Forum Home Enhancements - Fake Community Statistics

Due to the recent announcement of Internet Brands telling they are suing XenForo, I decided to immediately stop updating my vBulletin modifications, because I am not supporting this action.

[Snow]

I doubt this innocent little plugin will give the bigboards team a headache. If someone was intent on cheating their way into bigboards they'd find a way with or without someone elses plugin/hack and Bigboards almost certainly have their own way to check if someone is faking their stats.

[arcadian_girl]

interesting plugin...i'm thinking of using it but still debating. i don't see anything morally wrong with it-in this day and age, soooo many people have a messageboard, especially what with these "host my messageboard" free places, that board owners really need to go the extra mile to make sure their forum is a success-i see this plugin as just one more tool to help your board succeed.

[moonclamp]

I really don't understand what the fuss is all about, you only need to edit the stats template and add a "1000" in front of all the numbers to make it look like you've got the busiest forum on earth.

Faking a big board with this mod would be silly ... A forum with 500,000 posts, 30,000 members but only 10 new posts a day? Do you really think they would buy that?

[Freezerator]

Originally Posted by Rich

I understand where it could be useful Floris. We both know though that this is just another tool for newbies to jump into the mix and pretend to be larger than they are, thus attracting more members because they look more active than the site actually is.

Many of us have had our sites up for years and everything that went into it was old school. We had to earn the respect of our members and our activity is genuine and has been processed with old fashioned work. lol Nowadays people can just toss a site up, and immediately they are competing with the next guy who has been around for a few years.

One of my smaller sites has roughly 20,000 posts. I could use a feature like this to boost the numbers up to 200,000 and change the cookie as well....but that isn't what I am about. I guess my issue is a moral one. My sites don't have a large number of competitors as I deal in some very specific fields. It will affect those though that have a much broader topic.

Yes, mods that help new site owners to cheat bother me. lol

I agree. I am currently in a situation where we are the biggest board in our section, and we don't need to cheat. But our competitors do and now there is very hard to proof them wrong. The hack self is fine coded, only the moral to release it is not.

Nofi floris, but do you use it on vbulletin.nl? Wouldn't be suprised though. Approx 26k of postings difference whit the forums i can see and what the total postcount says. Almost 20% of your total postings in your forums on private forums?

[Rickie3]

I really dont think this hack was intended for big boards,but more for those with small boards just starting out

[Celtic_Mad]

Is there any way in which you could change the number of posts and threads to the right of each forum on forumhome to match the 'fake' statistics?

[Developer]

Nice job, but i don't like cheating :S

[Damien2005]

Yup good job.. but i dont like also to cheat

[geevest.com]

The value added here will be added on top of the real value. ?
The value added here will be added on top of the real value. ?
The value added here will be added on top of the real value. ?
The value added here will be added on top of the real value. ?

i fill 15.16.35.47 not work in my stat why?

[tei727]

Originally Posted by Rickie3

well i recon this is great for newies starting their boards,it would make their new board look like its alive to a guest and would promote a guest to register,i'm going to have a play with this on my board for a few days and see if my staff actually notice the increase in the stats LOL,i also believe negative comments about this release are not called for,its simple dont like it dont use it,no wonder the coders are saying they have had enough,just my 2 cents worth

I think it would look worse if the stats say the new board has a thousand members, and there are no posts..I hope no one looks in the member's list then and finds out the stats are a fraud. How does that make the admin look? If it sounds like a duck...