Post count for bumps.

I notice a lot of accounts in the market section are just using auto bump software to bump their threads as no replies are given to comments. These appear to increase post count. Can post count be limited to something like once per market sale thread. People literally have 2000 posts purely from replying to their own posts with "we are online now" every 8 hours.

Post count is used, whether foolishly or not, as a measure of trustworthiness among people new to the site. And these sales bots are getting absurd amounts of them from being the only person replying to their sales threads...

Or maybe an auto prune function which merges the bumps after they are made ao at the least someone else has to comment in between bumps for it to count as a new post.

 

Frankly I've always had the same thought, not sure what the exact solution would be because I'm not familiar with XenForo but something should be done about it.

Also fuck it's been a long fucking time since I've seen you holy shit.

 

Disagree. Trust can be inferred in any way you want, you can't just blame it on post count.

Some people differ trustworthy to untrustworthy according to Donar Rank, Number of miniranks, Join Date, Fancy Signatures, Age or even Country of origin.

tl;dr- Unnecessary suggestion

 

Sure it can, but statistically noobs to forums see high post count and think BAM, hes been posting for ages obviously and isn't banned so he must be legit... It is human nature. The fact is that runescape is a game tailored to kids, teens and young adults. Generally as kids or teens you find the cheating side of things. And at that age are naive to the world and how fucked up it is. This is also the age where a big post count is likely to make you go WOW this guy must be good.
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Sure these are other ways in which trust can be inferred. However Fancy signatures/miniranks are infinitely less applicable. To a noob forum user both are meaningless. Post count however is something that a larger than necessary amount of meaning is applied to, irrespective of whether it should be or not.

You haven't actually given any reasons as to why this would be an "Unneccesary Suggestion" but rather just highlighted various ways in which people perceive a trusted user... These other ways are far from applicable in this circumstance aside from maybe donor ranks (anyone can buy a donor rank easily) and you have not/can not deny post count is used as a gauge of trust by people... Ask those who have been scammed what possessed them to trust a person, and in my experience as a market mod here many MANY of them thought the person must have been legit because otherwise they wouldn't have wasted the time racking up 2,000 posts.

But who are you to say it is unneccesary? Any idea to attempt to break the cycle of scamming should be a very important suggestion. The death of this site will be due to no one wanting to buy anymore due to scammers becoming more prevalent.

Finally, in most forum software packages auto merge mods and so forth are easy to code/acquire and implement.

 

Rich stated something about a button being possibly implemented, therefore it would no longer receive post count for bumping.
@Sythe are you still trying to put something in for this?

I'm not entirely sure how it will effect auto-bumpers if it will.

 

If you're using post count as a base of trust, then you seriously have some issues.

 

Have ypu read any of the post at all? Yes it is a poor way of assigning trust, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to the thread aside from pretty well spam. At least your post count will rise regardless hey. Just post useless one liners everywhere.

 

It's foolish of people to measure trust from post count so lets take away post count from bumping threads is what I got from reading this post, no support.

 

Also a really lame part of this suggestion would be that it simply isn't fair that a ton of people have already gotten post count this way and new people wouldn't be able to.

Being trusted by post count is a dumb thing, but a ton of people above don't realize that it DOES happen, so limiting post count gain would screw many new people over because people would trust the older members with high post count. Just my 2 cents, I don't really have a support or no support, but I'd lean towards no support because it'd give newer members a better chance.

 

I know everyone views posts differently, I personally look at it to see how active people are, but I don't post for the post count. I post for bumps, I support making it a button and no longer counting towards post count.
Also, I think it would be awesome if the OP of a thread could reply to customers on threads about accounts/different markets where people tend to ask more questions without bumping the thread and then the competition reporting them for spam etc. I could see reports going down quite a bit as now you're not possibly losing your spot.

However, you would still need to make it so if the OP makes the thread it is put to the top and wouldn't need to make a thread and then go and bump it right after.

Support.

 

why then are we not allowing spam forum to add to post count? it is easy as a long term forum user to appreciate how using post count is stupid. but to a new member it is not so easy, in particular one whom also has limited life experience as well. And we need to be nurturing new members to maintain the growth of the forums. It is a simple fix, one i could likely implement in a couple of hours.

And aside from the trust issue... I worked fucking hard making actual decent contributions over YEARS to barely get half the post count that these bots accrue in a few weeks... The only way in which i could see this potentially having a negative impact is that the additional posts would possibly work to boost our SEO rankings as they "feign" additional activity on the forums which the search engines will use to rank us higher. But being useless comments rather than actual new threads i don't even think this applies.

and @PureAddiction and auto merge script would rectify this quite rapidly. Furthermore, when i was here as mod we had the bump button, so essentially I was ripped off as i missed out on the post count as well. So there is no unfairness that hasn't been suffered by others already.

