Change how "activity" is calculated

[moderate]

Hey meta-people. So I was wondering about this "activity" you show for each user based on the amount of posts combined with the post frequency over weeks since registration, and other details I'm possibly forgetting right now.

My issue with this metric is that it is completely irrelevant, I see users posting replies like "lol, right", "me too", "hi", "you're welcome", and so on. Which are fully useless, add nothing to the topic, yet increases the activity. I can imaginate a couple of reasons of why people do that, like being close to 10 years old, raising activity in accounts for selling them so other people can promote their services with sock puppets, or getting a higher rank. I have no hope for the first situation, this requires a nation-wide re-education which this forum cannot handle.

The other situations can be partially handled by simple rules, a more advanced system would apply some form of NLP. Would it be possible to not count towards activity replies with less than 5 words ? Maybe even reduce the activity when that occurs. People reported as trolls and such should never have their activity increased until they stop trolling. You could also take a dict and only count the words in a reply that appear in that dict, if it is below 5, then it cannot count towards activity either.

This bothers me because legitimate "hero members" and others are negatively affected by this kind of people.

[dree12]

lulz

Serious: No method is perfect. In my opinion, making the activity system more complicated just makes it easier to cheat it. The more rules there are, the more ways there are to get around them.

[moderate]

lulz

Serious: No method is perfect. In my opinion, making the activity system more complicated just makes it easier to cheat it. The more rules there are, the more ways there are to get around them.

I'm not claiming this to be a perfect method, neither suggesting there is a perfect one. These simple rules will at least make people read rules about how the activity works, and then put a little more effort into their spamming replies. I do believe this helps the situation, it does not avoid it.

EDIT: lulz roflmao

[dserrano5]

My issue with this metric is that it is completely irrelevant, I see users posting replies like "lol, right", "me too", "hi", "you're welcome", and so on. Which are fully useless, add nothing to the topic, yet increases the activity.

No they don't.

The activity is the minimum of two values, one of them being the post count and the other is time-based. If you post a lot, the minimum will usually be the time-based one.

[moderate]

My issue with this metric is that it is completely irrelevant, I see users posting replies like "lol, right", "me too", "hi", "you're welcome", and so on. Which are fully useless, add nothing to the topic, yet increases the activity.

No they don't.

No what ? They who ?

Anyway, if you post trash during a whole year the activity will still increase.

[dserrano5]

My issue with this metric is that it is completely irrelevant, I see users posting replies like "lol, right", "me too", "hi", "you're welcome", and so on. Which are fully useless, add nothing to the topic, yet increases the activity.

No they don't.

No what ? They who ?

Please read your quoted text, then my answer.

If after doing that it's still unclear, well, you're talking about replies increasing the activity.

[moderate]

My issue with this metric is that it is completely irrelevant, I see users posting replies like "lol, right", "me too", "hi", "you're welcome", and so on. Which are fully useless, add nothing to the topic, yet increases the activity.

No they don't.

No what ? They who ?

Please read your quoted text, then my answer.

If after doing that it's still unclear, well, you're talking about replies increasing the activity.

So your reply doesn't make sense, because obviously any reply contributes to raising the activity. You just need to keep posting garbage each week, which is very easy to do so and makes the activity metric irrelevant.

[dserrano5]

So your reply doesn't make sense, because obviously any reply contributes to raising the activity. You just need to keep posting garbage each week, which is very easy to do so and makes the activity metric irrelevant.

Of course nothing stops people from filling the forum with junk but the activity counter is capped to an increase of 14 every two weeks, thus it doesn't inflate as quickly as a mere post count. You can make 10 junk posts a day totaling 140 posts in two weeks, yet your activity increase is limited.

[moderate]

So your reply doesn't make sense, because obviously any reply contributes to raising the activity. You just need to keep posting garbage each week, which is very easy to do so and makes the activity metric irrelevant.

Of course nothing stops people from filling the forum with junk but the activity counter is capped to an increase of 14 every two weeks, thus it doesn't inflate as quickly as a mere post count. You can make 10 junk posts a day totaling 140 posts in two weeks, yet your activity increase is limited.

Thanks, I know it is limited like that but I didn't remember the exact rate. This point was made in the original post, did you read that ?

What I'm asking for is to apply some simple rules to reduce junk-activity members.

[btcton]

I don't think it would make much of a difference. I believe we should just leave it as it is, it seems good enough that way.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Would it be possible to not count towards activity replies with less than 5 words ?

+1 that is a great idea. thanks.

[DeathAndTaxes]

^ Note this is not a great idea just pointing out that +1 will be replaced with equally trivial but longer statements.

[btcton]

^ Note this is not a great idea just pointing out that +1 will be replaced with equally trivial but longer statements.

I agree with what he said. (Just what people will replace instead of just quoting someone or saying "this," so no, it won't work.

[dserrano5]

^ Note this is not a great idea just pointing out that +1 will be replaced with equally trivial but longer statements.

I agree with what he said. (Just what people will replace instead of just quoting someone or saying "this," so no, it won't work.

A discourse forum I'm a member of has a 20 character minimum size for posts (it may be discourse default, I dunno), so people do the obvious:

Agreed. Twenty characters

[deslok]

Would it be possible to not count towards activity replies with less than 5 words ?

+1 that is a great idea. thanks.

next we're going to not count anything in the off topic section! and then the Alternate cryptocurrencies because neither is bitcoin related!

[rampalija]

i saw that, many users post like one word or just a smiley, and yet their activity increases

[fildza]

The activity number is determined in this way: time = number of two-week periods in which you've posted since your registration activity = min(time * 14, posts)

Activity is updated every 30 minutes.

The new membergroup limits work like this: Group Requirement Brand New 0 posts

Newbie (none) Jr. Member 1 post written over 4 hours ago

Member activity: 15 Full Member activity: 60

Sr. Member activity: 200

Hero Member activity: 400

I'm not 100% sure that the membergroups work correctly. Tell me if you see any bugs.

This should explain how it works. The biggest factor is the two-week periods so spamming won't increase your activity that much.

Yes spamming will not make your activity increase much in a short time because it also based on your time count

[dree12]

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Believe it or not, there are 200 characters in that post. How much is it worth, though? 0.

[greyhawk]

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Believe it or not, there are 200 characters in that post. How much is it worth, though? 0.

Well, if you don't want it, imma gonna sell it on Bitmit.

[dserrano5]

i saw that, many users post like one word or just a smiley, and yet their activity increases

It increases up to the next multiple of 14, then it stays static until 14 days have passed, then the mechanism is repeated.