdom?

Would it bee too complicated to make that data avaiable for the staff members?

It's more than likely already being collected for PPD statistics, I think.

I'm not sure I completely understand your second objective. I think I do but I want to make sure I understand it completely before responding.

Basically, my idea is that having to keep a minimum of activity (set by a PPD vale) during a certain ammount of time (waiting period before gaining Official Membership) could help new users to ponder their actions in CB according to a long term perspective rather than on getting 200 posts alone. Having "time to think" could compel some of the new users to think outside of a "must get X posts" mentality and pay more attention to the boards during their first steps in here.

As for the third objective, I'm not sure how we can decrease the number of users who continually make fly-by-night posts. Posts, perhaps, but not members. It slightly depends on what you mean by fly-by-night posts. Are they the "useless" posts made in such topics as Dani listed or those that don't really contribute to the community? The issue of moving such topics to the Sandbox (which consists of forum games and where posts do not count) but there's always been a division of opinions on that.

Okay, my fingers hurt. :x

The waiting time could have an impact on that, since the requirements for Official membership would be based on time/PPD rate instead of on a static mark. The ratio of users that register into CB would be unaffected, probably. However, the number of these new users that would make rushed posts in order to attain a status could easily decrease, since there would no immediate motivation for getting Official Membership ASAP, (unless they contribute with layouts, etc... ?)

Regarding the third objective, why do you want to reduce the number of 'fly-by' posters?

The term fly-by-night posters applied to Createblog would reffer to people making the maximum number of posts possibly in the lesser time in order to get a benefit. I do doubt such style of posting does have any kind of effect in CB, so in a sense, it's a waste of server space.

I personally wouldn't visit createblog at all if it weren't for the community forums (i dont use my myspace anymore, so i have no use for any of the layouts), so it is entirely the posts of community members which define my experience here, and I'm not alone in this respect.

Agreed; that idea was discarded after Dani's post mentioning "probation" time for new people anyways. Thanks for the feedback, though =) .

- Would you guys like to open a new thread to discuss the creation of a chatterbox forum?

Dani opened an interesting question, but maybe it deserves it's own topic.