Quote Originally Posted by RockyR View Post
I like to know how active the person is who is giving me their thoughts and / or advice. If John Doe is professing to be an expert and offers his opinion on everything but only has 3 or 4 posts under his belt, those comments might not weigh as heavily as someone like Graham or Hamish with thousands of posts telling me their opinions. Just my $.02.
Rocky, I see the basis of your theory, but it doesn't necessarily hold true.

I can register a new account and start posting -

"Cool pictures" after every picture post
"Nice kilt" after every new kilt is announced
"I don't have an answer" after every question is asked

Just those types of posts alone will get my post count into the high hundreds in very little time. I will certainly have the big post count, which would make my opinions worth more value by your theory, but I would actually be offering nothing in the way of intellectual value to any thread.

I think to use your theory, a member that has been here for 3 years might have a more valued opinion than a member that has only been here 3 weeks. But even that is a slippery slope.

I've been haunting online bulletin boards (anyone remember dial-up boards?) and forums for over 24 years and have yet to see any kind of number truly indicate a person's intellectual capacity on any subject. Other than the number of well-written and well-reasoned posts. And a perfect example is this - I have almost twice as many posts here as you (I had to open a new tab to check, believe it or not), yet you could engrave what I know about kiltmaking on the head of a pin. Needle and thread? Thread is colored string and needles are sharp at one end. Did I get that right? I'm told they can be used to re-attach buttons when they fall off, but you couldn't prove it by me.