I agree with FRuiTY. Daniel is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, someone could still post 500 pieces of crappy advice in the trading forum and get "elite" status. Second, if the system is changed, people will start posting more BS in the trading forum to pump their post count. Daniel, why are you so obsessed with this? Is anyone actually dumb enough to believe that a higher post count makes someone more knowledgeable? Keep things the way they are! Snake
Excellent post Snake.... I agree with what you say and would add that the ONLY other alternative to the status quo is to introduce a simple "1000+ poster" label after 1000 posts... but I am inclined, like you, to feel that the status quo is the preferred route...
snake, someone COULD post more crap in the other forums (not anywhere near the extent that he could in chitchat), but those posts get DELETED. and whether or not the trading advice is crappy or not, it would be TRADING advice, and therefore RELEVANT. well, you don't even have 100 posts. so i guess it's not even worth talking to you... i'm not saying that number of posts is the be all end all. but it is misleading. and if it only requires the most minimal effort to correct such a problem, then why not do it?
I cannot support Daniel_m on not counting ALL posts made by members... the whole point about a post count per member is that it represents general participation on Elitetrader, irrespective of where the posts have been made... you cannot say that participation in one thread or on one forum is more or less valuable than elsewhere...
but of course we can. who in their right mind wouldn't agree that a post consisting of "" is worth far less than one of Traden4alpha's episodic attacks on his journal? we'd call the former a pretty worthless post right? ie "less valuable" (regardless of which forum it was posted in) now, since this site is elite TRADER, the forums are designed to discuss matters relevant to TRADING therefore, by definition, any forum whose explicit raison d'etre is mindless "chit chat" should be excluded from counting towards elite TRADER participation on the grounds that such participation has not added value.
What you are suggesting is that someone should go through each of the 195,000 posts on Elitetrader and decide whether or not a post has sufficient quality to warrant being counted... for, surely, there will be posts on all forums and in all threads that 'lack quality'... this is a highly unworkable suggestion... I support the maintenance of how things are currently done i.e. count ALL posts, since the number of posts is a measure of general participation in the Elitetrader community...
candle, candle. i never presented this as the PERFECT SOLUTION to all of ET's problems. ( i recall specifically stating that) the point is, it is an IMPROVEMENT. sure, we will never weed out ALL the irrelevant posts. but by weeding out the counting of posts made in a forum that was speficially designed to house irrelevant topics it would be a STEP FORWARD.
The whole point about number of posts is that it is a general gauge of participation on Elitetrader... If you are proposing the removal of post count for posts made in Chit Chat forum, this is only fair and workable if ALL posts in ALL forums and ALL threads that are deemed by Baron to be low quality should be removed from the post count (an unworkable suggestion)... moreover, there are many higher quality posts in Chit Chat than in other threads in other forums... Remember, post count is about general participation in Elitetrader... things are just fine as they are...