Bring Back Serial Thread Postcount

[IglooDame]

Thank you. I've seen legislation that's gone from tabling to Royal Assent in less time than this is taking.

From another OT-regular, been-here-a-while-with-gaps, 20K+ postcount retired staff person... Please stop sniping about how long it's taking. As you well know, staff here are uncompensated, put significant time and effort into the site, and it shows given that we're most of us here for decades and thousands and thousands of posts (even if a few of them don't count towards postcount) and still going strong. This is hardly an urgent issue, and staff conversations tend to wax and wane while finding the best decision. That's the way it goes, and getting snarky about it is neither speeding anything up nor encouraging them to decide in the direction you advocate.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I am thankful for the amount of work they've already put into it. In addition to this thread, Leif did reach out to me personally to offer an explanation of the state of affairs and to give me a hearing. I do not intend to breach his privacy by saying this but rather to point out that the mods are proactively looking at this and have been more than fair in hearing us out. I was a bit frustrated at first when about a week went by without them replying to this thread but that's to be expected and they've since shown they've put real work into debating this with us and among themselves. They have a clear rule that they could just fall back on without hearing us out and I'm thankful they're giving us a hearing.

And I will be the first to admit that this isn't a dire issue, making the mods deliberation that much more noteworthy!

 

[Arakhor]

Ok I'll bite - what makes mini blogs less worthy of postcount than a dedicated topic? This is all problematic.

I have thousands of posts from Mafia games, so I'm not going to pontificate about what makes a given post less "worthy" than any other. I was just providing a possible reason as to why that might be the case.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have thousands of posts from Mafia games, so I'm not going to pontificate about what makes a given post less "worthy" than any other. I was just providing a possible reason as to why that might be the case.

Sure and I'm not really asking you to so much as pointing out the problem with the reasons stated.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

From another OT-regular, been-here-a-while-with-gaps, 20K+ postcount retired staff person... Please stop sniping about how long it's taking. As you well know, staff here are uncompensated, put significant time and effort into the site, and it shows given that we're most of us here for decades and thousands and thousands of posts (even if a few of them don't count towards postcount) and still going strong. This is hardly an urgent issue, and staff conversations tend to wax and wane while finding the best decision. That's the way it goes, and getting snarky about it is neither speeding anything up nor encouraging them to decide in the direction you advocate.

Sorry, but I was frustrated with the lack of so much as a "we read your posts and are thinking about it"... for a long time. I know it isn't urgent, but just to know that we're not posting into the wind would have alleviated some frustration.

 

[Takhisis]

This is hardly an urgent issue, and staff conversations tend to wax and wane while finding the best decision. That's the way it goes, and getting snarky about it is neither speeding anything up nor encouraging them to decide in the direction you advocate.

This is exactly why it took me over a month to post here again. There's no point in just hounding people. It's like children* in the backseat asking ‘are we there yet?’ every five minutes.

*or talking donkeys

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It was hardly that frequent and I was not the only person who was frustrated.

Okay, I will apologize for my latest expression of frustration over the time this is taking. I do stand by my initial feeling of annoyance that it took a long time for the thread to be acknowledged.

 

[Takhisis]

I will apologize

No. You don't. You have just gone out of your way to attack me in private, for the third time in a year, over yet again misinterpreting a post which referenced you in no way whatsoever (the footnote in #106). It is the third time in which, as I say, you take care and time to insult me, all the time switching the roles around and pretending that I am the one who's attacking you. And the third time that you do so in a private message so that nobody else sees this side of you and pre-emptively blocking me from answering in private so I can only answer you here.

Your apologies are insincere. You just look for something to be angry at, one poster and/or issue after another. Stop it, for you own dignity if nothing else.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Moderator Action: Takhisis, Valka, take the argument to PM please. This is not the place for it.

 

[Cutlass]

Way I see it, those people for whom this is an important issue, it's not about the post count in and of itself. They see this as a community, and themselves as part of that community. Their post count isn't important because it's a big number to brag over. It's important because it shows that they actually took the time and effort to be part of the community. And having that post count, or part of it, removed feels disrespectful of them. Particularly when there really isn't a reason that that removal happened, except for the given explanation that the powers that be really do not respect that contribution to the community.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@Cutlass !!!!

