Meh, people will just find a new way to be stupid
-glad to bring you your daily pessimism, Squall

Moses made some good points.

My opinion is to do away with the post count. It is quite meaningless, whether a person can post
14,000 times or 60 times. Either they post when they actually know the answer, they guess,
or they post stupid remarks - the two latter ones waste your bandwidth.

You titled the site LinuxQuestions.org - where Linux newbies come for help Suit me if you did
away with General and let those who have all that time email or IM each other.

And this title thing is anonying. I see that I'm coming up to 1,000 posts, and personally I don't want
either guru (which I am not) or LQ addict (which I am not) appended to me as a title. LQ is a great forum,
and I'd spend 10 times as long reading without it; but if we must have titles, could you just leave mine as
Contributing Member? If they must know something, tell them I'm helping you pay the bills for the site - even
if it's such a small amount. And if someone ever does that Affero thing with me and gives money, they will
help support LQ, also.

I'm for it, and also for a limited life for the threads in that forum.

I'm with the general consensus. Since this is a Linux help site and General doesn't provide help with Linux systems, it shouldn't be counted.

I would say don't make it retrospective and clearly state in a bulletin or sticky or something that from x date posts in General will no longer be counted. Hopefully that will cut down on the thousands of posts from people who feel hard done by because their post count isn't going up.

Since General is no longer strictly a discussion area for non Linux topics and has become a way to just empty people's brains (it's either that or the posters have to go to the park and shout at the trees ;)) if General gets out of hand and needs to be put down, it will have much less of an effect.

Bye bye General post count!

I see General as the place to hit when I am too tired to get along learning and helping others. So, it would be nice to remove the increment in post count when posting in General. Jeremy, pull the chain.

P.S. We might see a spurge in posts in General because of a few homosapiens who feel that post counts matter and they should make as many posts in General while it is still being counted :D

Do away with the entire post count altogether. Post counts have no real meaning.

I'm all for posts not counting in General.

I'm of two minds about the whole title/post count thing tho. While a high post count isn't indicative of a member's linux knowledge, it does show that the member in question does put time into LQ, which means something. Removing General from post count totals (i'd be all for doing it retroactively even, if it was an option) just makes that indication a bit more accurate as to the effort the member puts in on the board by either asking questions or contributing info (yes, its not foolproof but it does help...unless someone has 1000 posts with only 'LOL' or 'me too' but that's more the exception than the rule)

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming. A few points.

- Chinaman, your Contributing Member title will remain after you hit 1000.
- As I think about completely removing post count I am not sure it's the way to go, especially if General posts no longer increment post count.

--jeremy

Jeremy,

Thanks! You've got a great site, and whatever you decide, I'm behind you. This is an awesome resource and I never take it for granted.

Bruce

Thanks Bruce.

--jeremy

In addition to stopping the post-count increment from General, possibly the best way to create a sufficient dis-incentive to spammers etc is to take away the post-count visibility in members reply's/questions - insofar as its needed at all, just leave it in the members profile where its rarely seen.

Hey Jeremy,

I dont mind one way or the other, but would it really matter? I mean, it seems to me that a few people are making a big deal out of something that is not really that important, at least from my perspective. It was never an issue until recently, and we all got along fine.

Plus the count does give some kind of indication hwo long someone has been here. So here is an idea... get rid of the posts and display the date the number of days or the time s/he first registered.

-Steph

I don't know about this man. If you do remove the post count increment in General, why remove the post count?

The issue is the misuse of the post increment from the General forum to attain higher ranks. If the General posts no longer result in post count increment, don't remove the post count.

personally, i enjoy the general forum as a window on the makeup and attitudes of the community. however, it is obvious that if we're going to attach reverence to the post count, then most likely we are talking reverence for skill and linux knowledge rather than what is often mere patter. if so, then we don't need to reward chatterboxes with a status irrelevant to their contribution to solving linux problems(not that problems of many sorts are not resolved in general and that there is chatter occurring in every forum), so, yeah, move post count to a members profile and break it down into general and all other forum posts. i'm not sure why the moderators would even be interested in a post count for themselves as a 'thread moved" post many times over doesn't add much to one's credibility as a guru, though it may be an indicator of job performance. in any case, their status is secure regardless of post count(the corner office with the windows).
what may be more relevant here is the bandwidth issue(if it is an issue); because, post count or not , general may continue to grow as it is of interest to many and does, i believe, help to draw members into the life of the community. also, i would think that overall membership and activity(post count) have to count in any pitch for advertising revenue, so even if unpublished,
up is good. clicking on an ad to be able to post in general(write privilege, not read, which should remain part of overall site access) might be a productive moderation of this situation.
so, whatever works works for me.

Well I feel kinda dumb. I just noticed that our avatar does display when we registered, which makes my suggestion make me look like an idiot.

Here is a new suggestion: Instead of calculating the count by how many times you post, why not change it so it shows how many threads you posted to? That way these multiple posts in a single thread wont count for anything but one.