Posting Profiles

[oscar51]

To add to the usefulness of the vBulletin application, I suggest that each member be assigned a "posting profile" that can be conveniently viewed by all other members and that will show at a glance the forums to which a member's posts have been submitted.

To illustrate this concept, here is the posting profile for vBulletin.org member "Xenon" as of 5:30 AM PDT on 29 May 2003. The posting profile is the column of numbers labeled "Rounded". The numbers in this column are the percents shown in column "Exact" rounded to the nearest whole number. (High precision is not required for this concept to be useful.) For example, Xenon has contributed about 2% of his total posts to the "Announcements" forum, 12% to the "Full Releases" forum, 1% to the "Beta Hacks" forum, etc. -- and note that 0% does not necessarily mean 'none'. (I hope the entries in this table lineup properly; I cannot preview of view them myself. Sorry for any inconvenience here.)

Member Xenon: 6083 posts since 02-25-2001

                                         Percent of 6083
ID   Forum                       Posts   Exact   Rounded
-- ----------------------------  -----   -----   -------
02 Announcements                   115   1.890       2
04 Full Releases                   745   12.24      12
05 Beta Hacks                       51   0.838       1
06 vB1 Hacks                         2   0.032       0
07 Site Feedback                   409   6.723       7
08 Hack Requests                  1277   20.99      21
09 Help Me Finish                  242   3.978       4
10 General Hacking Discussion      849   13.95      14
11 Support                         459   7.545       8
13 The Lounge                      992   16.30      16
14 Forum Commenting                 31   0.509       1
15 PHP / MySQL                     444   7.299       7
20 Hacking Hints and Tips           12   0.197       0
22 Template Modifications           41   0.674       1
23 Language Packs                    6   0.098       0
24 Buttons and Graphics             27   0.443       0
25 Testing Zone                     33   0.542       1
26 Pre-Sales Questions             253   4.159       4
27 Template and Button Requests     81   1.331       1
42 Pre vBulletin.org Threads        14   0.230       0
-- ----------------------------  -----   -----   -------
                   Total posts:   6083

Posting profiles can be easily calculated from parameters readily available in the MySQL data base and could be made available routinely either as a list of numbers or a simple bar chart accessed via a suitable link in each member's personal profile. Posting profiles would be especially useful in avoiding arguments over whether or not the parameter "post count" is to interpreted as a measure of merit indicating a high (or low) level of technical expertise.

Readers interested in a longer and more detailed explanation of the concept of a posting profile may refer to the reports I wrote on that subject for MyOPera (http://www.oscar51.net/other/opfrpt1.html) and for Tech Support Guy (http://www.oscar51.net/tsg/tsgrpt7.html). Warning: These reports contain big tables with lots of numbers and may induce sleepiness in their readers. Pleasant dreams -- er, reading.

Posting profiles can be generated by anyone willing to download a bunch of files and run some filtering and tabulation software. But it would be a lot more convenient if these profiles were generated routinely in the vB software and then displayed on request. If this capability is already part of vB, I have not been able to locate it.

P.S.: As additional illustrations, here are the posting profiles of "Erwin" and "FireFly" as of early morning PDT 30 May 2003.

Erwin: 4256 posts since 01-07-2002

ID   Forum                       Percent
-- ----------------------------  -------
02 Announcements                     2
04 Full Releases                    30
05 Beta Hacks                        3
07 Site Feedback                     5
08 Hack Requests                    11
09 Help Me Finish                    1
10 General Hacking Discussion       10
11 Support                           7
13 The Lounge                       20
14 Forum Commenting                  1
15 PHP / MySQL                       3
20 Hacking Hints and Tips            0
22 Template Modifications            1
24 Buttons and Graphics              0
25 Testing Zone                      0
26 Pre-Sales Questions               4
27 Template and Button Requests      1
42 Pre vBulletin.org Threads         0
-- ----------------------------  -------

FireFly: 5410 posts since 06-18-2001

ID   Forum                       Percent
-- ----------------------------  -------
02 Announcements                     3
04 Full Releases                    19
05 Beta Hacks                        1
07 Site Feedback                     9
08 Hack Requests                    12
09 Help Me Finish                    8
10 General Hacking Discussion       17
11 Support                           4
13 The Lounge                        9
14 Forum Commenting                  2
15 PHP / MySQL                       6
20 Hacking Hints and Tips            1
22 Template Modifications            1
24 Buttons and Graphics              1
25 Testing Zone                      1
26 Pre-Sales Questions               2
27 Template and Button Requests      1
42 Pre vBulletin.org Threads         3
-- ----------------------------  -------