 

[choxorn]

I have thousands of posts from Mafia games, so I'm not going to pontificate about what makes a given post less "worthy" than any other. I was just providing a possible reason as to why that might be the case.

I'm not going to pontificate on it for the same reason, but I'd also say that it's not really clear what exactly the standards are for "too <whatever> to be post count worthy," because it seems that it's a standard that only applies to OT serial threads and not to other kinds of questionably "too bloggy" type threads or "serial" threads, particularly in the other Colosseum subforums- as an example, the "Questions not worth their own question thread" threads in OT do get archived, but the Computer Talk and World History subforums also have "Questions not worth their own question thread" threads that are just about questions specific to that subforum's subject, which don't get the same treatment, even though there's not that big of a difference between these thread types. Humor and Jokes is made almost entirely of serial threads, a lot of which are mainly dedicated to just posting pictures of things. Hell, there's even other serial threads in OT that don't get archived, I guess because something like the Clown Car threads on general goings-on in politics are about a less random or more serious subject than some of the ones that do get archived? Hell, I'm sure if I looked around I could find non-serial threads that are still kind of bloggy in their discussion, or even threads in the main Civ Forums that aren't reaching any kind of quality level of discussion.

Which again, is not to say any of those posts are less worthy or unworthy compared to the Random Rants or What Music Are You Listening To threads, they're all contributing things and better discussions than you'd think in their own ways. I'm certainly not arguing that say, the Funnniest Pictures threads in Humor and Jokes having postcount is a bad thing, I think the serial threads in Humor and Jokes absolutely should have postcount.

I'm just pointing out that I can't see exactly what set of standards are specifically excluding this particular subset of serial threads in Off-Topic, and honestly, I don't really think you can come up with a truly fair standard for what "should" and "shouldn't" count for postcount (aside from spam or other rule-breaking) because the actual threads people make don't really always fit neatly into whatever categories and dividers you're using, so given all that, why not just let everyone keep their postcount, and count every post in every thread everywhere on the site the same, as long as the post doesn't break the forum rules?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm not going to pontificate on it for the same reason, but I'd also say that it's not really clear what exactly the standards are for "too <whatever> to be post count worthy," because it seems that it's a standard that only applies to OT serial threads and not to other kinds of questionably "too bloggy" type threads or "serial" threads, particularly in the other Colosseum subforums- as an example, the "Questions not worth their own question thread" threads in OT do get archived, but the Computer Talk and World History subforums also have "Questions not worth their own question thread" threads that are just about questions specific to that subforum's subject, which don't get the same treatment, even though there's not that big of a difference between these thread types. Humor and Jokes is made almost entirely of serial threads, a lot of which are mainly dedicated to just posting pictures of things. Hell, there's even other serial threads in OT that don't get archived, I guess because something like the Clown Car threads on general goings-on in politics are about a less random or more serious subject than some of the ones that do get archived? Hell, I'm sure if I looked around I could find non-serial threads that are still kind of bloggy in their discussion, or even threads in the main Civ Forums that aren't reaching any kind of quality level of discussion.

Which again, is not to say any of those posts are less worthy or unworthy compared to the Random Rants or What Music Are You Listening To threads, they're all contributing things and better discussions than you'd think in their own ways. I'm certainly not arguing that say, the Funnniest Pictures threads in Humor and Jokes having postcount is a bad thing, I think the serial threads in Humor and Jokes absolutely should have postcount.

I'm just pointing out that I can't see exactly what set of standards are specifically excluding this particular subset of serial threads in Off-Topic, and honestly, I don't really think you can come up with a truly fair standard for what "should" and "shouldn't" count for postcount (aside from spam or other rule-breaking) because the actual threads people make don't really always fit neatly into whatever categories and dividers you're using, so given all that, why not just let everyone keep their postcount, and count every post in every thread everywhere on the site the same, as long as the post doesn't break the forum rules?

