My reply for Skeptic Overview 10, why posts are declining.

I am sorry for posting this in here but I felt it was necessary to find a way for everybody to view this post. I have also posted this as a reply under Skeptic Overview 10. Skeptic Overlords PODcast.

"The Reason why the Posts are declining are because of possible lack of Points"

Sorry this will be such a short post compared to all of you awesome other long posters. I can probably tell you the main ingredient as to why ATS posters arent posting as much... Points. I know it sounds rediculous, but you wont see me posting soo many topics just anywhere. I am not talking about everybody, but I feel like alot of members here at ATS, perhaps most, do not post topics anymore because of the lack of points they are getting for their posts. I am not one for points because I dont go around posting things that should be posted in "Below Top Secret"

I have taken a look around at the new posts and have seen alot of unworthy posts. I am not being sarcastic or mean, but alot of the posts at ATS, should be in BTS. You wont see me posting alot. I try to do quality over quantity. With an exception of the Writers, the Scholars, and the Fighters and a few Members. Alot of members make GREAT posts around here at ATS, dont get me wrong. But you also have to think, alot of the posts ive seen I do not believe should be in ATS. Once again I am not trying to be mean or sarcastic, but I am only expressing my feelings about how I feel about why members arent posting as much. Perhaps they do not feel that they are recieveing more points for their posts? Maybe it is creating a domino effect that basically tells them "Why am I not getting enough points for my post" type question. "I just wont post on here because all I get is 1 lousy point for one post." I feel that this could possibly be the thought that goes through members minds?

Once more, im not being mean or sarcasic but expressing my feelings about why the post count should be low. This whole time I wrote this I have been listening to Skeptic Overlords PODcast.

Opinions?

Dont get me wrong I have made some pretty unworthy posts myself, but not just to go after points.

[edit on 10/23/0505 by brodband]

A user can post with a total lack of points. What is there to lose? So what if you cant afford stuff. Do you need it? About the only content you will be missing out on is RATS.

The only time I ever use posts is to buy the RATS entrance, and even that I skip sometimes.

If there is anything contributing to a lack of posting its that it can be confusing at times. Where do I post this? ATS, BTS, PTS ?

I know its frustrating to put something on PTS and it really gets no views.

But thats life. So what if you are not getting lots of points?

No, no, perhaps you misunderstood my point. It is not me that is complaining for lack of points, all I am doing is expressing why I feel like members are not posting, because of lack of points they recieve for their posts. For example, if a member posts a very high quality post, they would probably expect high quality points. I do not really bother about points system because I feel like some posts here are just to recieve points with ATS. I believe in Quality over Quantity.

[edit on 10/23/0505 by brodband]

Same thing, you can post good or bad, but whats the big deal if you get points or not when all they do is sit around?

Sure a WATS vote is nice, but the points you get with it are not that useful, are they?

I have not been posting very long at ATS, and I love this place. I've been spending too much time here posting because I have so much pent-up stuff to say, and this place is a great outlet. I've not been caring about the points. But I know I do post a lot, and my points just stay in one spot. I lose a lot of points because of breaking the rules on the HTML quotes, and I'm getting the hang of it better. Also lately now I'm in trouble for posting cut and pastes that are too long. But for all the time and effort I spend here I'm not getting any points it seems, just losing them. I got hit with 50 points and accused of plagiarism by one moderator and it was just because I didn't box my quoted material. They zoom in and fine you before you even get a chance to finish your post. Only one time did anybody just warn me and let me go and fix something. All the rest of the times I just got socked. I've probably had at least 200 points taken, if not more.

Originally posted by Dulcimer
Same thing, you can post good or bad, but whats the big deal if you get points or not when all they do is sit around?

Sure a WATS vote is nice, but the points you get with it are not that useful, are they?

Right, I understand that. But some members' posting has been degrading probabaly becasue of lack of points. Either a member wants to access RATS, or recieve the WATSA, or hurry up and get into the chatroom, or just get enough points to try and be "above and beyond" the members with high points. I also know that experience grows with reputition, but I have seen a few members who have been here for a while, still post things that should probably be posted into BTS or PTS. It seems like a points factor. Things that arent really secret at all are being posted into the main subject "Above Top Secret".. I know this is a message board, but the things that are being posted in ATS that should be in BTS, feels like sometimes, that it is only being used to recieve points.

Originally posted by resistance
They zoom in and fine you before you even get a chance to finish your post.

Generally when you click 'submit', you do so when your post is finished.

Yea Resistance, I see that warn you have. That must have cost a point or two. I've had them myself. OK, i've only had one, but I deserved it. anyway,

If all someone cares about is points they should move on to the high point areas of the board. Start podcasting and you'll have more points then you know what to do with in no time at all. I can't even remember the last time I spent points, but I did notice that tonight I finally broke the 100,000 mark. Big whoop, I don't even use the darn things.

Excellant posts get applause, you can win points in the short story contests, Several areas of the board give good rewards for contributions. If you are interested in points you should focus on the areas where points are high. Otherwise you should be happy with what your getting.

ATS is not about the points. It never has been and I hope it never will be.

