What are your views on post count?

[Cory]

Each user has their own post count. Do you think people sometimes compete to be one of, if not the top poster on the board? Can post count be an incentive to post more or does it deter users from creating quality content? If a board were to disable showing the post count on a user basis, do you think it could still be a success?

I post this as my 1000th post.

 

[Aaron]

I don't care much for post count.

 

[Strawberry]

I would say a small minority really care for their post count and probably try to get to the top to feed some sort of ego to be well known or well liked. Usually this does come with their content to be quite low quality, borderline spam.

I do like to see who’s most active on forums though so I like the ability to see post counts.

 

[Cedric]

When I was younger I used to care a lot for post counts. Had to have the most posts and of course that led to loads of spam. Nowadays I don't care at all for post count on any other forum. Except, I have to admit, I've been following my post count here and it's nice to have a larger one again. Haven't had 1500+ posts on a forum in probably 7-8 years.

 

[Arantor]

As someone who has been the most prevalent poster on multiple forums in the past, I sort of don't care but I also sort of don't *not* care. As in, I didn't set out to be the most prevalent poster, but once I'd got into the top 10 or so, just keep going!

That said, I'm not sure post count is entirely a useful metric - quantity is no proof of quality, after all. But combine it with likes/reactions (e.g. someone who has an average of 1 like per 100 posts is probably less valuable than someone who has 20 likes per 100 posts) and you can start to do more interesting things. But as ever these must be taken with a pinch of salt because they're always gameable.

 

[kolakube]

I like to see high post counts in staff members of a board as I think it shows that the "people that count" have an interest in the keeping the community going. This thread made me realize I don't trust sites as much where the admin is hardly engaged or has a low post count, so keep it up @Aerodynamic!

 

[Tracy]

More important than post count is post quality.
WAY to often the majority of many users post bring no real quality to the site.

 

[Heatman]

As long as majority of the member's posts isn't spam or one word post, it's something that deserves recognition in my eyes. It's not easy adding high quality contents on a forum everyday to become the top poster. I took pride in my post count on VGR when I was on the site as I had over 16,000 high quality posts made on the forum.

 

[Reverie]

I don't really care about post count. I care about participating in conversations. Now that might lead to a higher post count, but I kind of like how on here for example you can't see the post counts unless you highlight over the user profile in a post. Forums are meant to be participated on, it is up to how you want your experience to be on a forum.