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Square Wheels

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Posted

What happened to post counts?  It's now content count.  Those things are not the same.

Most of the people on my fairly active site came from another site, mostly because their software was horrid.  One thing that was universally hated by all was the fact that likes, post counts, reputation and other elements were combined in a secret and proprietary way to display something like a content count.

Is this an option to have it display only a post count?

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Posted

What happened to post counts?  It's now content count.  Those things are not the same.

Most of the people on my fairly active site came from another site, mostly because their software was horrid.  One thing that was universally hated by all was the fact that likes, post counts, reputation and other elements were combined in a secret and proprietary way to display something like a content count.

Is this an option to have it display only a post count?

​Content count is your post count. It counts every post you make everywhere. It does not count reputation and such.

Posted

​Content count is your post count. It counts every post you make everywhere. It does not count reputation and such.

​So a user who uploads 500 images in an album and a user who posts 500 messages in the forum now have the same "count?"

Posted

Prior to my upgrade I had just over 10,000 posts.  Now I have over 12,000 posts.  People are already a little perturbed over me "forcing" this upgrade on them, I fear for my life when they realize their post counts have been tampered with.  :tongue:

I wish there was a way to get back what we had.

Posted

They would have a count of 1000 because that's the number of content posts they have made to your community.

​Apparently this is the case. Considering that the majority of the action happens in the forum, wouldn't most users think that the "post count" indicated next to my name refers to forum posts rather than "content count?"

So I just uploaded 3 useless images to my album. I've just upped my "content count" (or is it post count since that is what it says here too?) by 3 images. What if I uploaded 200 photos from my vacation from a few months ago or swatches of all the colors in Crayola's big box? Suddenly I appear to be much more active in the forum. And how will levels work? If they are based on "content count" rather than forum posts? Can I get trophies and raise my user level simply by adding photos to my album.?

 

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Posted

Does it matter where the majority happens? A user wants to see the number of times they have posted on the community. It seems to be a perfectly logical thing.

Posted

As long as it's not combined with reputation.

So private messages count?  I could theoretically have a user who has never posted anything public, but has sent 10 private messages, they will have a post count of 10 but no one will be able to see any of their activity accept the recipient of the PMs?

Posted

Does it matter where the majority happens? A user wants to see the number of times they have posted on the community. It seems to be a perfectly logical thing.

Depends upon the site and niche -- some things are far more important to some communities than others. For example, let's say it's an experts community. Do you think someone would be thrilled that their title "Widget Expert" with 700 high quality forum posts is now the same as another who uploaded 500 photos from a convention and has 200 quality forum posts? I will tell you now that they will probably be... eh... slightly miffed. :D

There is also the issue of awards systems and user levels too. Some content - especially forum content - is far more valuable than others, e.g. forum vs. gallery. What about useless blog posts that nobody will read and may exist solely in the little island that a user posts? Unless you can provide a system that an admin can devise value (such as also choosing to exclude additional content other than forums such as gallery or rewarding certain actions like articles that take more effort), the user levels may be noticeably skewed.

Last, the expectations of users. While I applaud the desire to move the forum scene to another level, I think that community admins are probably in the best position to gauge what will work best for their communities. Is there an easy way that we can make it simple for admins to use forum post count or counts for each module in each module? I'm assuming this is already built in and probably it can be done via templating just swapping out variables so the forum post count is used. That's acceptable for me and I think most. Might also be nice to have an option of showing each type of content in the card, e.g. forum, gallery, articles and using an icon next to the count. You could even make it very efficient that way and easy to see.

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Posted

As long as it's not combined with reputation.

So private messages count?  I could theoretically have a user who has never posted anything public, but has sent 10 private messages, they will have a post count of 10 but no one will be able to see any of their activity accept the recipient of the PMs?

​PMs do not count as they aren't really "content" since they live in their own space.

Posted

​PMs do not count as they aren't really "content" since they live in their own space.