Just my thoughts on it. Love and light,

Wupy

Declining posts on an older/established forum such as this, with a growing number of members daily is cause for concern.

I am not an active contributor to the site, but I am a daily reader.

In a nutshell: I enjoy a debate. However, I do not enjoy having to argue, back, provide proof of everything I state or "feel" on a forum. I understand that part of the way to Deny Ignorance is with facts, links, pictures, etc. But what about ideas and feelings? Must they proven?

2nd, the treatment of a new member. I think we can all agree that ATS is different from any other site you've visited. It takes a while for a new member to fit in. They make mistakes. They break the rules without knowing it. They ask questions that seem so obvious to all of you. Most of the response (none of it from mod's mind you) is neither helpful nor makes the new member want to stay, let alone post again.

This is my opinion. You can take it or leave it. I will not be debating or backing up my comments. You can check your stats on new members posting no more than once, to see if I'm wrong.

I'd be curious to see the stats of your members posting more than 60 times this year in comparison to your total membership. The reason I state this is because maybe the decline in posting was never noticed until now because you had new posting members replacing members who stopped posting.

Originally posted by parrhesia

Originally posted by resistance
They zoom in and fine you before you even get a chance to finish your post.

Generally when you click 'submit', you do so when your post is finished.

Nope. I submit so I don't lose what I've written, then go get a link or a name or something I need and come back. And I almost always have to fix stuff once I click the enter button. It's usually a mess the first time I submit. There's typos, spelling errors, quotes are wrong, the red html didn't work so you have to change everything to bold, whatever.

I am happy with what I have,,im just replying to Skeptics thing and expressing why I think the posts are declining. I could care less about points...I dont use them either, but it causes some members to just go post things that should be posted elsewhere, and I dont like to see that.

Originally posted by sosuemetoo
In a nutshell: I enjoy a debate. However, I do not enjoy having to argue, back, provide proof of everything I state or "feel" on a forum. I understand that part of the way to Deny Ignorance is with facts, links, pictures, etc. But what about ideas and feelings? Must they proven?

The easiest way around that is to end your post or begin it with, This is just my opinion.

When I have ended a post with, "This is just my opinion" I have never once been asked to back it up with links or even facts. You are entitled to have an opinion here, everyone is. You need not back it up with anything other then your will to argue it. Other people have differant opinions and they have the right to them as well. You don't even have to argue it, just state it and if someone dis-agrees, so what?

Just my opinion,

Wupy

I love to post, and I love to surf the web, and down the road I'd probably be doing good for ATS. As it is I'm posting a whole lot -- too much actually and not getting my work done at home. I've put my heart and soul into the Creationism thread, been the only one arguing for creationism against everyone else. I've just been fined 500 points for my "activity" on that board. Nobody will tell me what that activity is that I'm being fined for, but while on the board I've been jeeed at, and accused of deliberately publishing false information on the board against ATS policy.

How would anybody take this but as an invitation to get off ATS?

One thing I think I'm really good at is starting a lively discussion, and if ATS kicks me off they are going to be losing somebody that will bring on a lot of activity to this board. I don't know who owns this board, but I think they would want someone like me. If moderators are driving people away whose opinions they disagree with, that is undermining to the owner of the site and not good.

Originally posted by resistance
Nope. I submit so I don't lose what I've written, then go get a link or a name or something I need and come back. And I almost always have to fix stuff once I click the enter button. It's usually a mess the first time I submit. There's typos, spelling errors, quotes are wrong, the red html didn't work so you have to change everything to bold, whatever.

Maybe you should try using Notepad, or MS Word, or any other word processor. It'll check spelling, you can save as you go, andyou can also copy and paste and press Preview Post before submitting.

Getting The Point

ATS is the only board I contribute to that has a point system. I still post to other boards that don't have point systems, and the only reason I post to any of them is to exchange opinions and information with other people on the Internet.

ATS/BTS/PTS points can be a fun thing to play around with, but if the staff were to abolish the point system today, I wouldn't be posting any differently tomorrow.

There has been a problem in the past with people posting garbage and flamebait to rack up easy points for some reason or another. It was increasing the traffic stats and post count, but the quality of the board was being hurt by that behavior.

I have seen other once-fine boards driven to ruin by that sort of thing (racking up post counts and flaming “newbies”), so I am very relieved to see ATS moving away from “points-for-posts” to “points-for-good-posts”.

That transition is still in progress, but the plans SkepticOverlord has hinted at are very encouraging to me.

Meanwhile, points or no points, as far as I'm concerned, ATS is all about quality.

I can't read all the posts that are made to ATS each day. So instead, I would rather that the posts I do have time to read are worth reading.

Yes, not every new post is a Hall of Fame candidate, but the overall trend is encouraging.

And stats-wise, I think rumors of the death of ATS are greatly exaggerated.

I feel the Decline in posts here at ATS are because of BTS, and PTS and any other spin-off ATS desides to go with.

People want to discuss Conspiricy Topics....on the "Best" site on the net. When someone posts a thread and gets some good posts to it, only to see it move and Die on PTS and BTS you can see where there frustration comes from.

