Post by Sparky on Jul 24, 2006 15:26:38 GMT -5
(This board seems to have become the place for technical announcements so I'm posting this here.)
You guys, Proboards is retarded.
You see, whenever a post is deleted here, whether by the original poster or by a staffmember, the poster's post count does NOT decrease. Guess what that means. Yup, people have been abusing that by deliberately posting and deleting it immediately in order to inflate their post counts. I thought something weird was going on but I didn't realise what it was until I checked the admin's log from the hotel and saw that someone had started doing this in huge chunks (as in, not just once here and there so I wouldn't catch on but DOZENS of times in a ROW - so it was like, duh). Let's just say my admin log is FLOODED with this now.
In theory I could go back though the admin log and count up everyone's deleted posts (not including in the Spam section of course) and decrease people's post counts accordingly, but the log only goes back about a month and this has been going on longer than that. Maybe I'm dense but I don't see why anyone would want to undermine all the admirable posting done by such members as Cassini (who as you probably know was the first person to reach 1,000 posts LEGITIMATELY) though such stupid behavior. Other than the obvious culprit I do have an idea of who else has been doing this (albiet much more sneakily) but at this point I don't see what exactly I can do about restoring people's post counts to what they ought to be. Of course, everyone deletes their own posts now and again, for legitimate reasons (I certainly do), and technically *those* deleted posts "don't count" towards our post counts, but, as I said, Proboards is retarded and I can't really remedy the fact that technically, probably nobody's post counts are completely accurate. But for MOST of us, it would be close enough. Those of us who haven't taken advtange of the forum software and basically made a mockery of those of us for whom every post is EARNED, that is.
For those of you for whom post count is more important than the integrity of my board, the trust of its members, and the Foster's fandom, GET THE HELL OUT. If you are guilty but want to stay (being good from now on of course)...then stay. I have decided not to ban anyone, or delete accounts - though needless to say, I suggest you don't volunteer next time I'm looking for staffmembers! The only person whose post count I can easily adjust is the one who was deleting in bursts as mentioned above, but I cannot count up the fraudulant posts of the others (the Proboards admin log isn't really *that* good). The good news here is that this won't happen on vBulletin, as vBulletin *isn't* retarded and *does* decrease post counts when posts are deleted.
I still plan to manually transfer over everyone's post counts into their new account at vBulletin when we move - however, now everyone is aware that for SOME people, that number was acheived by cheating. I don't however think everyone else deserves to lose their "legacy post count" just because some yayhoos decided to take advantage of me.
I just wanted everyone who has been doing this to know that I *am* aware of your stupid little "trick", though I *will* admit that I'm not positive who all *exactly* has been doing it. Whoever you are, I bet you thought it wasn't hurting anyone, right? Well guess what, you hurt me, obviously, and you hurt EVERYONE ELSE (and now they know it, too). I'm not naming names (like I said, I'm not 100% sure of who all is guilty) and I am not leaving this thread open for discussion. I really want this behind us. I had to spend the better part of my vacation trying to decide what to do about this, and in the end all I decided to do was just tell everyone about it rather than banning, or not transferring *anyone's* legacy post counts, which was what I had originally wanted to do. That is all.
You guys, Proboards is retarded.
You see, whenever a post is deleted here, whether by the original poster or by a staffmember, the poster's post count does NOT decrease. Guess what that means. Yup, people have been abusing that by deliberately posting and deleting it immediately in order to inflate their post counts. I thought something weird was going on but I didn't realise what it was until I checked the admin's log from the hotel and saw that someone had started doing this in huge chunks (as in, not just once here and there so I wouldn't catch on but DOZENS of times in a ROW - so it was like, duh). Let's just say my admin log is FLOODED with this now.
In theory I could go back though the admin log and count up everyone's deleted posts (not including in the Spam section of course) and decrease people's post counts accordingly, but the log only goes back about a month and this has been going on longer than that. Maybe I'm dense but I don't see why anyone would want to undermine all the admirable posting done by such members as Cassini (who as you probably know was the first person to reach 1,000 posts LEGITIMATELY) though such stupid behavior. Other than the obvious culprit I do have an idea of who else has been doing this (albiet much more sneakily) but at this point I don't see what exactly I can do about restoring people's post counts to what they ought to be. Of course, everyone deletes their own posts now and again, for legitimate reasons (I certainly do), and technically *those* deleted posts "don't count" towards our post counts, but, as I said, Proboards is retarded and I can't really remedy the fact that technically, probably nobody's post counts are completely accurate. But for MOST of us, it would be close enough. Those of us who haven't taken advtange of the forum software and basically made a mockery of those of us for whom every post is EARNED, that is.
For those of you for whom post count is more important than the integrity of my board, the trust of its members, and the Foster's fandom, GET THE HELL OUT. If you are guilty but want to stay (being good from now on of course)...then stay. I have decided not to ban anyone, or delete accounts - though needless to say, I suggest you don't volunteer next time I'm looking for staffmembers! The only person whose post count I can easily adjust is the one who was deleting in bursts as mentioned above, but I cannot count up the fraudulant posts of the others (the Proboards admin log isn't really *that* good). The good news here is that this won't happen on vBulletin, as vBulletin *isn't* retarded and *does* decrease post counts when posts are deleted.
I still plan to manually transfer over everyone's post counts into their new account at vBulletin when we move - however, now everyone is aware that for SOME people, that number was acheived by cheating. I don't however think everyone else deserves to lose their "legacy post count" just because some yayhoos decided to take advantage of me.
I just wanted everyone who has been doing this to know that I *am* aware of your stupid little "trick", though I *will* admit that I'm not positive who all *exactly* has been doing it. Whoever you are, I bet you thought it wasn't hurting anyone, right? Well guess what, you hurt me, obviously, and you hurt EVERYONE ELSE (and now they know it, too). I'm not naming names (like I said, I'm not 100% sure of who all is guilty) and I am not leaving this thread open for discussion. I really want this behind us. I had to spend the better part of my vacation trying to decide what to do about this, and in the end all I decided to do was just tell everyone about it rather than banning, or not transferring *anyone's* legacy post counts, which was what I had originally wanted to do. That is all.