Boards that don't contribute to activity

[theymos]

I'm thinking of making Games & Rounds not count toward posts or activity. What other boards would be good candidates for this? Maybe Off-topic, though some decent discussions occur there, so I'm not sure about that.

[1714193969]

1714193969

[1714193969]

1714193969

[Johny Depp]

Investor-based games - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=207.0

[theymos]

Investor-based games - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=207.0

Why? I don't read that section, but I feel like most of the posts there should be fairly substantial and contribute to a person's "record".

[cryptohunter2]

Imho all other boards should contribute to activity.

 Also i think post count should be given more weight over date of membership. I see legends with hardly any posts.  I can't how they are contributing more to the board than those that are active and posting daily. Of course again just my own personal opinion perhaps I don't fully understand the rating system, and appreciate it is hard to know how valid these posts are that are being made - perhaps some code that could measure how many deleted posts or threads they have could be factored into the calculation.

Also please please can you reset my cryptohunter account back to me. I have posted over 6000 posts and now some other pest will enjoy turning legendary on my behalf.

thanks if you can.

[botany]

I'm thinking of making Games & Rounds not count toward posts or activity. What other boards would be good candidates for this? Maybe Off-topic, though some decent discussions occur there, so I'm not sure about that.

Would all posts in these sections be excluded, or posts after a particular date?
Off topic and archival boards can probably be excluded.

[RedPrince]

I'm thinking of making Games & Rounds not count toward posts or activity. What other boards would be good candidates for this? Maybe Off-topic, though some decent discussions occur there, so I'm not sure about that.

Damn it... NO! Calculating potential activity will be very difficult.

[Lutpin]

I'm thinking of making Games & Rounds not count toward posts or activity.

For the love of god, yes.
They are going to stay in the "last posts" list though, right?

Off topic and archival boards can probably be excluded.

Dunno about archival. I mean, just because a thread gets moved there after losing its relevance doesn't mean the posts are not worth giving activity.
You would risk someone losing posts/activity for a great/good post, because the thread has been moved to archival.

Damn it... NO! Calculating potential activity will be very difficult.

Why? It would be 14 times the number of activity periods an account has posted in, excluding those periods it only posted in Games&Rounds (or other excluded boards).
That won't be too hard to change calculators to, seeing that some like bctaccountpricer already give you detailed overviews of the boards someone posts in.

[ABitNut]

Without knowing what you're trying to achieve with this change it's a bit hard to give a well thought out opinion. I can only assume it's to reduce the spam caused by signature campaigns. That's all fine but it will mean the signature spammers will spread out to other boards and that may increase the burden on moderators. If they're on board I'd say go for it. But it does seem a bit like a small patch, not a complete solution.

I was thinking that making the post count only show up when you're watching your own profile (or even completely hiding it) would make things harder on signature campaigns. But it would be quite a radical change and people might not like losing one of their ego stats.

[Bill Gates]

I was thinking that making the post count only show up when you're watching your own profile (or even completely hiding it) would make things harder on signature campaigns.

Why do u think theymos is against signature campaigns?

[cryptohunter2]

Without knowing what you're trying to achieve with this change it's a bit hard to give a well thought out opinion. I can only assume it's to reduce the spam caused by signature campaigns. That's all fine but it will mean the signature spammers will spread out to other boards and that may increase the burden on moderators. If they're on board I'd say go for it. But it does seem a bit like a small patch, not a complete solution.

I was thinking that making the post count only show up when you're watching your own profile (or even completely hiding it) would make things harder on signature campaigns. But it would be quite a radical change and people might not like losing one of their ego stats.

Post count is the most important part of being active? I believe it should account for the most heavily weighted part of activity rankings.
However alongside this ANY post or thread deleted for being pointless or outright spam should carry a HUGE penalty. Perhaps reduce your ranking by 25% or more - 3 strikes in a month and account deletion or suspension.

Even a ranking other members can give based on answers/help given. I've seen it on other forums and it works out quite well. They can't subtract but can add.

Sig for snr and above only.

