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Suggestion: Posts

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Stewart

Stewart

Active Member
What about modifying the forum so that it doesn't count posts to the Non-Book Discussion and Testing forums? That way, we can get a better idea of those that are interested in discussing books on a book forum and those who are here to talk inane drivel.
 
I think that's a very good idea, Stewart. If you ask me, I think they should close the General Chat area.
 
The non-counting of posts in those areas seems a resonable idea if it makes 'non chat' fans happy.
As a matter of interest would you also included the members introduction area? I've just had a quick look though the conversation I've been having with Sergo in there, and amongst all our 'inane drivel' we've somehow managed to mention the following authors:

Valdimir Voinovich
Mikhail Bulgakov
Anna Politkovskaya
Victor Erofeyev
Andrey Kurkov
Victor Pelevin
Andrey Platanov
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Vasily Grossman
Boris Akunin
Sir Arthur Conon Doyle
Anton Checkov
Fyodor Dostoyevski
Nikolai Gogol
Vladimir Nabakov
Leo Tolstoy
Ivan Turgenev
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Anna Akhmatova
Alexandor Blok
Maria Svetayeva
Aleksandr Pushkin
Douglas Adams
Ursulla Le Guin
Robert Heinlein
Isaac Azimov
Ray Bradbury
The Strugatsky brothers
Stanislaw Lem
H G Wells
Edgar Alan Poe
Irwin Shaw
Graham Greene
John Le Carre
Terry Pratchet
Bill Bryson
Iris Murdoch
Jaroslav Hasek
William Shakespeare
Boris Pasternak

and no mention of Dan Brown.

Awaiting your next pronouncement with keen anticipation,

K-S
 
Kenny Shovel said:
As a matter of interest would you also included the members introduction area?
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Yes.

I've just had a quick look though the conversation I've been having with Sergo in there, and amongst all our 'inane drivel' we've somehow managed to mention the following authors:
Click to expand...

Why not request it split between the greetings, which will probably be the first ten or so posts, and your discussion, which could be moved to the General Book Discussion?
 
I can't provide stats on myself as my returned posts exceeds the 500 search results limit set by the forum.

A couple of little stats, just to demonstrate why I think the post count should be conditional in order to drive people to the correct areas to discuss books.

jenngorham is the forum's fourth top poster, after Martin, Wabbit, and myself. She has 3421 posts to her name. If you don't count the posts to the Members Introductions, Testing, and Non-Book Discussion forums her post count falls to 484, meaning that only 14% of her posts are relevant to the forum's main focus. If you remove her posts from the four word story thread in the showcase forum (which is just more idle spam) then you reduce her 484 by 117 posts meaing her actual book discussion is 10% of her contribution here.

Motokid, the forum's fifth highest poster, has 2843 posts. 445 of them relate to books, meaning his contribution to the main focus is 16%.

ricky, who I wonder why she ever joined, has 1070 posts with only 64 (6%) to be found amongst the book discussion. You can then remove her 36 posts from the showcase thread mentioned above and that 28 posts which remain on book discussion is a mere 3% of her contribution.
 
Stewart said:
Why not request it split between the greetings, which will probably be the first ten or so posts, and your discussion, which could be moved to the General Book Discussion?
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Because it's a General Discussion not a General Book Discussion, most of what we talk about has nothing to do with books. However as we both came here through a love of books we know that if, as happened, we suddenly start quoting our favourite poems by Blok at each other, we can do so safe in the knowledge the other isn't suddenly going to hide behind the sofa in fear.

As to what should or shouldn't be included in the post count, I'd say why have it at all? What exactly does it indicate?
 
Stewart said:
Hey, I only mentioned Dan Brown in 73 posts! Well, 74 now. :D
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You're probably the cheapest publicity he’s ever had. I don’t mean cheap in a demeaning way incidentally.

Edit: Posting in this thread is driving my percentage down, I'll never get a house point at this rate.
 
Now I wonder what my percentage is... Maybe we should substract the general posts from the book posts? Then I'd definitely be below zero. ;)
 
So I'd only be -18%. I can live with that.

As far as I'm concerned the post count can be removed altogether.
 
Stewart said:
I can't provide stats on myself as my returned posts exceeds the 500 search results limit set by the forum.
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I make it 60% of your last 500 posts.

Stewart said:
Hey, I only mentioned Dan Brown in 73 posts! Well, 74 now.
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Obviously if you count these as duplicates that figure does come down a tad.
 
Hmmm, I was actually moderately surprised to see a post-count on this forum. It's usually something I connect with 'a fun feature to entertain the kiddies - w00t!'

I haven't bothered to check my own percentage - I have some posts in General Chat, but I'm pretty sure most of my posts are in the Book sections.

I'd say if we want to keep the post count at all, remove it from General Chat and Members' Introductions, but keep it in Writer's Showcase as the art of writing *is* still somewhat relevant to a book forum.

Just my 0.02 $
 
Yeah, I think that that's a fair enough idea. Very interesting to see what people's post counts are dropped down to after excluding those sections!

By the way, how do you find the earlier posts people made after they have made it over 500?
 
MonkeyCatcher said:
By the way, how do you find the earlier posts people made after they have made it over 500?
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I search on posts in specific forums and tallied them up.
 
Despite me being (or having been, rather) the biggest abuser of General Chat, I agree with Stewart, ni matter how much my count would drop (feel free, Stewart).
 
What is the purpose of the post count anyway? It isn't as if attaining a certain number of posts allows the poster extra privileges, as in some forums I've seen. ie, entrance to the Adults Only areas. The only purpose I can see is it allows others to have some idea how long the others have been around here, and how active. Whether we keep the count as is, or make changes, I don't care. I just don't understand the animosity towards the chat areas. I chose this forum because of the book-centered chat. If we were gathered together in realtime, in a real meeting place, we wouldn't censor eachother for talking about stuff besides our latest read. We'd jump from a discussion about some book, to a personal anecdote or two, then back around to a another book that our talk brought to someone's mind. That 's what readers do. I thought the purpose of having the various areas in TBF was to facillitae discussions by helping us find others with similar interests. We are a collection of people with a wide variety of philosophies and interests. The thing we hold in common is our love of reading. I hate to see all this bickering and conflict over issues that can make this a vibrant online community.
 
Stewart said:
What about modifying the forum so that it doesn't count posts to the Non-Book Discussion and Testing forums? That way, we can get a better idea of those that are interested in discussing books on a book forum and those who are here to talk inane drivel.
Click to expand...

You can tell quite easily who's interested in chatting about books by starting threads, and/or posting in existing threads that deal with books. Pretty simple.
Those who want to discuss will....

If off-topic posts find there way into those forums, it's up to the mods to take care of that. They can delete and warn offending members. It's also up the the members to alert the mods to such issues.

I don't think getting rid of "general chat" is an acceptable answer. You'll just end up with off-topic conversations in all kinds of threads.

Who decides what "inane drivel" is?

Why not modify the forum so it doesn't count posts at all?

I wonder how many times book suggestions find there way into general chat topics? I know I've seen it happen.

General Chat is important to this forum. It's popularity, and importance to the forum shows in the amount of people who post there.

What's the purpose of segregating based on who posts where, and how often?
 
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