"Likes" a bit of a bugbear ... Feature Request

[tonmod]

Forum URL: (private)

For a good number of years we've been running the above site of which I'm a Mod (sorry if you can't see the link).

We have several thousand Users and fair number of them have posts totalling hundreds and a smaller but good number with posts numbering in their thousands - and just as you'd guess a corresponding, but smaller number of "Likes" - so many with dozens of "Likes" a good number with hundred of "Likes" and a fair few with thousands of "Likes".

The issue with all this is we have is that a number of Users (who for their own reasons) have deleted large numbers of posts. So for example one User had inexcess of 1000posts and 449Likes. Deleted all but 4 of their posts - as the "Likes" remain after post deletion their profile reads: 4posts 449"Likes", which I think largely makes a mockery of the "Likes" system. Moreover this particular User, as they've deleted so many posts - it now makes those thread where he posted difficult to understand and in a large number of those threads that same User started the them, so those threads are largely nonsensical.

Ideally, I'd like to continue to allow Users to delete their posts but I'd also like for them to lose the "likes" associated with it when they do delete a post. Hopefully this will discourage Users from mass deletions and lead them to be more selective, in that way my forum (and others) will be more useful to other Users and generally be more intelligible, which is now lacking on many of our threads.

Perhaps the "Likes" total should be editable just as the post count is now? (I'd rather my suggestion above tho')

(Edit. On our forum we sometimes need to correct Users Post Counts to reflect their actual post counts)

[BUCKY]

On our forum, the "Likes" count usually always is higher than the "Posts" count. In a way, this lets each member know that what he has posted has at least been read by more than one other member. If you look at it that way, it might make the unbalanced numbers more sensible. If members are deleting vast numbers of their posts, you might have a PM chat with each individual member to find out the reason. When things like this happen on my forum, when the thread doesn't make sense anymore, I go in and delete the entire thread. I hope this helps, in some small way.


EDIT: As an example, on my forum, I have 12,xxx posts, and 16,xxx likes. Lets me know that my posts have been seen at least more than 16,000 times. With numbers like that, I know I'm not wasting my time posting.

[Craig]

The posts and likes are a record of the posts made and the likes received on the forum. The post count does not decrease when a post is deleted, so if their post count is now showing 4, has their post count been adjusted in their profile?

[Scott]

tonmod, just to expand on what Craig was saying... when a post is deleted that member's post count does not automatically decrease. So if a member with 500 posts and 600 likes deleted all but 5 of their posts, their profile should still show 500 posts made and 600 likes received. Thus the implied correlation of likes to posts would not be an issue.


The issue here is this member's post count was manually altered to match the number of remaining posts.


I can see where in certain circumstances and based on the nature of the forum, when a post count is adjusted the likes vs post counts could be misleading so I will label this thread as feature request for the higher ups to mull over.