Just like most forums, we have a Moderator Forum meant for discussing behind-the-scenes issues. No members ever can see or have access to this forum. My question is whether it is normal practice to count posts made in this forum towards the overall forum post count statistic that everyone sees.

What an interesting question!

It's an issue we've recently discussed at a Gamer's Forum I'm involved with as well, where we also have a very active 'Conversational' section and a hidden-from-view 'Locked Topics' section as well.

The general concensus, after discussion amongst both the administrative group and the membership, was that very few people actually took real notice of the 'postcount' issue at all!

Spammers spam for the sake of spamming, rather than for postcount, and those seeking assistance or advice took notice more of the content of members' contributions than of their postcount tally. It was decided there to leave the postcount untouched, on the basis that postcount tally simply indicated the level of contribution a member had historically made to the overall forum community.

I'd be quite interested to see if there's a difference in the way postcount tally is viewed by the membership here, where the average age level of the membership is most likely higher.

Hello,

I don't think it matters all that much. I agree that if someone wanted to spam, that we would develop a way to knock them off (ban the user, ban the domain, ban the IP number).

It's just a number.... right?

Christian

i actually count all staff posts and hidden posts currently. another forum i moderate on had to stop counting posts since moderators were spamming it up in there. so basically keep counting it until a problem arises with it