Yes, but people have to click on my profile to see it. If no avatar on the main page, then at least one line of text.
post count can be meaningless but that come down to individual opinion. To me, for what it worth, it is factual. There are close to 24,000 bc members and only a handful find post count meaningless. The administrator should consider the vast 'silent' majority who don't object. I find signatures utterly useless. First, your user name identify who u are, we dont need another reminder after every post. Second, u can put your avatar or funny lines in your profile. Third, i have been to many forums before, signatures does one thing, it clutter and eat up forum viewing space.
I use it to put pertinent information so people would IM me what racket I use, what tension, what grip, what... I can add links to my reviews or an inspiring quote. Many people do not look at the profile.
i agree with cooler on the signature. while i am sure a handful of members like Dink will use signature properly, what i have seen in other forums is that most users abuses the ability to put a message or link in their signature. post count is not totally meaningful, i agree, but then the amount of abuse that can be made with the post count is very minimal so leaving it there isn't going to clutter the site. if there are a lot of members who think that post count is also useless a thing to display, then perhaps we can do without that also.
Yeah I can definitely understand that. They can add a lot of clutter if abused, and it's not often you see a forum with signatures done right. How about avatars though (hosted by the user of course)? I just think it's nice to have some other way than your name to personalize your account . As for post count, I think generally this is a very sensible forum and I haven't really seen people looking simply to boost their post count as I have on so many others... I only ever use it as a veeery rough gauge on how long a certain user has been around (though I guess I could use join date for that heh) or how active they are on the forums (again very rough). I would of course never judge a person by their post count however (we all started at 0 ). So I don't really see any reason to remove it, but I wouldn't be too fussed if it was.
Post Count Oh, but post counts do matter - ask any new user on here and any other forums on the planet. They come in and automatically accord the title of the 'veteran', 'wise' and 'knowledgeable' to the ones with the most posts for the reason that "this guy must've been involved in many important discussions in this place, so he must know a lot". You just can't fault the problem of perception - somebody from Yonex are almost always viewed as knowledgeable about racquets just because he has a Yonex namecard, nametag and is a Japanese. The same goes with PhDs, people trust them better than the average Joe Public because of the title - it implies that these people had been doing deeper study and are experts in the group. (Note the keyword 'implies') You want members to refer to the right people, you must give them an indication of who to refer to. At the moment the job fell to those with the highest post counts, however inaccurate that is. Removing post counts can complicate matters. "Who is this and what does he know?". One way I can think of to deal with this is to use 'custom titles'. Does vBulletin support that? Valuable members in the aspect of knowledge in badminton could be accorded a special tag under their nicknames to tell that 'this guy knows his stuff AND is trustworthy'. Dinkalot created and tested a heck lot of grips, hence from experience he can be given a nickname 'BC Grip Tester'. The auld fellas such as Bbn and Loh have far reaching knowledge in terms of history, hence they could be called 'BC Historians'. Cooler tested so many racquets, maybe 'BC Racquet Tester/Breaker'. Somebody undergoing training with BAM could be named 'BAM Trainee', hence possible reference point for training info. The forum software should be capable of making it only assignable by moderators whom should know who to give it to. Now, the possible problem of perception ie. 'boot shining' or 'mod's pet'. This will depend on the mod's own conduct then - I do suppose it is still all right since I can vouch that Kwun, Cheung, Mag and Jamesd20 had been pretty trustworthy and impartial enough that I doubt they will give out titles just for the sake of appealing to an individual or group. Really, are you scared of alienating 20 users who can't look beyond the superficial meaning of custom titles? The assignment of special titles to a member can begin with the observation of the level of participation of the user, how long they have been a member, how knowledgeable they are, how well their conduct are, how well respected they are. Have a written law that can be read by all members that custom titles are by no means a necessary indicator of a member's status but as a guide to show that this guy had been active here, done a lot of research/added to his own level of knowledge, is a good debater of issues (however controversial) and is respectful, AND is from the sole judgement of the mods alone. Final, no discussions. If they do suddenly get drunk with ego and lack of respect after being accorded one, just take it off. It's no different from dealing with a senior member-turned-outlaw. This is not an attempt in teaching members who to listen to, who to respect, who to look to ('To err is human') - this is a way to 'validate' that what these guys say may not be the most accurate, but can be trusted. Avatar Not very important unless you're looking to allow some kind of identity to the members. One way to deal with this to allow smaller avatars, maybe 80 x 80, not the large crazy animated ones that causes nothing but take attention away from the core of the matter - posts. It is done at 75 x 75 at RAWK, a forum around the same size as BC but with much greater amount of activity and interaction between members - avatars, once loaded into browser cache, doesn't cause any noticeable dent in the response time. In fact, it runs quicker than BC with all the (text) signatures and avatars enabled! Signature Dinkalot has a pretty valid point hence a good compromise is to allow for text signatures no more than 2 lines? Text will load many times faster than images which I think is what a lot on here are asking for. === Kwun, if you find all that overwhelming, consider asking for more help; we have people on here who are well versed with HTML, experience with web programming and free time. Doing it alone is certainly going to make it look like a gargantuan task.
