So why do reactions "count" in Off Topic, but not comments?

[r2724r16]

Why did I decide to make this post? I noticed something arbitrary about one of the subforums of this website. When I post something in the Off Topic subforum, it doesn't add to my total post count, whereas reactions in the Off Topic subforum do add to your total reactions count.

 

The Problem: What's stopping a few people from getting together, spamming in the Off Topic subforum, and giving each other an endless number of reactions (and this does happen as far as I can tell). 

 

My Question: Why is this the case? It just seems stupid.

 

My Proposal: It should either be that both posts and reactions in Off Topic add to your total OR neither posts nor reactions in Off Topic add to your total.

 

But again, this is just my opinion. Thanks!

 

@colonel_mortis @Whiskers thoughts?

[minibois]

Same can be argued with status updates.

The reactions on this forum are quite meaningless, as someone who, as you said, participates in many Off topic threads (or status updates for that matter) will artificially inflate their post to reaction ratio.

This is why they decided to make a system where you have different reaction types (informative, funny, like and agree), because in the past (2015 and before I believe) you only had like. Now I guess you could look and judge a person's different reaction types gotten.

[r2724r16]

5 minutes ago, Minibois said:

The reactions on this forum are quite meaningless, as someone who, as you said, participates in many Off topic threads (or status updates for that matter) will artificially inflate their post to reaction ratio.

I agree, this is why I made this thread. We're sort of defeating the whole point of reactions if they're not representative of people's knowledge (or whatever you wanna call it).

5 minutes ago, Minibois said:

 This is why they decided to make a system where you have different reaction types (informative, funny, like and agree), because in the past (2015 and before I believe) you only had like. Now I guess you could look and judge a person's different reaction types gotten.

Never knew that, I'm pretty new to this forum. But despite the different reaction types, it still inflates their post to reaction ratio, which is unacceptable IMO.

[minibois]

5 minutes ago, Geography said:

I agree, this is why I made this thread. We're sort of defeating the whole point of reactions if they're not representative of people's knowledge (or whatever you wanna call it).

Never knew that, I'm pretty new to this forum. But despite the different reaction types, it still inflates their post to reaction ratio, which is unacceptable IMO.

You can still click on the person's reputation points to see what the distribution is between the points to get a grasp of their standing in the community. Although this is kind of tainted; since 'likes' you receive now add onto the likes you had from before the reputation update. This essentially means, people that have been active in 2015 and before will have an inflated 'Like' amount still. 

In the past, they 'locked down' like; as in your profile had a place "Likes (Old): whatever amount", and you couldn't get any more of them; but that has since changed.

 

Aaaanyways, what it comes down to:

as the reputation currently stands it is kinda of broken because of what you mentioned, the status update reaction stuff, the old and new likes adding up and people not understanding the system occasionally (an OP of a thread giving someone an 'agree', when it clearly deserves an 'informative' for example).

 

Also, just to add: there was a bug a long time ago, where the post count of this forum screwed up and I think everyone's past off topic posts did count towards the post count; meaning you saw some people with previously a lot less posts suddenly have like a couple thousand posts extra  

[r2724r16]

6 minutes ago, Minibois said:

This essentially means, people that have been active in 2015 and before will have an inflated 'Like' amount still. 

That's fine I guess, but IMO we shouldn't continue making the same mistake.

7 minutes ago, Minibois said:

as the reputation currently stands it is kinda of broken because of what you mentioned, the status update reaction stuff, the old and new likes adding up and people not understanding the system occasionally (an OP of a thread giving someone an 'agree', when it clearly deserves an 'informative' for example).

Agreed. The admins should honestly "fix" this whole system (as I proposed above).

[LogicalDrm]

Imo whole counting of them could be as well turned off. They are good for determining which posts are informative, liked or what others agree on, which is why they are there to begin with. Having counter for them is added bonus. Or some ranking up that comes with it.

[r2724r16]

4 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Imo whole counting of them could be as well turned off  .....  Having counter for them is added bonus. Or some ranking up that comes with it.

Agreed. The problem is people can easily inflate their post to reaction ratio, which shouldn't happen on such a reputable forum.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 hour ago, Geography said:

Agreed. The problem is people can easily inflate their post to reaction ratio, which shouldn't happen on such a reputable forum.

That's not my biggest concern.

 

It's up to interpretation and all that, but reactions can also end up being misplaced or misguided. Sometimes I see topics where someone less informed is getting all the reactions and someone who actually knows what they're talking about gets nothing.

[r2724r16]

1 minute ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

It's up to interpretation and all that, but reactions can also end up being misplaced or misguided. Sometimes I see topics where someone less informed is getting all the reactions and someone who actually knows what they're talking about gets nothing.

Happens to me a lot, I know how it feels lol. I've tagged Admins to this thread, we'll see what they think about all of this.

[Sousuke]

If I remember correctly when I was running my own IPS Forum the software has the ability to stop posts from adding to the post count in certain sections however the "Reputation" feature has not got the same option. 

 

So it's simply a software limitation as LTT may own/operate and modify the IPS Forum software they do not create the core software themselves. 

[LogicalDrm]

14 hours ago, Geography said:

Happens to me a lot, I know how it feels lol. I've tagged Admins to this thread, we'll see what they think about all of this.

I don't see why to tag them. Mortis reads everything posted here anyway. When he has time.

[colonel_mortis]

Reactions aren't really a useful metric of anything, and making reactions in off topic not count isn't going to fix that. Moreover, it's not something that we can change - it's a limitation of the forum software, as mentioned above.