PTS and BTS Are not the best Sites on the net....ATS is.

Let all conspiricy topics be discussed on ATS then I feel you will see steady increase in posts and members.

peace

or you can continue doing what your doing.

Has anyone looked to see if there is some corralation between the increase in podcasts and the decrease in written postings?

Originally posted by Ambient Sound
Has anyone looked to see if there is some corralation between the increase in podcasts and the decrease in written postings?

While podcasts may take away from some of the written form, its not going to take over. Many have never even listened to an ATS podcast (not because I hate them, but I have dialup)

Written form will always have its mark here.

Originally posted by Ambient Sound
Has anyone looked to see if there is some corralation between the increase in podcasts and the decrease in written postings?

I think this is true to an extent as with any increase in quality, quanitity suffers. It's obvious some of our most proflic posters made the leap to podcasting first, and spent a good deal of time editing, rerecording, etc. those first 500 podcasts when "normally" they might have made 5 times as many posts. Now it's easier for them though. They can do both.

Plus as others observed, many of our longer, well researched posts tend to intimidate newer posters from jumping right in. But these aren't necessarily bad things. Admin turns down far more applications than they approve. And just by banning the worst of the worst trolls we have, post "count" will go down immediately. And the people rejoice.

It's not entirely a bad thing at all.

Originally posted by brodband
For example, if a member posts a very high quality post, they would probably expect high quality points.

Well, isn't that for the readers to decide?

I'm sure that many who post utter garbage feel that their post is of high quality and should get them lots of points, but the reality is somewhat different. And isn't this just what the staff applause is for? A reward for posting good quality material, even if it doesn't attract much of attention otherwise.

For example, if someone starts a thread by asking a question, and someone else answers with a long, well-researched post answering the question and perhaps making more and the discussion/debate starts off from there, all the "reply points" go to the thread starter, instead to the one who got the discussion going. Unfair? Yes, probably. Staff applause is there to even up the score, so to speak.

And speaking for myself, I was quite surprised that I got applauded, because in my opinion the post I got it from wasn't all that special, but I suppose that I managed to convey information in good, concise manner instead of my usual style

...and since I didn't know that the points have different qualities (apart from the obvious ATS/BTS/PTS split), perhaps your intention was to say that one expects high quantity points from high quality posts? Feel free to correct me if I've missed something obvious.

I do not really bother about points system because I feel like some posts here are just to recieve points with ATS. I believe in Quality over Quantity.

Same goes for me too. While I would like to have enough points to buy RATS membership, I'm not in a hurry to get there. And since I don't have much time to do any original research, I must resort to posting now and then when I feel that my knowledge or opinion is warranted and can perhaps make a difference.

The board I used to run had many posters who were extremely active in 'chat' threads and racked up posts something fierce. I didn't much care for it personally, but since those were topical to the board (whose topic was mainly off-topic) and users seemed to like them so I let them be. If I had had a points/rewards/whatever system in place which would've been dependant on postcount, things would've been much different.
But even when almost everything WAS on topic, people still were afraid to post. Some felt that since there was so much of bovine excrement floating around they did not want to lower their standards to that level and thus kept from posting 'quality' stuff (but were ready to complain about the lack of quality), and others felt that it's their right to post whatever to wherever no matter how the different areas were set up, thus creating work for the moderators and complaints to me from posters and readers.

Some also had issues with my management style, and were complaining that the tone of the board was not in their liking. I tried to explain to them, that it's the community who sets the tone, not the management. The management can only set guidelines and enforce them, the users are the ones who make the content. Even in my board there was (and still is) quite a bit of quality discussion going on, one just needed to look for it. For those who made the effort to do so, the experience was very different than for those who only looked superficially and made their judgement from that viewpoint.

If the guidelines and enforcement is not acceptable to the general user population, the users will not come (or will leave, depending on the time when guidelines and/or enforcement policy is set up or changed) and if there are no users, there is no discussion and thus no need for a board.

In ATS I feel that the guidelines are reasonable, enforcement could be better (but having frontline experience with it can understand why that seems always be the case, even though everyone and their cat is doing their very best and then some), but the main problem why postcount is lower than expected is (in my opinion of course) that there was a big spike in board activity due to the Katrina / Rita controversy and now the board is sort of having a hangover from all that. Because of the huge amount of interest created in so small area, other areas of the board atrophied and are now slowly returning to normal. And due to the large diversity of topics in ATS and the mere existence of PTS and BTS, the active userbase is spread pretty thin. And perhaps some of the new users who came in and registered during or right after the Katrina issues spiked are not really interested in the core ideals of ATS, and thus refrain from posting.

And yes, some of the Mods/Supermods are downright scary when they descend from above into a first post or incipient thread and lay down the law of the land. That doesn't bother me, but it might bother someone who is 'young and innocent in the ways of the discussion forums' and only starting their career. Everyone of us was young and inexperienced once. Some of us still are! Perhaps instead of laying down the law in public a mod could send an u2u instead, pointing out the shortcomings?

And now I'm going to continue my rambling elsewhere...