Interestingly... the overwhelming majority of negative feedback comes from those whom have gold selling sites... Interesting that they don't want post count to be changed... When it is them who will be impacted

but oooooh its not a big deal and means nothing... Just don't change it... If it means nothing to you why is it an issue?

 

As someone who litterally has over 3500 posts from bumping threads, I don't support this. Unlike some of us I don't have time to browse the forums & post everywhere to gain trust (yes I feel like posts do contribute to trust for some people). I'd potentially lose customers purely because I actually don't get involved in the community. I try to be as responsive as possible on Skype & work as hard as possible on peoples accounts. But that doesn't show itself on sythe. I wouldn't mind a merge/button though.

^ I completely agree with this statement.

 

This thread just caught my eye from the home page. I'm fairly new to these forums but not to forums in general and I must admit it does make sense to remove adding post count to bumps.

I personally have probably gotten about 30% of my post count from bumping, not that I'm trying to up my post count.. It just happens to be that way.

I support this.

 

I'd just like to make it apparent because I don't think I did when I posted the comment about the bump button. I wouldn't mind at all if there was a bump button. It would remove the amount of pages people have that make them look like their trustworthy because all they do is bump.

The only issue I'd have with that is sometimes I prefer to make a mini thread per bump, rather then just writing "bump", this way I can get across my daily rate changes, new vouches per last bump, new trade screens, rather then it just being "hey bump I'm here". I guess it'll be something I can get over. But as long as we can still post to like say "for customer: this this and that".

Anywho I put the idea of bump button vs post count/sythegold in the bugtracker as a feature request, just to make sure they know and remember.

It is definitely true that post count is used as a sign of trust. Whether you want to admit it or not. I had the same view though when I first was active "if you think post count means trust you're stupid" is literally what I said back then. I didn't get the point of it, but unfortunately it does give that sense. I barely bump my one thread and on occasion bump other threads; I don't use it as a means to get post counts, but there are definitely a HELL OF A LOT of people here that use it to get bumps, i.e. making market threads in various places just to bump.

So I definitely support the removal of it; or having a bump button. Considering people can post bump in the market and receive sythegold, I also don't like that. That's not even contributing to the community. So that's why I put that subject down for why it should be added (bump button) in bug tracker.


EDIT:

Just remembered, I tend to bump various CDT events, so I'm not sure how that will be affected. You know like having updates, or when the event will be finishing etc. Hopefully that isn't effected. ? Community threads or just market?

 

I'm with PA on that even though it gives people a better sense of trust it may as well be left as it is so that newer traders have the opportunity to gain postcount the same way as existing users have. There is already a restriction in place where you can't post within 8 hours of your last post on a given thread anyway.

Let's be honest, the people who farm postcount in order to scam don't do it by bumping threads but instead posting on other people's threads with no intention to go through with what they post.



I'm not sure those kinds of people even aim for high postcount since they just try to sell the same accounts over and over?

 

I don't understand why people comment on suggestions saying they're "unnecessary." 99% of updates AREN'T necessary, they're just ways to improve on the way things already work. Just because something isn't necessary for Sythe to operate doesn't mean it's something that needs to be shot down immediately.

I agree with your suggestion, I've noticed the 50 page threads with posts from only one person too. It's kinda ridiculous.

 

If you are basing ur trust on postcount that's your own problem, learn safe trading practices and don't be retarded and u can prevent being scammed 90% of the time, we do not need to penalize marketers by reducing post count due to other people being ignorant and refusing to trade safely.

Tough love sorry.

No support.

 

i would support this only if the button still brings the post up to the top of the forum section.

i mainly see bumped threads to see how active the seller is. if they are motivated to sell their product, they come online just to bump their threads in hopes of making a deal. when you see the same 3 posts on the top of the market pages, its people who are really looking to do business. activity=post count. this is my only argument against a bump button.

 

how is it penalising the marketers exactly? Apparently, according to all of you "marketers", post count isnt relevant at all. How would you be penalised?

Yet again i see overwhelmingly that only gold sellers have a problem with losing their post count... Yet repeatedly try to tell me that it isn't important.

So tell me, can i get one reason from you, Bus, as to how this would actually be detrimental to you personally? Or how this would actually have a negative impact on the forums on the whole whatsoever?

pros
- cleaner sales threads easier to read
- spam posts no longer add to post count
-
cons
- Gold sellers have to lose their falsely earned post count