Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

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[Dimetrodon]
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Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by [Dimetrodon] »

Honestly, to some, post counts seem to be a "right of passage" or sign of status (my reaction: :roll:), and to others, it's just a count of the number of times a user happened to press "submit" after executing posting.php on the server.

While there was an older topic about this, but the last post was in 2008.
My question: Does post count affect your decision to trust support advice on this board? Would you be more likely to listen to someone with a higher post count?

Honestly, I'm more inclined to believe those who's answers make more sense as opposed to a higher post count. This is especially true when one can gain a high post-count by asking lots of questions as opposed to being knowledgeable. I sincerely question if it should even be displayed in the mini-profile.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by warmweer »

[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:29 am While there was an older topic about this, but the last post was in 2008.
My question: Does post count affect your decision to trust support advice on this board? Would you be more likely to listen to someone with a higher post count?
It does ... but postcount is only 1 of the factors having an influence on my initial "evaluation" of the trustworthiness of the "advice" given.
In the topic you linked to a couple of valid points are made: e.g. quality of the posts (and that also includes asking the relevant questions in order to be able to give advice).
[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:29 amHonestly, I'm more inclined to believe those who's answers make more sense as opposed to a higher post count.
But a newcomer usually doesn't have the experience with phpBB which would allow proper assessment of the quality of the answers given.
Seeing the postcount is easy ... but reading some of the (support) posts will give a lot more information about the poster's "credibility".
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by Mick »

“upvotes” and “likes” are even less use apart from data gathering.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by [Dimetrodon] »

warmweer wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 6:04 am
[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:29 amHonestly, I'm more inclined to believe those who's answers make more sense as opposed to a higher post count.
But a newcomer usually doesn't have the experience with phpBB which would allow proper assessment of the quality of the answers given.
Seeing the postcount is easy ... but reading some of the (support) posts will give a lot more information about the poster's "credibility".
I think a better system would be one where a user in need of support can mark the reply as the answer with the Community Team being able to override this if the post turns out to be dangerous advice or something of that nature. All of that totaling up to a number of answers on the user's mini-profile.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

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[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:36 pm I think a better system would be one where a user in need of support can mark the reply as the answer with the Community Team being able to override this if the post turns out to be dangerous advice or something of that nature. All of that totaling up to a number of answers on the user's mini-profile.
Basically a "Thanks" system
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by [Dimetrodon] »

david63 wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:40 pm
[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:36 pm I think a better system would be one where a user in need of support can mark the reply as the answer with the Community Team being able to override this if the post turns out to be dangerous advice or something of that nature. All of that totaling up to a number of answers on the user's mini-profile.
Basically a "Thanks" system
Yes, something similar to that nature. The only difference would be only enabled in the support forums. "Voting" on posts in other forums such as GD or phpBB Discussion should be disabled, as they're not support forums.

This is not a new idea either, as Kailey written a 3.2.x extension that does this: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... est_answer
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

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[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:49 pm This is not a new idea either, as Kailey written a 3.2.x extension that does this: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... est_answer
I keep forgetting I need to rewrite this thing. :oops:

As for the original question - post count doesn't really matter to me. Post quality gets my attention a lot quicker. So if a user is facing an issue and another user replies with a quality answer but only has a post count of say 5, then I'll move on to another task.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by [Dimetrodon] »

Kailey wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:19 pmI keep forgetting I need to rewrite this thing.
You may not have to. It seems to be working on the latest version of phpBB.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

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[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:36 pmwhere a user in need of support can mark the reply as the answer
Which is all very well if all users who have had a positive (or negative I suppose) experience and actually come back to to say the issue is solved. There are many thousands of topics on this site that have resulted in a fix but have never had the Image added as the OP never came back to say it was resolved. This can lead to skewed results and in my opinion is unnecessary on this site.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by Kailey »

[Dimetrodon] wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 10:28 pm You may not have to. It seems to be working on the latest version of phpBB.
There's additional functionality I want to include, and most of the extension will require a rewrite for it.
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Re: Post counts on phpBB: Do they even matter?

Post by [Dimetrodon] »

Mick wrote: Wed Sep 21, 2022 9:19 amThis can lead to skewed results and in my opinion is unnecessary on this site.
While your concern is valid, I don't think there is any system that is immune to skewing. I have experience working with phpBB for instance, but I am just learning how to actually code in php. ie. I'm a complete novice, but there are people who are fluent in php and have more "under the hood" knowledge of phpBB than I do, but who have a lower post count than I do. If we were to go by post count, that wouldn't really be a 100% accurate depiction of our skill sets either. Only it doesn't have any measurement (no matter how flawed) of how useful our posts have been.

This is just my opinion though. I don't have any burning desire for a change. :D
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