Post count spammers never have those problems.
I have too much "required reading" here and in staff that I ignore many threads until called to action. But I do favor, business, politics, movies, TV and religion.
It could be much, much worse. I've been on sites where all someone does is post "ty" (thank you) to get their post count up. I once belonged to a smiley forum where some people tried that - the owner had put in a policy where people were
required to post at least twice a month to maintain membership (and access to the vast database of smiley sets we had). There were a lot of members there who were mods and admins of other Invision forums and wanted the smiley sets for their own sites.
When some people started with the counting threads and "ty" posts, he put his foot down that they had to be MEANINGFUL posts, not just spam.
I kept my own membership up there by being one of the people who created smileys. My Spud avatar was born on that forum.
I've never understood deliberately trying to get one's post count up. It is what it is. Just post what you want to say and it will steadily go up.
That said, I'm nearing the 10,000 mark, so I have to start planning something special for that post.
I look at post count as a measure of my activity on a particular site. It's interesting that even though the reason I was gung-ho about getting online in the first place was because of Star Trek, I have over twice as many posts here as I do on TrekBBS. And that's taking into account that post count gets you a perk there - access to hidden ranked lounges. If you're a new person, you have access to the Redshirt Lounge. As your post count increases, so do your Lounge accesses, though once you gain a new rank you're "promoted out of" the old Lounge.
So it was a sad day when I was promoted out of the Flaptains' Lounge, as I was no longer a Fleet Captain (Flaptain). It was an interesting group of people in that particular subforum. I'm part of the Admiralty there now, having achieved 11,000+ posts (only took over 10 years!), and that's not even the highest rung of the Admiralty. At my posting rate there (what I post in a day here I might post in a month there, except when it's my turn to host the Star Trek Hangman games), it'll take several more years to gain that last Admiralty rank.
Now here... I've been gradually creeping up through the post count ranks here, passing some people who don't post anymore, or people who don't post as much. I'll never catch up to Kyriakos or Takhisis or Birdjaguar or a few others, but I have caught and passed some others who are still active.
E-peen? Be best at something? It was more meaningful in the early days of the forum when the world was fresh and green. I would set a cap at 30, 40 or 50,000 and make that the end game goal for those that care.
As for why some people care about post count... as mentioned, for me it's a measure of my activity, and that I've actually accomplished x number of things to say, most of which are meaningful in some way. Part of the reason my post count is much lower on the Star Trek forum is because so much of what I could say there has already been said dozens of times and isn't new at all. So what's the point of making the 4692nd post about the precise color of Kirk's shirts? No real point at all, as there are so many others and consensus still hasn't been reached.
The first forum I ever joined had an unofficial meta kind of game going on. The Faction Game used the forum ranks (generic medieval rankings) to create an interactive story game setting that involved participants all over the forum. So when I reached these milestone post counts (and got a new rank), I'd write a post about it, the other participants might offer congratulations and virtual gifts, and write a bit more of the ongoing interactive story we were gradually creating. The highest rank anyone there ever reached was Emperor/Empress, at 10,000 posts. Only 4 people had reached Emperor and 1 had reached Empress at the time I left that forum. I myself had reached the rank of Queen (5000 posts). Post count did matter there for another reason - if you reached a certain post count, you got access to a hidden subforum where people could discuss politics and religion (those subjects were forbidden elsewhere on the forum).
So after all that, I guess the idea that post count matters is something that stuck with me. I've had a lifelong problem with procrastination, and seeing that post count in my profile is something that tells me there are 29,600+ things I had to say that I actually finished writing and posted (so many posts I start end up not being finished, so apologies to anyone miffed because they once asked me something and didn't get an answer). I look at it as a form of personal encouragement.
Besides, you should see the post count of one of the people at TrekBBS. I kid you not, over the past 20 years or so, he's racked up over 282,400 posts. The guy in 2nd place has 109,300. Yes, much of those 200k+ posts are basically spam posts, The 2nd place guy is a tie-in novelist and he doesn't do the recreational posts that most others do. His post count is mostly talking about books that either he's written or that his colleagues have written.
Next to some of the people on that forum, the highest post count achievers here are left in the dust.
Of course it's a matter of quality vs. quantity. That's why I don't go for the easy post count as much as I could there (in the 3/5/7-word story threads, for instance; most people make no effort to have their posts make any sense, whereas my takeaway from the first forum I joined is that if you're going to have interactive storytelling, it's disrespectful to the other participants if yours
doesn't relate to their contributions in a way that advances the story).
). Imagine someone thinking I just had to get post #73137 now or a daily average and you've imagined someone who long outlived their purpose on the forum ^^