i kinda like it the way it is. usually i can see whose opinion i can take into consideration based on their previous posts. and i know who just likes to argue for the sake of arguing and would never consider other people's opinions. so on my side, all is well.
But I have 1149 more posts than you do and I have been here almost 3 years longer, surely I am the wiser between us?
it is human nature to find short cut or quick ways to judge something and post count can be quick guide although it isn't perfect but at least, it let the viewer draw 'his own conclusion'. I prefer not to be labelled or stereotyped into a certain type of poster. On your last part, our administrator and mods have continuously making this forum cleaner and efficient. Adding avatars and signatures defeat all those efforts. I'm sure the large 'silent' majority prefer a high S/N forum.
Yeah this is what I mean, just a nice tidy little avatar around the size you mentioned would be perfect. And the identity thing, that's exactly what I'm getting at. On other forums I can see a little picture in the corner of my eye and instantly link it to a forum member without even reading the name. I'm not quite sure why but I like to have something visual to link to each person. It makes them seem like more than just another name... if you know what I mean... err not that I do just think of the people here as names . But I'm sure you know what I mean...
in theory it's good but not practical. There are high chances of same avatar chosen by 2 or more users. Also, i think some poster names are more descriptive. For ex. where can i find avatar for : dogflu, tofuboy, sweaty_bastard,
All right then, think of it as an 'honour system'. Indeed. Do you trust the viewers to make a good conclusion by using post count as an indicator? Similarly, the forum has over 40,000 threads and almost 600,000 posts. You look credible enough - you own some 12,000 of those posts. A believer in the philosophy of 'less is more', cooler? Same here but I don't agree that adding avatars and signatures will create a less 'clean' forum - they serve their purpose as an identifier, not the content itself. Maybe Gollum could do some editing to the CSS to see if it can be made to fit a layout with liquid width, adding to longer content space on the right to offset the effect of avatars to the far left.
Well, do it manually for a while so we can see what the benefit is supposed to be. It shouldn't be too much effort to do it manually, stick the sig in a notepad file and leave that open whilst on BC and just copy and paste into every post.
However, the job title or PhD are indications with some proven (might not be perfect) test cases. Therefore, the indication should be much more accurate than the post count from a public forum, which no ones knows who's behind another screen. I've seen ppl repeatly using meaningless posts to boost up the count, or simply because s/he is too bored. Do you consider ppl have 500 posts of "hahahhahaha....", "mE VeRy GOOD aT bADdy..." as a trust worthy source of information? I am sure you can't use the above to obtain a job or a phD, right?
i think siggy is a good idea though... for eg. my signature would be : K!LL3R $M@SH Dink would probably be : Save the forest ( panda ) and prevent global warming because it will melt northpole and south pole ( polar bear ) Kwun would probably be : Look at my baby!
and that's EXACTLY why i think signature is pointless. what has any of the above gotta do with badminton discussion other than distracts us away from it?
The thing about posts in some forums r often mistaken as the seniority of the members.Those who posted less than 100 r considered newbies by those who posted more.That's why ppl race for posting more n more,so that they wont be consideren as a newbie in the forum.Ppl r also tend to listen or looking forward for someone who has posted "more",as they think that man knows more. But this doesnt applicable all the time,since i have seen alot of new members..their posts r considered quite matured.The different is just about the time they joined..some knew this forum from a long time ago,and some just knew it currently..