[grue]

Auctions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0), since bid posts contribute nothing. Maybe even include all the "listing" sections such as goods, services, currency exchange.

[GermanGiant]

Auctions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0), since bid posts contribute nothing. Maybe even include all the "listing" sections such as goods, services, currency exchange.

Auctions is a good choice. But, goods, services & currency exchange have lots of constructive discussions.

[achow101]

Damn it... NO! Calculating potential activity will be very difficult.

Not really, at least for my site, you just need to configure it to exclude those boards in the counting. Since it already looks for the board, all you have to do is change it so that it checks the board before incrementing a counter.

I think off-topic would be a good choice as well as politics and society.

Theymos, can you let us know when you set those changes to go live so that those of us with potential activity checkers (like me) can update our sites accordingly?

[grue]

Auctions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0), since bid posts contribute nothing. Maybe even include all the "listing" sections such as goods, services, currency exchange.

Auctions is a good choice. But, goods, services & currency exchange have lots of constructive discussions.

Like what? What's pretty much there:

• bumps
• "be sure to use escrow"
• "scammer!!!1!"
• "sale went smoothly"
• questions related to transaction (who goes first, escrow, counter offers, etc.)
• people asking for vouch copies (in digital goods)
• sig spammers asking questions but have no intentions of buying

[Lutpin]

Auctions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0), since bid posts contribute nothing. Maybe even include all the "listing" sections such as goods, services, currency exchange.

Might aswell include Lending in that list.

[BitcoinEXpress]

You should consider making any post with a Sig Campaign not count towards activity.


~BCX~

[achow101]

You should consider making any post with a Sig Campaign not count towards activity.


~BCX~

That isn't actually possible. You can't distinguish between when a user had a sig on or not and whether that sig is a campaign or not without going in and manually doing stuff.

[Quickseller]

Investor-based games - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=207.0

Why? I don't read that section, but I feel like most of the posts there should be fairly substantial and contribute to a person's "record".

Investor based games often have threads which the OP of such threads encourage "players" to both post when they "invest" and when they have their "investments" returned (they are essentially getting people to bump their thread for them).

Auctions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0), since bid posts contribute nothing. Maybe even include all the "listing" sections such as goods, services, currency exchange.

I would agree with the auctions sub not counting, especially posts that are not an OP considering that some auctions are sig spam heaven in that the minimum bid increment is sometimes ridiculously small like 1 satoshi.

I am not so sure about the other marketplace sections though, as even though the above types are posts are generally useless and made by sig spammers, there is somewhat of an incentive for people to warn others about shady dealings, and when things don't (or do) go smoothly if such posts "count" towards post/activity count.

I suspect the goal behind this is to reduce signature spam throughout the forum, and if this is a true statement then I would suggest that posts throughout the forum count towards a user's post count, but certain sections do not count as posting towards posting in an "activity period". The reason for this is that if a particular section did not count towards a user's post count, but a signature campaign wanted to encourage participants to post in such section then the campaign manager can manually count posts in that thread from a user's post history -- the opposite is true today in that all posts count towards post history, but for example campaigns want to discourage people from making low quality posts in "off topic" so they manually exclude posts made in off topic.

I would suggest finding some boards that should not count towards activity, as I would theorize that the worse of signature spammers both farm accounts (eg collecting potential activity by collecting activity posts by making a single post every two weeks), and spam the forum with paid signatures.

Another potential solution would be to make it so you need more then a single post made in a two week period in order to collect the (potential) activity points. It could either be setup so that you need to make at least 4 (or some other number equal to or less then 14) posts in order to collect the 14 activity posts, or so that you both need to make at least 2 (or some other number equal to or less then 14) posts and be online at least 2 hours (or some other amount of time) during that activity period in order to collect the activity points. Yes time online can easily be faked, however it is at least a small hurdle for people who are spamming the forum in order to collect potential activity points.

[155UE]

why not we just report accounts and ban those obviously posting just to gain potential activity? that could be more effective in the long run

[rezilient]

You should consider making any post with a Sig Campaign not count towards activity.


~BCX~

I would agree on this.