THE PACK Message Boards

Um... I have no clue where this should be, I didn't see any forum feedback or whatever, sorry.

Anyways, I notice that the status (or custom rank) after a certain number it turns from Just bitten, dealing with the change, etc. all the way to Legendary, but then after that it never changes. I see people with posts WAY up there, and then some that are just above it. And for all of them it says Legendary. Tis borin'.

On most forums I've been on, the custom rank changes with each 100 posts, and then once it gets past 1000 it changes every 1000 posts or something, and I figured it would be kind of neat to see other titles for those who have different post counts (since you can't customize the titles here anyways). Make you feel special.

Just a thought, sorry again if its in the wrong section, just thought I'd make a suggestion. ^_^

The post count itself may not reflect the user's actual activity or forum contribution. By not having ranks that go beyond 50 posts, it discourages people form making "junk posts" that do not contribute to discussions within the forums. Someone might use two word posts, or treat the forum like an instant messenger in order to increase their rank. Sorry to say, ranks are meaningless unless they serve a purpose. It's been this way in the Pack since it started.

Very true. Well, can we make them customizable? I know that's a possibility in phpBB.

Last I checked, custom titles are currently enabled on The Pack.

I'll change mine to check.

Edit: Ahh, the "custom title" appears under our avatar, rather than replacing the Legendary.

I think a lot of members originally abandoned this idea for two reasons:

1. We do not want to encourage arbitary posting simply for the purpose of "inflating" their post count and, subsequently, their title.

2. Because the title of 'legendary' is easy to achieve, no emphasis on titles are applied by any of the members here. We simply don't want members to feel as though they're 'ranked' above or below the rest as according to their post count.

But the moons still look pretty cool!

And this is important. . . Why?

Outward pretty much nailed it: the more emphasis is placed on post counts and titles, the more spam the pack will endure.

When it comes to posts, I like to think the pack prefers quality over quantity.

Well my purpose in asking wasn't to show off post count and down quality, it was more to make this site a little more interesting and fun.

I recently had an issue on my forums over this (we have many more ranks, with a much higher top-end). Since I'm not really active there at the moment, I haven't kept an eye, but back in May we had our first honest-to-god troll (not trying too hard to insult folks, but just wanting a really high post count).

This user made over 1,100 posts in a span of less than two weeks. I was busy doing things outside of my forums, and didn't care much for it, but a lot of other members (five or six that I know of) stopped going, because they were afraid of feeding the troll.

What I'll probably have to do is either drop the top end of the ranks (by a LOT), or change the rules to discourage trolling (risking the loss of all of someone's posts - good and bad). But before I do anything like that, I'm going to consult with other folks who are helping me run the boards.

On most sites, they let trolls roam free, which is why those sites should fail. Surprisingly, ZU has stayed afloat with those trolls.

I've seen moderators who watch my posts very closely. If I approach 1000 posts or so, they watch to see if any of my latest posts leading up to it were worthless just to get to 1000. If they have any doubts, they deleted my post. It was annoying simply because they didn't trust me. Even if the post was on topic. I hated that.

Anyways, looks like you guys like it the way it is. I wasn't trying to change the quality of posts, but just be more creative seeing as how its a unique forum and you could have a lot of fun with it. Sorry if I made anyone realize anything else, that wasn't my intention. >_>

Hmm, could it be based on time since you joined, rather than post count? Or as sugarpoultry suggest, enable the custom title function to replace the Legendary or whatever.

That's something I've been thinking of myself... if we code something for phpBB3 that works (as a mod) to do something of the sort, and The Pack wants to do it too, I don't see a problem with it.

Wingman wrote:Hmm, could it be based on time since you joined, rather than post count?

Once again, this violates our need to keep the 'ranking' to a minimum; we don't want members to percieve certain members as having seniority over others.

Or as sugarpoultry suggest, enable the custom title function to replace the Legendary or whatever.

Before the most recent forum upgrade, we had that feature intact; now only existing as a vestigial "Custom Title" option you can place below your avatar. My guess is, because we had the feature before, that the only only reason why we don't have it now is because the admins can't figure out how...

sugarpoultry: Don't feel afraid to provide any more suggestions! You just happened to be in the unfortunate position of suggesting something we've already managed to beat to death.

As I recall, there used to be a number of "levels" based on Post count. Then there were fewer levels, still based on post count.

Then Tony decided it was a waste of time, and we went from n00b to Legendary in 50 posts.

That was...obviously...a while ago.

RedEye, are you showing your age again? *poke*

Bah. It went from 1-50 when I joined, I know. And that was quite a while back.

I like to think here that once you've gotten fifty posts you're basically accepted as a member... after which post count becomes steadily less important. Perhaps post count shouldn't even be visible outside the profile.

Kzinistzerg wrote:Perhaps post count shouldn't even be visible outside the profile.

That sounds like a good idea.

I think that might be a good idea too. Just because even though everyone's been really cool here, it can be a little intimidating to say "I disagree with you" when you-and everyone else- can see that that person has over 1000 posts, and you've got 6 or 7.