​OK, then this makes no sense for my site then.  I have 1 blog post, no pics and I had 10,000 regular posts.  I now have over 12,000 "posts".  Where did the extra 2,000 come from?

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Posted

​OK, then this makes no sense for my site then.  I have 1 blog post, no pics and I had 10,000 regular posts.  I now have over 12,000 "posts".  Where did the extra 2,000 come from?

​Sleep posting? I hear it's a thing.

Posted

Depends upon the site and niche -- some things are far more important to some communities than others. For example, let's say it's an experts community. Do you think someone would be thrilled that their title "Widget Expert" with 700 high quality forum posts is now the same as another who uploaded 500 photos from a convention and has 200 quality forum posts? I will tell you now that they will probably be... eh... slightly miffed. :D

The quantity of user posts/content is something we identified as a poor indicator of the quality of submissions quite early on. This is what the reputation system exists for.

Posted

The quantity of user posts/content is something we identified as a poor indicator of the quality of submissions quite early on. This is what the reputation system exists for.

​Don't disagree. But they are two different things. It's just a "likes" count" and not bragging rights for how much you actually contribute. It will also be heavily skewed if you consider moving to IPS from any other system or one that made very little use of the "likes" count. For quite a while the reputation system wasn't so used.

Personally I think admins should decide which item works for their forum best and, if a user wants to see more, they can choose to see the card. Otherwise you see "4,540 posts" of which 4,000 can be personal photos. That's just not going to make some happy, reputation system or not. The challenge I'm finding with IPS is is that, at times, the approach is "this is the best way" as opposed to "default is the best way we believe but you have an option to do that too." Don't see why it can't be optional. And if there is variable swapping we can do in the template then problem solved!

But the real problem is user level escalation -- regardless of your like/reputation. If you want users to have contributed 50 posts before they can post a hyperlink, that's what you want. A nice way to avoid it is to post 10 posts and 40 photos. 

Posted

Is it possible to have a block on the front page showing the top posters? I used to have this on 3.4 but havent figured it out in 4.0. The top posters miss it because they aren't shown anymore.

Posted

Is it possible to have a block on the front page showing the top posters? I used to have this on 3.4 but havent figured it out in 4.0. The top posters miss it because they aren't shown anymore.

​I'm not sure that it works correctly, but there is a top contributors block.

Posted

​I'm not sure that it works correctly, but there is a top contributors block.

​Yeah I have that activated at the moment. I personally like it as it incourages people to like posts & also encourages people to post interesting things, rather then spam for post count.

Although it's only working for likes? Is there a way to also display top Posters. That would be great.

Posted

I'll be honest, I haven't looked at this in depth but we have awards that are purely based on forum participation, I'm not sure I like the idea that entire content count is now classified as one (if I understand it correctly). For instance we have 10 prestige levels for medals all geared on length of membership, medals achieved and forum participation. If all content is now counted this would completely skew the results and I don't want that.

If I understand it correctly, is it possible for only forum posts to be counted towards content count, excluding everything else (downloads, gallery, calendar, pages)?

Posted

I'll be honest, I haven't looked at this in depth but we have awards that are purely based on forum participation, I'm not sure I like the idea that entire content count is now classified as one (if I understand it correctly). For instance we have 10 prestige levels for medals all geared on length of membership, medals achieved and forum participation. If all content is now counted this would completely skew the results and I don't want that.

If I understand it correctly, is it possible for only forum posts to be counted towards content count, excluding everything else (downloads, gallery, calendar, pages)?

Yes. This is exactly the issue I'm raising above. It makes it even more challenging to administrate if you'll have users dumping in "content" in all those areas that may have nothing to do with ​the primary purpose of your site, which is forum participation. I'd have to believe this holds true for a lot of sites.

The content count is for all content posted regardless of the app.

​Could we clarify:

1. Are user levels now being determined by "content count" as opposed to "forum post count?"

2. Is there a way to easily show the post count of each module as the default display in each module, e.g. 345 posts, 54 articles, 43 images, 22 files, etc ?

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