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Member promotion mechanism is under construction

Discussion in 'Forum announcements' started by dRD, May 5, 2006.

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  1. dRD

    dRD I hate titles Staff Member

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    As several of our users have noticed, our script that "promotes" users based on their post counts, is now offline and we're working on a major rewrite of the whole forum system that will store the user post counts in a separate table. The problem with the old system was that the forum was never intended to calculate people's post counts, thus the data for each user was never stored anywhere -- everytime we ran a script that "promoted" members, the script had to go through all 2 million messages in our database and see how many posts were made by user X, by user Y, etc. Finally few weeks ago the system sorta halted, it seems that the Dual Xeon 3GHz database server decided that comparing 520,000 users against 2 million forum messages was too much for it and system tended to halt when the "promo script" was running.

    Now, we need to go through the 2 million rows in msg table and store that data alongside the user info. But after this process and required modifications to the forums are done, the new promo script will kick in. That will happen on next week.
     
  2. andmerr

    andmerr Guest

    why not save yourself some time drD,DONT FIX IT.......and then we could gop back to the old way.Maybe the computers were agreeing with me by shutting them selves down but then again thats probably and idle wish isnt it................
     
  3. Phantom69

    Phantom69 Regular member

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    to i guess, ELABORATE on what andmerr said, i do not believe the ranking system should even be in place, maybe show the join date instead, the ranking system pretty much more assists to [bold]SOME[/bold] new members wasting valuable scrolling time with posts that have either been covered previously, mean absolutely nothing at all or are just plain unecessary in general.

    i know it is not my place to tell anyone on this site what to do, especialy an administrator, however i just believe it would be more beneficial without titles.

    just my 2c
     
  4. andmerr

    andmerr Guest

    nice phanty , you said a mouthful with just 2cents,but you could of suggested one more and have a post count under the users nic with the date they joined.At least that would maybe slow the useless post drivel thats been going on for years
     
  5. Phantom69

    Phantom69 Regular member

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    nice idea.
     
  6. andmerr

    andmerr Guest

    it would be if they incorporated it in to the board but well thats an admin decision
     
  7. Lethal_B

    Lethal_B Moderator Staff Member

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    In the long scheme of things, it is a good move. A quicker status upgrade system may prevent the

    [bold]"I have 150 posts so why am I still a newbie"[/bold]

    type of threads.

    Nice job.
     
  8. whiskeyfa

    whiskeyfa Regular member

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    You know I was worried about this in the begginning, but now it doesn't really matter, most of the questions I answer are things that I found out searching, so status be darned...because half my posts point to other people with more practical knowledge, who have already answered that question before.

     
  9. Lethal_B

    Lethal_B Moderator Staff Member

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    [bold]whiskeyfa;[/bold]

    You'll go far in this environment, buddy. If only everyone adopted that attitude..

    :)
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2006
  10. DakSurf

    DakSurf Member

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    I would agree the level title is obsolete. Date joined with posts made would be much better. The only ones that really need a title is the staff. I'm just getting tired of being brushed off because it still shows I'm a newbie when I been around the Internet for 20+ years. Leave the level titles for trackers. It should save a lot of time.
     
  11. borhan9

    borhan9 Active member

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    It does not bother me either way because the people that know me for me inregards to aD info input i have put in, is all i need the status thing is just a bonus, plus in the begining it was somethin i was striving for but one quote came to mind and it goes like this.

    Thats as simple as i can put it.

    What ever the admin choose i am for.

    Just on a side note i do agree the only people that may need titles would b admin and mods, thats about it.
     
  12. brobear

    brobear Guest

    I suspect dRD knows what he's doing. Post counts and titles have been a problem for some time. They're sort of meaningless now with some members with padded counts becoming Seniors and Addicts with mostly chatter. Irregardless, there's those members who still feel counts and rank are important. So, to keep from being endlessly aggravated, it makes sense to have a system that will do the count automatically.
     
  13. Rikoshay

    Rikoshay Regular member

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    I think instead of having such a negative term like "Newbie", you should change it to something else like "Guest" or Entry Level. It doesn't sound half as demeaning, and just seems a bit more appealing to me.

    I also applaud the people who are still within the Newbie status and have not complained about getting to a higher ranking right away, or the person who makes it to Senior Member status within the first two months of arriving based upon idle chatter or pre-answered, one-lined posts.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2006
  14. JXP2307

    JXP2307 Regular member

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    Is the promotion mechanism back up and running?

    Just curious.

    As far as Rank goes, personally I am happy with whatever dRD comes up with.
     
  15. flyingv

    flyingv Guest

    I agree that a counter would be a much more pratical solution to the problem at hand. It feels demeaning to be classified. I know that i'm new to this web site, but i've been around the internet for a long time. Thanks to the staff for filling us all in on this subject.
     
  16. brobear

    brobear Guest

    Most of us, who have been around a while, realize Newbie only means a short timer at AD. There can be those of questionable intellect at all levels. Rank only indicates how many times a person has managed to click Reply, not what they know or who they've helped. A trained monkey could set and click Reply. The important part of being involved in a forum such as AD is being helpful and trying to deal with everyone in a sociable manner. Those that get caught up in the rank game and useless posting are just wasting their time and being a nuisance, especially since rank means little as far as helping others. Rank and a buck will get a coke from the soda machine. ;) Since a lot of people seem to be interested, the staff needs some system of tallying posts and assigning rank. The one dRD set up is as good as any under the circumstances.
     
  17. cincyrob

    cincyrob Active member

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    [bold]Brobear[/bold]
    once again i agree with you. the people who actually help out on here should be the opnly ones with a rank i think. take me for example. jr member soon to be member. i havent really donated anything other then a little that i know that might actually only help out someone who is new to the backup game like myself. as you know most my post have been in the question type post so why should i have a rank. hell i should still be a newbie, until i actually post something that helps out, other than my opinon like right now.so on that note i guess i will stop ranting and drD do the decideing for us all.. good day paul harvey
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2006
  18. flyingv

    flyingv Guest

    Good point and well taken. Post alone shouldn't determine rank, it should be earned as you go. I thank all of you who have helped me in my quest to be more knowledgeable and for all I have learned from this web site.
     
  19. ireland

    ireland Active member

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    I never liked newbie from day one..
    What I like is:

    New member
    Junior Member
    Member
    Senior Member
    AfterDawn Addict

    and the reason i do not like it

    A newbie (1337: n00b) is a newcomer to a particular field, the term being commonly used on the Internet, where it might refer to new, inexperienced, or ignorant users of a game, a newsgroup, an operating system or the Internet itself. The term is generally regarded as an insult, although in many cases more experienced/knowledgeable people use it in purposes of negative reinforcement, urging “newbies” to learn more about the field or area in question. Newbie itself is usually considered truly to be a person who's new at these events and not really an insult as opposed to n00b.

    Variant spellings, such as newb, noob, and, in Leetspeak, n00b are numerous and common in Internet use.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbie
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2006
  20. brobear

    brobear Guest

    How about [bold]AD "Short Timer"[/bold]? More colorful than just New Member, but a continued low post count could leave us with a long time "Short Timer". With New Member, one could be left with an old New Member, if the member doesn't post a bunch real quick. ;) Or... to clarify the situation the title could read [bold]Afterdawn Low Post Count Member (Title not supposed to indicate diminished mental capacity.)[/bold]

    You have to overlook me at times, the insomnia just beats me down. ;)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 11, 2006
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