And let the quote wars commence
It is a perfectly valid position to have since only a fool values their contributions by the number of points an arbitrary number is increased by. Stephen King and SM Stirling don't write books to increase their book counts, Shakespeare didn't write more plays for the sake of more plays, and I don't expect people who contribute meaningfully to the sub-forums because they're being rewarded a post count.
I feel that what you're missing here is that you assume those who won't post art at all. This is an incorrect assumption. They simply just do it elsewhere. For example, for those IOTers who NES, go look at their posting/artistic quantity and even quality between NES and IOT. It's easy to notice that they tend to have higher amounts of quantity and quality in the NES subfourm than in the IOT subfourm.
Also, those writers did have a post count they were striving for. A simple post count known as money. They write their stories, and they get credit for it with royalty checks. And yes, money is different from post count in that its value is more inherently obvious. However, even though post count value is not as obvious, it still does, and if your posts of equal quality get it elsewhere, there's no reason we shouldn't get it here.
With that logic, but keeping the status quo, nobody is going to be pissed off if IOT doesn't get post count.
That doesn't even begin to make any sense. No one would get pissed off if IOT got post count because it wouldn't break their legs or pick their pockets. However, there is resentment in the IOT community on how we don't get post count compared to almost literally the rest of CFC (Only the NOTW and Forum Games also don't get it IIRC). Granted it died over the years as we as a community realized it probably won't ever happen, but it doesn't mean we don't want it now
So what is the big deal? It isn't completely irrelevant if IOT happens to be a non-Civilization game topic and I'm partially basing my "who cares, but no anyway" answer based on it? Do you not know what the word irrelevant means or are you looking for ways to ineffectively agree with me?
You're the one who is making it a big deal by arguing against my points. If you truly don't care, you wouldn't care if it happened. Also, as stated above, almost all the other non-civ related discussions get post count, so saying "it's not-civ related" is in fact an irrelevant argument.
And how much do those people really matter to the board? Would they leave if he didn't get post count back? If so, good, who needs them? If they wouldn't, then who cares about post count?
It's a fun way to gauge how active and prolific a poster is on the site. Just because you don't see the point in it doesn't mean others don't. And in that case, I fail to see why you have to regulate other's fun just because you don't like it.
Either way, it matters not. Post count is inherently meaningless in determining the contribution of a member to the board as a whole.
How many times a user posted is in fact a great way in determine a user's contribution (especially alongside a reputation system, but I digress). It shows how active a poster posts, especially when compared to when they first joined the forum. A person with a recent join date and high post count implies a new user who actively participates in conversations. A person with an old join date and few posts is either inactive or rarely posts, etc, etc.
So, you're basing this solely on short-term effects. With that logic, I could easily argue that IOT should be made a subforum of Civilization V Brave New World. After all, the status of IOT activity in the long term, even if it bottoms out, wouldn't matter compared to the short term effect of adding it to the CivV BNW subforum and moving it back to AOG later.
No, I'm saying that DYOS's decline has nothing to do with post count. That's the bottom line. DYOS is dead because it was moved from OT (with post count) to A&E (also with post count). A&E eventually died because it couldn't garner the userbase of OT and therefore shriveled up.
Your logic is if X happened and unrelated event Y then happened leading to outcome Z due to event Y, we shouldn't do X because it eventually led to Z in the past, even though Y was the cause for it.
However, if we ignore things that point to our hypothesis of increased activity in the long term being wrong and only focus on things that make our argument valid, then I am always right and you are always right and the mods are always right and both sides of this argument are equally and always right.
I agree with you here somewhat. While I agree neither of us can proven right or wrong, the issue does remain that IOT is one of the few subforums on the entire site that doesn't get postcount, and for no particular reason. Since no one presented me a good reason why IOT shouldn't get post count, the default assumption must be that it should get post count.
That is the crux of the issue here.
You have been focusing on so much about trying to dismantle my position, you never presented a single reason for your position. No one here can give me an argument on why IOT shouldn't get post count execpt "it doesn't have post count now", which is not an argument because the point is to change that it doesn't. You keep on asking me why, so right now I'm going to ask you why not.
I highly doubt that. Thor manages to contribute heavily to IOT without post count, as did a great many people did during several IOTs. Adding post count won't suddenly increase the quality of posts, just the quantity and truth be told, I rather quality over quantity.
False dichotomy. There is no reason to assume more quantity means less quality.
Post count isn't credit. Post count just acknowledges they posted something. It does not credit the user with anything. Only user validation does that.
Read noun, definitions 1 and 2
"1. (uncountable) Recognition and respect
2. (countable) Acknowledgement of a contribution, especially in the performing arts."
Sounds exactly like post count to me, especially definition 2.
With your logic, the author of Princes of the Universe was more focused on post count that user feedback of his story. If anything you said was true, we should see a ballooning amount of activity in CivV and IV S&T but we do not see that at all.
That is not my logic at all. There is more to user activity besides post count, and if you think my argument boils down to "all subforms with post count automatically receive more activity than those without it", then you are not fully comprehending what I'm saying. In your particular example, the problem with the S&T is its more limited scope in purpose compared to IOTing or NES. Since all stories there must revolve around a game of Civilization, it has a much more defined purpose than NES or IOT, thus leading to post count. Unrelated to post count.
How is it a damning correlation? What is the degree of correlation? .12? .05? .98? You can't say there is a damning correlation and not have anything to back it up. I can easily point to NES having a long and storied history of quality and a strong userbase to their success, not some pointless counter on the side of their posts. If you took away NES post count right now, there would be grumbling and maybe even shouting but the users that call NES their true home won't disappear and they'll continue to pump out quality stories and the only credit they will receive, and the only credit they even want, is the credit they receive when others acknowledged their work. They don't care if a counter acknowledges they added something, because I could post a picture of a kitten and it could be acknowledged by a post counter.
While that last paragraph is completly valid in terms of other reasons why NES tends to have more art, post count is still a significant factor. Taking away post count from NES would take away motivation to write future stories because it would imply that the mods did not care about that particular subforum anymore. At this point, though, I feel like we're talking about way too much hypotheticals, which often conadrict each other, to make a conclusive point.
So, once again, I echo what I said above. Name me one reason why IOT shouldn't have post count, and therefore also implicate that you actively do care about IOT not having post count, or truly admit you don't care and stop trying to have an argument over it.
). DYOS got a huge increase in activity once it got post count, because the content creators got the same reward of posting their comics as they would elsewhere on the forums. NESers get post count for their art (whether it is through writing or pictures or what not), and therefore have incentive to create content there. In IOTland, there is no incentive to create art pertaining to IOTs on the IOT subforum because we don't get "credit" for it. By putting post count on the subforum, we do get the same amount of credit as elsewhere. Thus equality.
