Get rid of post count (poll)

[AKPilot]

Folks, we used to laugh about all of the polls on TRF 1.0. But there's some validity to it all. By the end of this you're going to be saying, "AK lighten up!" Or that just what my wife says?

Polls are notorious for being in accurate. Here's the problem with many of them.

They typically only hit a sample of a population.

In this case we have 600+ TRF users currently. As of now, only approximately 60 some-odd people have replied. So the population is 600+, the sample is 60 (roughly 10%).

The problem with samples is that they hit a few snags. Statistically, the individuals who respond are typically either happy or upset (outlying T-values). The majority (80%; paretto principle) don't respond. So in polls, the people that respond are often the "vocal" minority.

In the case of the poll above, initial looks tend to indicate that there are people who want posting numbers taken away (e.g. Yes vote). However, there are also those who've said "No". And another who have said "I don't care".

Unless we get everyone on TRF to commit and complete this poll the "I don't care's" are represented by the population who haven't voted. Not those who responded. In other words, "I don't care" is representative of those who both answer - as well as those who don't do the poll.

As for the "No" vote, their vocaling stating no. However, if the remaining TRF population was to answer that statistic may go up more. Same with the "Yes" votes. We simply don't know.

See being vocal, and answering a poll are two entirely different things.

This is why many people, who are savy, discount polls entirely. Basically, the press, TV, radio polls, etc. are skewed from the onset, and tend to suck-in people who take them for gospel truth.

Are they fun? Yes, at times. But, I can't base my decision on a sampling of the vocal-minority.

Also, my decision was based on the issue that they don't hurt anyone either. It's another tool for some, to chide and to have conversations about - such as is happening now.

I'll be the first to admit - I liked being able to chide Jim Flis on his 15,000+ post count on TRF 1.0. Jim, being the stellar man that he is, never took it personally as far as I knew.

 

[madsen]

In this case we have 600+ TRF users currently. As of now, only approximately 60 some-odd people have replied. So the population is 600+, the sample is 60 (roughly 10%).

But these are the smartest and brightest of all forum participants. Therefore, you should give them extra consideration.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Folks, we used to laugh about all of the polls on TRF 1.0. But there's some validity to it all. By the end of this you're going to be saying, "AK lighten up!" Or that just what my wife says?

Polls are notorious for being in accurate. Here's the problem with many of them.

They typically only hit a sample of a population.

In this case we have 600+ TRF users currently. As of now, only approximately 60 some-odd people have replied. So the population is 600+, the sample is 60 (roughly 10%).

The problem with samples is that they hit a few snags. Statistically, the individuals who respond are typically either happy or upset (outlying T-values). The majority (80%; paretto principle) don't respond. So in polls, the people that respond are often the "vocal" minority.

In the case of the poll above, initial looks tend to indicate that there are people who want posting numbers taken away (e.g. Yes vote). However, there are also those who've said "No". And another who have said "I don't care".

Unless we get everyone on TRF to commit and complete this poll the "I don't care's" are represented by the population who haven't voted. Not those who responded. In other words, "I don't care" is representative of those who both answer - as well as those who don't do the poll.

As for the "No" vote, their vocaling stating no. However, if the remaining TRF population was to answer that statistic may go up more. Same with the "Yes" votes. We simply don't know.

See being vocal, and answering a poll are two entirely different things.

This is why many people, who are savy, discount polls entirely. Basically, the press, TV, radio polls, etc. are skewed from the onset, and tend to suck-in people who take them for gospel truth.

Are they fun? Yes, at times. But, I can't base my decision on a sampling of the vocal-minority.

Also, my decision was based on the issue that they don't hurt anyone either. It's another tool for some, to chide and to have conversations about - such as is happening now.

I'll be the first to admit - I liked being able to chide Jim Flis on his 15,000+ post count on TRF 1.0. Jim, being the stellar man that he is, never took it personally as far as I knew.

Good points Troy, and well taken...

I understand that the post counts are here to stay and that's your right, and I'm not disagreeing with that, but for sake of discussion, I would like to make a couple counter points, just to get it off my chest...

