DOS Games Discussion

Gamer V, didn't the original Warcraft *Orcs and Humans if I'm not mistaken* come out before Age of Empires? (Maybe I just think that cuz *I mean "because" for TSM * O and H is abandoned and A of E isn't??

If you can code such a meter then we might consider using it, but I really wouldn’t waste my time as there is no way to have to calculate such things automatically and the staff are already busy enough with other forum duties that are actually relevant to the day-to-day runnings of this place.

As for the teaching, I lead by example.

And yes Warcraft did come out before AoE, that’s the joke. It’s not in any way possible for it to rip-off that which did not exist when it was made.

Criteria for a possible Spam-O-Meter:

If the post is only 1 or 2 words long
If the post has no recognizable English words (prevents posts like "ewhgwuiohg ejfnjksd sdiogj sdoowe gsdljkn" which would beat the first criteria)
If the same poster keeps replying to self over and over again (double/triple/quad/etc. posting)
If you create more than X number of topics per day
If you post more than X number of posts in the same topic
If your posts per day undergoes an unusual spike (example: if your average posts per day was 3 over a few months, then you suddenly post 30 or 40 posts in the same day)

The only punishment would be that it would take 5 SPAM posts to increase your post count by 1. (or 2 for 1, or 10 for 1, or 20 for 1, or whatever you want). Thus the ambitious PostCounters would have more incentive to make better posts.

Hmm...

Final Chance wrote:If you create more than X number of topics per day
If you post more than X number of posts in the same topic

#1, I can see Abyss as the King Spam-a-lot
#2, What if there's actually something interesting going on, and active members, so you post a dozen replies in one single thread?

Final Chance wrote:The only punishment would be that it would take 5 SPAM posts to increase your post count by 1. (or 2 for 1, or 10 for 1, or 20 for 1, or whatever you want). Thus the ambitious PostCounters would have more incentive to make better posts.

Only problem I have with that...post counts are completely meaningless.
I don't allot worth based on some silly number.

cazgotsaved wrote:Okay this is probably a bad idea, especially considering that I think my only actual contribution to this thread was the first post, but what about a spam-o-meter? If you just talk smack all the time, or give broken links, your spam meter goes up, and if it gets to a certain level, then like, you get a special ranking, like sir-spam-a-lot, or sir-sucks-at-gaming or...you get the picture. I get automatic diplomatic immunity for proposing the idea btw!

If you want to take the time to go through every post on the forum (60,000+ now), then read and deduce the quality of each post, then compile all of that data into creating a "spam-o-meter" database, go ahead. Heck, I'd even make you "The Lord of Spam" or something.

But the rest of us don't have that much time available.

Larry Laffer wrote:#2, What if there's actually something interesting going on, and active members, so you post a dozen replies in one single thread?

Then the maximum posts per thread can be set to a fairly high number like 20 or 30 or something.

Final Chance wrote:

Larry Laffer wrote:#2, What if there's actually something interesting going on, and active members, so you post a dozen replies in one single thread?

Then the maximum posts per thread can be set to a fairly high number like 20 or 30 or something.

Well, that would disqualify most of the active posters in the SPAM topic.

...I like this idea.

As mentioned FC, if you go through and tabulate all the data, then maybe, otherwise the staff here have more important matters to attend to.

I guess it's easier to just let it be, the post count number can make no distinction between quality posts and piles of crap unless we're willing to bore ourselves by analyzing loads of posts.

Or you could solve the problem by sucking the fun out of everything and hiding post counts. That's the way I'd do it, anyway.

That might do the trick, NPS.

Even so, I've put little or no effort in getting a high post count since I re-joined this forum as "Final Chance".

But about 2 years ago I was desperately trying to get a high post count, trying to figure out any old reason to make a new topic or reply to an existing topic, even if it was something like "Yeah", or "That's cool", trying to crank that number as high as it can go. It felt euphoric as I climbed towards the higher ranks.

It took me that long to learn that post counts are not that important. They're not totally irrelevant either, as they do give some idea of a member's seniority (someone with 700 posts is obviously more of a member than someone with only 7 posts, even if the guy with 7 posts signed up in 2002 and the 700 poster signed up in 2005).

But I thought, hey, if I just continue as normal, there's no rush to get a high post count, and even now, I have about 130 posts, and am in the 3rd Block of the Top 100, and have way more posts than the majority of members, many of which have 0 posts at all. So I'm not necessarily that much of a lesser member, though it's easy enough to recognize Dogbreath as a veteran member, admin or not, with his 3000+ posts, so it all works out fine.

Sighs... as I mentioned before, you do know that the post count can be edited as quick as that *snaps fingers*, right?

Larry Laffer wrote:Sighs... as I mentioned before, you do know that the post count can be edited as quick as that *snaps fingers*, right?

Not really. emmzee would have to get into phpmyadmin of DOS Games and manually edit posts counts there. We don't have access to post count numbers in the admin control panel on the board.

Even so, doing something like that probably wouldn't have much merit:

If emmzee decided to give somebody 25,000,000 posts, it's obvious that it would be fake, and there would be no reason to be happy about such a high number.

If emmzee decided to give somebody, say, 320 posts, he'd know it's fake even if no one else does, and the good feeling would still be gone.

Now, if emmzee decided to cut somebody to 20 posts, then his member-relationships might be at risk. He could try it as punishment for overspamming, and if he did it on a regular basis to PostCount Athletes, it would be accepted as routine. It would be upon him to warn in advance and threaten to reduce the postcount to help understandings better, but nonetheless it is a precarious situation.

So, my point is, even if emmzee knew how to change someone's post count in 5 minutes (unlikely due to the nature of databases), it would be a serious decision to make, far from being an easy one.

(P.S.: If emmzee gave himself 1,000,000,000 posts then people might think he got a big fat ego, so that wouldn't work too well either)

Yeah.

That's cool.

Mr. Worm wrote:

Larry Laffer wrote:Sighs... as I mentioned before, you do know that the post count can be edited as quick as that *snaps fingers*, right?

Not really. emmzee would have to get into phpmyadmin of DOS Games and manually edit posts counts there. We don't have access to post count numbers in the admin control panel on the board.

Well, who mentioned you or TSM?


But, I think it would be nice if one [random] member would have a negative post count

Larry Laffer wrote:But, I think it would be nice if one [random] member would have a negative post count

I'm down with that

People trying to inflate postcounts to feel important happens all over. I hate postcount because of the people writing "me too" posts to get ahead. Better off without it.

I wonder how many people make a subconscious judgement about a member based on his post count?

For some people (including me to a small extent), it's an instinct to have a higher opinion of someone who has a high post count over someone who has one much lower. Opinions are taken more seriously, respect is higher, etc. for the people with high post counts. Not necessarily far higher, but at least a bit higher.

I try not to, but it's more of a subliminal brain process. It's hard to when post count is a semi-reliable indicator of a member's participation and experience in the forum.