What Happened to Nightfall's Post Count?

[hong]

I rank people as follows:

< 0 posts: not worth reading
0 posts: possibly worth reading
1-10 posts: intriguing new flesh
11-10000 posts: one of the crowd
10001+ posts: SHUT UP SHUT UP ALREADY

 

[Nightfall]

So do you tell yourself to shut up then Hong?

 

[Crothian]

I tell myself to shut up all the time iykwimaityd

 

[hong]

So do you tell yourself to shut up then Hong?

All the time.

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3539904&postcount=12

 

[Michael Morris]

Who here remembers the April fool's prank where I set everyone's post count to read "X less than Crothian"?

 

[Gulla]

Who here remembers the April fool's prank where I set everyone's post count to read "X less than Crothian"?

*Waves hand*


H

 

[Nightfall]

Crothian,

Really? Huh. Well I guess since you're the top guy you can do that.

 

[Dog Moon]

Who here remembers the April fool's prank where I set everyone's post count to read "X less than Crothian"?

I do!

 

[LightPhoenix]

I somewhat doubt that. And the same goes for join date. The only thing they provide is a rough estimate of how long someone has been visiting the forum. And that doesn't really say anything about them.

Personally I pay more attention to people who make interesting posts.

Hmm. The only way to make postcount any sort of indicator of how "valuable" someone is would be to have people rank posts. But that would be horribly elitist and much more vulnerable to misuse. "I don't like that guy, so I'm going to rank every post he's made a 1 even though he makes good points". "And that one I consider a friend so he gets a 5 everytime even when it's just useless drivel."

The psychology of how people assign authority is pretty interesting. One way they do that is "authority through experience." That is to say, people that have done more, know more. In theory, sounds completely logical, but people don't always recognize experience as opposed to simple time.

There's the phrase, "Respect your elders." That's an example authority from experience. Are all older people smart or wise? Definitely not. Conversely, not all younger people are dumb and stupid either. However, paying respect to older people is highly ingrained in most societies in the world.

Now, translate that to the internet. Unfortunately, on the internet, age is generally obfuscated. I could be twenty-seven, or I could be fifty-seven, and without physically meeting me, no one would really know (the former is true). So, experience is derived from time, and time is generally calculated two ways - the date someone joins a community, and how often they participate in that community. In this context, join date and post count.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone will equate join date/post count with experience or knowledge, nor do those dictate a degree of experience, or lack thereof. A large percentage do though, because that's how societies work, and have worked, for a long time. Hence, the whole "f-ing newb" mentality.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Who here remembers the April fool's prank where I set everyone's post count to read "X less than Crothian"?

I remeber. Loved it!