Okay, I finally read through all the previous responses One thought is if there could be a reputation system that worked "correctly" then that would be fantastic. Beano's other forum with Karma points sounds interesting but I would want to hear more. I think giving people an extremely limited amount of reputation points (like one or two per week tops) eliminates the popularity contest.
Reputation points should absolutely not be self serving as they are on a forum like T4T (which I am not ragging on the forum, but I just don't like the system on that site). In other words, you shouldn't need to "rep" other posters to get more points. It creates a self serving feedback loop for the highest number of posters and especially small "in" groups. The whole idea of reputation on internet forums would make for a fascinating sociological study.
What you would want to avoid is having posters that don't post much not being able to accumulate or distribute rep points at the same rate as veteran posters. In reference to my previous post's example about trip reports, another content issue is that someone that only posts trip reports could rack up tons of reputation points without really contributing any non-trip report content. So there would need to be some balance in that respect. I think reputation would be most beneficial when someone asks "can I trust this person that I don't really know to give a reliable answer?" I am not sure posting a lot of quality trip reports really contributes to reliable answers and good posting etiquette.
From a forum culture perspective, AlpineZone has always had a higher noise to signal ratio than other forums that discuss Northeast skiing and riding. There is a lot more chatter here which is both good and bad. You used to be able to avoid the chatter because it was often relegated to the Misc forum. Lately, the chatter has gone up across the site with lots of posts that don't contribute anything (not just GSS though obviously that is the most obvious of the post whores). Quite frankly, that is a turn off but other people may like the noise.
What I usually do when reading a thread, is that when posts break down into noise, I just stop reading and stop following the thread. Eventually, I just post less, read less, and visit less.
Will getting rid of post counts stop noise? No. May it decrease post whoring? I really don't know, there is no guarantee. Some people just love to log in and post anything even if it is "bumping" a thread that is the most recent thread on the top of the forum listing. Personally, the community and culture of AlpineZone has historically very strongly promoted post whoring by posting thread and post numbers and having congratulatory threads on reaching posting milestones. As long time members can attest, I have often ridiculed such quantity focused posting and thread topics and I am big on "quality" posting and threading.
All that said, I still think having the post counts public is fine. If the problem is post whoring and high noise posts, I don't think getting rid of the post count totals is going to fix the problem. Just my two cents but I figured I would get this thread back on track with some serious discussion and a full addressing of the issues at hand.
I agree with this for the most part.
I believe the noise part of the ratio has increased dramatically in the past 6 months or so.
So I refrain from making historical proclamations.