Absolutely agreed.

One thing I do on the forums I've admin'd is to celebrate milestone posts. For example, on a new forum, when the 1000th post (or the 30,000th) is made, whoever made it gets a 'thank you' - because without people posting, there's not much going on, right? I never considered removing post count for any reason, because 1. It's disrespectful to the posters; and 2. It provides more accurate data of how much activity is going on, and in what area of the forum.

One one forum I used icons in addition to publicly visible post counts. As the posters moved to new milestones (ranks), their little tree icons became larger, and I won't forget the surprise and delight one of the members expressed when she exclaimed, "My tree is growing!" She didn't care about the exact number of posts, but she did like to see her tree grow and mature, and it was something that helped cheer people up a little.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Plotinus's thread were only numbered because they went beyond one because of popularity. There was no intent at the start to have a series that were focused on mostly trivial conversation. If you are going to argue this through examples, you'd do better to use Mafia threads as an example of spam threads that get pc. They can do 1000 posts a day.

My preferred solution would be to freeze pc where it is on March 1 and then batch upload new pc totals every three months.

 

[IglooDame]

As someone who truly doesn't give a frack about postcount except in the broadest way (like, is someone over 5K or not), I would suggest recording postcounts on all archived threads. I don't see any downside, assuming all the posts in the trending-spammy threads are within the rules. If there is a technical/resource reason why this would be inadvisable, I hope staff would tell us users.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Plotinus's thread were only numbered because they went beyond one because of popularity. There was no intent at the start to have a series that were focused on mostly trivial conversation. If you are going to argue this through examples, you'd do better to use Mafia threads as an example of spam threads that get pc. They can do 1000 posts a day.

My preferred solution would be to freeze pc where it is on March 1 and then batch upload new pc totals every three months.

Were the original "Random" threads intended to be serialized? I don't remember if anyone thought they would get anywhere near 1000 posts.

I didn't use the Mafia threads because I've never read any.

There was some discussion some time ago about threads like "TIL", the weather thread, and the shopping thread. The OPs all opted to keep them as one thread rather than serializing them. This option likely wouldn't have been offered if we were still using vBulletin.

But my point about the Theologian threads wasn't their content. It was that they were numbered but not archived after being locked. But if you're going to compare content, there are posts in the serial threads that are every bit as complex and nuanced as some in the Theologian thread, and took some research to produce. The people who made those posts should not be penalized just because they were made in a serial thread.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Valka D'Ur I'm not too concerned what the staff does with all this and don't really care if serial threads are counted or not. But I really do like my idea of only updating pc every three months. It would create events and pc drama as people weep and shout over the new results.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Valka D'Ur I'm not too concerned what the staff does with all this and don't really care if serial threads are counted or not. But I really do like my idea of only updating pc every three months. It would create events and pc drama as people weep and shout over the new results.

I assume this is meant to be taken as less than totally seriously. It's more efficient to just let it be counted one post at a time as always (since this updating would make more work for the admins). There's no reason why milestone posts can't be celebrated (provided people notice them). For instance, on large forums, it's nice to celebrate the one-millionth post, no matter who makes it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I assume this is meant to be taken as less than totally seriously. It's more efficient to just let it be counted one post at a time as always (since this updating would make more work for the admins). There's no reason why milestone posts can't be celebrated (provided people notice them). For instance, on large forums, it's nice to celebrate the one-millionth post, no matter who makes it.

I'm totally serious. And we did celebrate the 1 millionth post here.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm totally serious. And we did celebrate the 1 millionth post here.

About the 3 months? Sure, I guessed you were serious. The celebrating, though... well, I used to belong to a forum where it was customary to write a brief story or vignette about each new rank gained. Not that CFC has anything comparable, but I could rustle up something for my 25,000th post when I get there in another couple of years or so, or even longer. It would be an in-character piece, from the point of view of the Civ leader who inspired my username.

I could have fun with that, but I doubt it's something that would catch on here.