Scratch

Lightnin wrote:

It's really interesting to read this thread, and to see how strongly some Scratchers feel about the importance of showing post count (or of having more tiers that reflect higher post count numbers).

It reminds me a little of this article on gamification that was recently in the New York Times.  Numbers can be powerful things, depending on what people think they signify.

To those of you who do feel strongly about it, I'm curious to know:
What does post count mean to you?
How does viewing someone's post count change how you think of them?

Wow that's a really cool article!

And even though I don't feel strongly, I'd like to answer these as best I can for fun and so you can get another perspective ^^

What does post count mean to you?
It's a number that signifies your activity on the forums and often your amount of experience, with the community, site, and program.

How does viewing someone's post count change how you think of them?
I don't actually base too much on post count and more on how they act. I've known some pretty cool people with like a hundred posts, and not so cool ones with over five thousand. I'm not more likely to value someone's opinion with a higher post count. The main reason why I like to see the post count is for the fun of it and just seeing how your level of activity compares to other people, although I'm not really sure why.

Lightnin wrote:

We've changed the way post counts are shown on the forums.

If you have less than 100 posts, your actual post count will be shown.
If you have >1000 posts, your post count will be ">1000"
If you have >500 posts, your post count will be ">500"
If you have >100 posts, your post count will be ">100"

We did this to discourage the practice of spamming topics just to up one's post count. We considered hiding post count entirely, but decided it's nice to be able to get a general sense of how much someone has posted on the forums - so we went with the tiered approach.

Scratch On!

I think after 1,000, instead of just saying >1000 it should round to the nearest 500.

Agentpieface wrote:

scimonster wrote:

Hmm... I would like a bit more specificity. How about also showing:
>250
>750
>2000
>5000
>8000
>10000
I think it's good that it shows the exact count below 100 though.

+1

I'm, personally, strongly against this. It just gives constant goals to reach, causing more spam.

And I just noticed this. >.> Hopefully this wasn't caused by the post count change.

RedRocker227 wrote:

Greenatic wrote:

I think they should add another tier, >2000, and then increment upwards by thousands.  (>3000, >4000, >5000, and so on)

I agree that it should be more accurate, but maybe not by that much. Maybe:
>100
>250
>500
>1000
>2500
>5000
>7500
>10000.

+1!

RedRocker227 wrote:

Greenatic wrote:

I think they should add another tier, >2000, and then increment upwards by thousands.  (>3000, >4000, >5000, and so on)

I agree that it should be more accurate, but maybe not by that much. Maybe:
>100
>250
>500
>1000
>2500
>5000
>7500
>10000.

I agree with more tiers, but I think that you have a bit too many.
>100
>500
>1000
>5000
OVAR 9000 (Jk, maybe April fools as a replacement for the next one :3)
>10000

Liru wrote:

By the way, where are you finding all this spam?

They usually occur in random spots on the forums.

One example is when some posts something along the lines of "this is my _th post", or "congrats on your _th" post to another user.

Another examples are less obvious person will try to post as much as he/she can. This can be done via posting several threads at once, or posting in the other languages forums via Google translate, or bumping old threads, or commenting irrelevant posts on threads. Often times, when questioned about it, the post count inflation is one of the reasons for posting so much in a short amount of time (the other being that they want to try and dominate the forums such that their name appears almost everywhere, but that issue is already somewhat tempered by the time posting limit).

They're usually removed quickly, though, which is probably why you haven't been seeing a lot of them.

Greenatic wrote:

+1 to everyone who used post count as a "experience-o-meter".  This really helps to understand a user's experience, and that affects other things, such as in Troubleshooting, what they are likely to already know.

You read my post? I wouldn't have — too long. 

Greenatic wrote:

Hardmath123 wrote:

Greenatic wrote:

+1 to everyone who used post count as a "experience-o-meter".  This really helps to understand a user's experience, and that affects other things, such as in Troubleshooting, what they are likely to already know.

You read my post? I wouldn't have — too long. 

I read most long posts 

But to continue on what I said earlier, say you have a post in Troubleshooting -- "I can't open this project."  If the user has, around 2 posts, then you might reply "How did you open it?"  to ensure they're attempting it properly, and you're not likely to be able to use complicated Scratch terminology.  But if the user has many more posts, then you can skip this step and go on using Scratch terms.

But you can see this with how it is now.

Lightnin wrote:

TRocket wrote:

do you plan on ever removing this or maybe showing users exact post counts on their user pages?

I'm not sure what the use would be?  Seems like it might encourage them to spam to up the count, which is why we've removed the actual numbers.

Well can you at least have the number available somewhere??

Or make the <#### be every thousand or something?

Last edited by SpriteMaster (2012-02-19 14:05:03)

Lightnin wrote:

TRocket wrote:

do you plan on ever removing this or maybe showing users exact post counts on their user pages?

I'm not sure what the use would be?  Seems like it might encourage them to spam to up the count, which is why we've removed the actual numbers.

At least put the actual number in the Scratch API?

videogame9 wrote:

Let's just remove post count entirely, then.

To me, this sounds like the best solution.

I've updated my idea:
An Experienced Scratcher level that is given to trusted people who help out lots by mods/ST. This level would fix the problem that people can no longer determine the experience of Scratchers. It would allow the person to only have a 30-second-rule for posting, since there would be little risk of people abusing it to spam.

You might say, then people would spam to try and get ST to notice them and make them Exp. Scratchers, however, the only spam would be to try and help people and answer questions, etcetera.

I really want to see a Mod. or someone in the Scratch Team's opinions on this.

veggieman001 wrote:

werdna123 wrote:

I've updated my idea:
An Experienced Scratcher level that is given to trusted people who help out lots by mods/ST. This level would fix the problem that people can no longer determine the experience of Scratchers. It would allow the person to only have a 30-second-rule for posting, since there would be little risk of people abusing it to spam.

You might say, then people would spam to try and get ST to notice them and make them Exp. Scratchers, however, the only spam would be to try and help people and answer questions, etcetera.

I really want to see a Mod. or someone in the Scratch Team's opinions on this.

I think this is the only way I could accept completely getting rid of post counts. Great idea, chap.

Thanks! Yeah, I guess it would be good to get rid of the post count entirely if we did that.

And you'd be able to determine the difference between new people, the sort of average person and the experienced/helpful people without needing a post count.