Rules for Regulars

meta
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There are a few threads that I routinely scroll through without reading. Questions is fun, but if you haven’t been there for a day or two, you can end up with hundreds of posts to get through, and generally the conversation has already moved on

I think I remember @codinghorror talking about distinguishing chat from other threads threads. If that change goes in, then the 50% cutoff could end up feeling pretty different. These days, reading 50% of all posts means you have to be up to date on Questions, Counting to 10000, and Khepra - which are all basically flavors of chat

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102

50% of posts in new [BoingBoing-only?] threads, I believe.

If you cut us, do we not bleed?!?!?

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That’s one way to look at it I suppose. I’m not sure it help with those who post a full book of meaningful info on a single comment though. I’m not even sure there’s a good metric in those cases. Word count would give the bots a lead. Anyone who remembers how word lengths were scored in the 60’s and 70’s knows that’s not the route to go either.

Maybe there’s no good answer. I’m betting if there was someone here would have it, even if they couldn’t bring it up due to NDA.

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Not that there’s anything wrong with chat!

I maybe need to recheck how the stats are counted. I thought it was 50% of all posts within a certain recent timeframe, without further qualification

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105

That isn’t so much chat as ranting on a soapbox from an otherwise nice (so far anyway) crackpot and the rest of us either trying to educate them or just wondering how much loonier it is going to get.

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Some of us are trying to brush up on our Egyptology:

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107

I unexpectedly became a regular and then went on vacation or work or something and lost it. Since then I haven’t ever really been bothered to try and get it back. As a title it’s interesting, as a Lounge it was similar enough to any other posts here, and frankly, any flags I put up as a non-regular get responded to, so I cannot say that being regular made my life significantly better to strive after it.

I read every post on the threads I want to read and forgo the ones I don’t. It has become a lot less worrisome than when I considered trying to get regular status back.

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108

Watch out for the dates.

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109

Might help with the regularity, though.

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What was showing on the users page? Because when I look up that particular user they have all 0s in the directory? They were the runner up beforehand? With what values?

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Well, that was weird. When I use the username and password stored in my laptop’s browser on my phone, it doesn’t work.

@sam, I guess I’ll try it your way after all.

Hey everyone, if this is the last you hear of me… it’s been swell! :wink:

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Ahh! Success! Hey look, everybody, I’m posting from my phone! Wheeeee!
:grin:

…

:expressionless:

Okay, yeah, that was a bit anticlimactic. But thanks, Sam.

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Tham.

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See the thread about embedding subsequent quotes using a phone and you’ll be all set. :relaxed:

(You may already know this…:wink:)

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WHO SHOT JR?

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The requirement is NOT to read 50% but 25%.

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read? I just like to look at dissolving blue dots

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Ok so @Kimmo in particular, since you personally asked, I can be specific. All stats look good except posts read in the last 100 days:

Required:  25,410
Actual:    24,894

You are very close, so just read a bit more.

As for @japhroaig asking about @anon61221983 and @slybevel comparing stats let me see:

  • slybevel has read 2x as much all time
  • slybevel has viewed 1.5x as many topics all time
  • slybevel has read 4x as much in the last 100 days
  • slybevel has viewed 3x as many topics in the last 100 days
  • mindysan has replied to 3x as many topics
  • mindysan has given 2x as many likes
  • mindysan has received 6x as many likes

What stands out to me is the big read disparity, it makes sense that slybevel would achieve regular sooner because the amount of daily reading is much higher.

This indirectly brings up a good point and perhaps it is the one you were trying to make from the start @tropo:

One negative side effect of these lol-tastic chat topics is that they artificially inflate required read time for all other users. Which is :frowning: and could prevent people from attaining regular, or prevent them from keeping it.

It certainly provides ammunition for the idea that we need a “separate but equal” way of handling chat type topics as they are truly different beasts.

cc @sam

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You could base membership on absolute numbers, like some of the badges, and not worry about chatty topics. Perhaps 20K posts read is enough.

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Maybe weight the “boing” category posts higher?

Or, instead of 25% of total comments, maybe 50% of all comments in either of the two categories that have the most activity (probably boing and games, on this BBS)?

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