geckzilla wrote:They're meaningless to me. There are a lot of petty people out there who will use their post count to lord over newcomers. It's completely ridiculous. For that reason I usually hide post counts from visibility entirely. And no, there is no "oh, so and so has 1000 posts, we have to give him a custom title" thing going on. If it happens, it happens. It usually does. Some people would be better off not attracting attention to themselves, though.
Most of the guys on here who have over 1000 posts have been around here for aaaages, and they also know their stuff, most of the post count has probably been amassed by answering questions put to the forum generally by newcomers (like myself) who don't have as good an understanding but-hope-to-someday about space. I wouldn't call it lording over newcomers, but I would say that they are entitled to show of their knowledge. Also as a newcomer I tend to have a bit of respect for people with higher postcounts as it either means they have been around for a longer time than me, or are generally knowledgable about space and can have a say in 99.9% of forums. Some of the threads I go into here I read the first line and think, "what the...." and just go to open space or something. If I have an idea I'll have a go at it.
All im saying is that it took me the best part of a few months to build that post count up. I was proud of it regardless of whether or not you feel its meaningless. After all, this is a community, and the only people who know me as having been a longer part of it are those who have been here and seen me post. A new comer will see me as just another newcomer. I don't like that it happened "by accident" is all.
(Thanks owlice)
Paul.