Excessive Posting rule?

[Zonadow]

"Excessive Posting

We require all users to agree to a guideline of 8 messages per 24 hour period. Please do not exceed this limit unless it is absolutely necessary. Excessive posting, posting of the same message in multiple places and/or multiple times are considered a contravention of this rule and may result in your account being banned. This will be decided by the administrators of Caudata.org."


I'm curious...why is this rule in effect? I can't see any reason as to why less forum posts would be a good thing. Wouldn't more activity and posts be the better thing?
Of course I'm still going to follow the rule, I'm just curious as to why it's in effect. I'm assuming it has something to do with bandwidth maybe...

Does this also count for comments on photos or profiles or just forum posts?

 

[SludgeMunkey]

This rule exists for many reasons a few being:

A- help control spammy single word posts like "cool dude!" Which really contribute nothing to the thread.

B- to prevent people from spamming posts just to be able to post a want advert in an attempt to circumvent the Rules pertaining to such posts

C- to encourage new members to participate in the community by reading threads and asking questions. This also allows time for new folks to learn the ropes and build a reputation. Unlike most forums, site reputation has a lot of weight around here.

D- as an anti malware control by keeping infected links and advertising bots in check.

 

[Zonadow]

I see.
That answers my question, but only 8 posts? Why not even it out to 10? Or 5 posts every 12 hours?

 

[SludgeMunkey]

I am unable to answer that as I don't play with the code.

I am certain that number is a result of the combined decades of experience with the site our administration possesses.

 

[Mark]

Our previous version of VBulletin allocated member status based on post count. This occasionally led to new members posting excessively to raise their status and hence the rule. 8 posts was deemed appropriate at the time.

Excessive posting is less of a problem now that we have the reputation system. It's still a very useful rule to have though, allowing us to deal with posters who write many substance-less posts in a short space of time. In reality, if you're contributing good quality answers no-one is counting.

 

[Azhael]

It´s very unlikely that someone dedicates enough time to post more than 8 trully worthwhile posts every day....
Users that post excessively are the ones that as Johnny put it, flood the forums with meaningless "cool! dude!" posts that add absolutely nothing to any post. We´ve had some cases of really excessive posters that just wanted to increase their post count with irrelevant posting....which is completely unaceptable.
As Mark says, if you ever feel that you need to post more than 8 posts in a day and they are all fully justifiable, nobody will stop you.

 

[Zonadow]

Ah, that makes a lotl sense. **pun**

So in other words it's bot prevention and prevention of circumventing the system to rank up (even though the rep system prevents this now), and prevention of small insignificant posts, but nobody really minds if you post 20 messages a day so long as they're quite useful and pertains to the thread, although unlikely that will ever happen?
Makes sense to me!
My only question is how you give and get reputation, and what the maximum would be, and what the minimum has to be for you to be banned or suspended. I've not seen anyone on the forum with their reputation red before.

 

[Jennewt]

There people here with a red dot on their reputation. But most people who are bad enough to get a red dot don't hang around very long.

If you want to give someone reputation/feedback, click on the icon below their rep that looks like the scales of justice.

 

[Morrison]

Ah, that makes a lotl sense. **pun**

So in other words it's bot prevention and prevention of circumventing the system to rank up (even though the rep system prevents this now), and prevention of small insignificant posts, but nobody really minds if you post 20 messages a day so long as they're quite useful and pertains to the thread, although unlikely that will ever happen?
Makes sense to me!
My only question is how you give and get reputation, and what the maximum would be, and what the minimum has to be for you to be banned or suspended. I've not seen anyone on the forum with their reputation red before.

That's actually what I also want to know. I still don't get that system. I'm actually pretty new here. Someone who can explain it?