For the 80% plus who don't care to make their opinion known, I for one don't particularly care what their position is. (I'm talking about FAR more than just one somewhat unimportant poll on TRF here, even extending to choosing and mandates given to our leaders.) They had a chance to make their feelings known and CHOSE NOT TO. That is a decision too. Choosing not to bother expressing an opinion is the same as saying, "I don't care what happens or which position wins out, because the outcome is unimportant to me either way and not worth my time and effort to formulate an opinion and make it known." That says to me that if THEY aren't worried about making their point of view and preferences known, that it isn't worth worrying about WHAT their opinion is and idly speculating HOW THE NUMBERS WOULD CHANGE IF THEIR OPINIONS WERE KNOWN. That invalidates the whole point of having a 'poll' (or election or voting on a proposition or whatever) in the first place! It is those who VOTE who decide the outcome, not those who sit idly by and do nothing; the poll/vote NUMBERS should be the metric for determining the outcome or preference, not IDLE SPECULATION on how the numbers would change had EVERYONE taken time to express their opinion. As I recently told my 6 year old nephew who's getting in trouble in school for not doing his work, and as I tell my kids on the schoolbus, "NOT doing the right thing is a CHOICE as well... it's choosing what's easiest NOW, which has repercussions, and by so doing also choosing to receive the repercussions of not doing what you're supposed to do. All we in authority do is make sure that you face the repercussions of YOUR decision." In short, when faced by kids who ask me, "why did you write me up and send me to the principal for XYZ and get me in trouble?" and I reply, "I didn't get you in trouble, YOU got you in trouble by your bad choices-- I just make sure you face the consequences for that." That makes a LOT of kids think... I can see the gears turn in their heads as they consider that.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there, because I've heard a lot of this sort of thing recently relating to 'fairness' and 'making everyone happy' based mostly on speculation by one group or person or another based on their best 'guesstimate' of what people WOULD have wanted had they bothered to express an opinion.... a VERY slippery slope my friend! And a very sad state of affairs it indicates...

Interesting thought exercise though... Yall have a good one! OL JR

 

[AKPilot]

Good points there Luke!

The question will always remain though, "why didn't that person vote in a poll"?

On TRF, was it the fact that they didn't see it? Was it the point that they didn't log in? Were they sick? Where they out of town on business, etc?

Just too many ifs.

 

[FatBoy]

Not only can you choose to vote in the poll or choose to ignore the poll, but you can also choose to not pay attention to the upper right corner of each post.

 

[jflis]

I'll be the first to admit - I liked being able to chide Jim Flis on his 15,000+ post count on TRF 1.0. Jim, being the stellar man that he is, never took it personally as far as I knew.

What? Who? Me????

Just a newbe here, nothing to see here folks...

Interesting poll though. I voted no, fwiw...

 

[hognutz63]

"AK lighten up!" Or that just what my wife says?

Your wife calls you AK? I wish mine would call me by my handle.

 

[powderburner]

In this case we have 600+ TRF users currently.

What do you call a 'user' here on TRF? (Yes, I am going to split hairs.)

I don't know how many folks are signed up here as users, but I do know that a large portion of that group do not post much (or, at all). For all I know, a big chunk of them signed up for some reason and then seldom ever come back. (I have done this at other websites, to get a piece of info, and I don't feel the need to remain active there forever and ever.) I think it would be entirely reasonable to consider a survey valid if it has responses from most of the active TRF users.

If you define an 'active' user as someone with, say, ten posts or more, then a quick check of the info on the Member List shows that we have 85 - 90 active users. Right there, if your survey has responses from ~68 opinionated users (and 90+ total users), then you do indeed have a significant level of participation.

If you define 'active' as someone with five posts or more, the number of active TRF users jumps to something more like 150. But your ~68/90+ survey responses are still a meaningful portion of this group.

I am one of the people who posted here and on other threads that it might be nice to dump the post counts.
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?p=1854#post1854

Let me be very specific on my reasons; I don't care whether we have, use, and show a post count. I do care very much that so much drivel shows up (in ALL threads) so often that is apparently posted merely for the sake of someone fluffing their count. These posts can not always be detected ahead of time, and are often embedded in a stream of interesting posts. You are reading along, and before you know it, you have stepped right into it. In fact, you usually don't even know it's a cr*p post until after you have read most or all of it, and by then you have wasted your time.

My interest in a post-count-free-forum is because I expect that removal of these numbers would remove most of the incentive for people to post blather. If they are not rewarded for wasting space, hopefully they would slow down or stop. TRF admins would have less stuff to supervise, store, sort, and keep up with, and TRF users would have a higher signal-to-noise ratio.

If we MUST have 'status' markers, we could substitute something as simple as Beginner and Member and leave it at that.

But I am sure there are more important issues for the TRF admins to address right now, such as trying to bring back the old TRF1 posts in some useful form. The issue of post counts is probably pretty far down their list.

Oh, wait, Troy already said......

 

[madsen]

I am one of the people who posted here and on other threads that it might be nice to dump the post counts.

Let me be very specific on my reasons; I don't care whether we have, use, and show a post count. I do care very much that so much drivel shows up (in ALL threads) so often that is apparently posted merely for the sake of someone fluffing their count. These posts can not always be detected ahead of time, and are often embedded in a stream of interesting posts. You are reading along, and before you know it, you have stepped right into it. In fact, you usually don't even know it's a cr*p post until after you have read most or all of it, and by then you have wasted your time.

My interest in a post-count-free-forum is because I expect that removal of these numbers would remove most of the incentive for people to post blather. If they are not rewarded for wasting space, hopefully they would slow down or stop. TRF admins would have less stuff to supervise, store, sort, and keep up with, and TRF users would have a higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Yes, Yes, Yes. Powderburner gets it. My complaint is not with the number of posts that someone has--if that were true, I would have to put out a contract on Jim Flis. My original complaint was exactly as Powderburner states. He has expressed himself perfectly. All I can say is "what he said".

 

[Peartree]

My personal feeling is that people make note of the post count because they can. The folks who post random nonsense are just as likely to do so whether the post count is displayed or not. In fact, I believe that when there are folk with post counts of 5,000 and 10,000, noobs are even LESS likely to pad their post count with drivel because they quickly realize that there is literally no hope of catching up. My own average on TRF 1.0 was about three posts a day, which is about a thousand posts in a year. Knowing that the "post leaders" were literally a decade of posting ahead of me made it incredibly obvious that no amount of drivel would ever allow me to "catch up." Again, people who like to hear themselves talk (write?) will do so regardless of whether you keep track or not.

 

[KDRaven]

Oh well if Peartree is correct that those that just like to hear them selves type is true thenI gess there will still be the ones trying to increase their numbers more and more. The thing that gets to me more than the post counters is the ones that will copy an entire post and then make a comment on either all of it or part of it even when the post contains several pictures and when this happens more than once in a thread it takes a while to go through the thread and when I see several postings that this has been done with it just makes me wonder how much of the server is being used up so I can see the same picture or comment several times....

just my gripe and sorry for stealling the thread.

 

[AKPilot]

Sorry folks, I've just got to say it . . .

I never knew that a small, 6-font, statement in the upper right corner of of a user id could draw so much attention.

It'll remain an open discussion, with a closed action, but why not expend more energy into building, launching, or posting build threads?

 

[Stymye]

I vote to turn on the 'Reputation' feature , it's explained at the bottom of this FAQ page.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/faq.php?faq=vb3_user_profile

that would quickly solve any issues over post count

 

[AKPilot]

Folks as a matter of policy, we don't "vote" on adding or deleting TRF features. You can go to the "Feedback" section of this message board and put in a request.

 

[WiK]

What do you call a 'user' here on TRF? (Yes, I am going to split hairs.)...

...If you define an 'active' user as someone with, say, ten posts or more...

Keeping with the theme of splitting hairs:
Ah, but if there was no postcount then how on earth would you define an active user?

 

[m85476585]

Disabling post count won't make useless posts go away.

 

[roadkill]

If it ain't broke - don't fix it...

I voted 'don't give a hoot'...

 

[sylvie369]

Are we supposed to be proud of having lots of posts, or embarrassed? :confused2:

 

[evil ed]

Are we supposed to be proud of having lots of posts, or embarrassed? :confused2:

Depends on what's in them!:bat:

 

[Pat_B]

In the forums I post to I've always found that a lot of the high post count people were generally the ones who had to put in their comments on every topic and were generally the ones I avoid reading.

I've always thought that it would be a good strategy to put a limit on posting when someone's post count far exceeds that others. Would establish an automatic limit when the poster can't contain themselves :roll:

 

[H_Rocket]

My interest in a post-count-free-forum is because I expect that removal of these numbers would remove most of the incentive for people to post blather. If they are not rewarded for wasting space, hopefully they would slow down or stop.

Surely you jest.

Give an idiot a forum and I got good odds they will foam away at the keyboard whether or not the get boo-boo points in the corner. Most of the post count junkies just like seeing their drivel on screen.

Unless those folks who moderate this place want to actively filter the noise, the S/N is not gonna improve.

 

[kelltym88]

Yea, you guys are sooooo funny!

Sarcasm! Nice. You can see why he doesn't want get rid of it, he's got over 1600. It's like he's a moderator or something.


All kidding aside, it doesn't really matter now does it? Decision has been made, let's move on.