I feel this thread is more jim venting some hot air then any real call to action, but in any case, i will humor the idea.

if you are really intrested in coming up with a mathematical representation for the quality of a board you must first determine the factors that make up a quality board. then take these factors and quantify them.

i started to make up a list and ways to quantify the list items, but it became rather combersome, and i really do not have that much time to piss away.

orginally i voted to rank based on view count, but after giving it some consideration i would like to flip-flop and say that ranking based on reply count is a decent ranking method.

you could improve on that by ranking by mean reply count and then removing any outliers (high and low). essientally this would remove any spam (few replies) and contests (many replies).

You're right bret...I just had to get it off my chest :) I am most likely going to shut down the poll and I just unstuck the thread. I was just curious if anyone at all agreed with the way boardtracker ranked resource sites. I know there is no meaningful way for a resource site to be ranked based on numbers alone.

Anyway...nothing to see here. Go about your business :)

While it is possible to accurately describe what occurs (or doesn't) on boards in terms of posting activity, ranking boards on 'quality' isn't possible. Quality ultimately depends on opinions and variables such as value, things that vary from individual to individual as well as situation to situation.

Every board is it's own unique social networking circle (or strives to be), each with strengths and weaknesses. You want hype or a shitstorm started you post certain places, you want serious discourse and discussion you may very well post someplace else. There is value in both of these, but they aren't often found in same place.

Wal-Mart can be considered a 'quality' general merchandise store. Products might not be the greatest, but they cover alot and their target market responds to that utility. You wouldn't go there to buy fur coat or new mobo for example. But then again, Cartier doesn't carry Rubbermaid and potting soil, nor does TigerDirect...

All you say above is very true.
Bret - your idea is exactly one of the things we have been considering (thats why I hinted about filtering out the spam threads). The furstrating list you tried to create - we tried the same. Thats why we started with the reply count - lack of better formula. We are still looking.
Something I want to talk to mention is this..
We are thinking about a rank system, where people can vote on boards. (This will be only for premium members, to eliminate cheaters and spammers). Ranks will be made per board based on several criterias. This is still in infancy and we did not finish it yet. It will come with another feature (which I hope the premium members will find interesting) but I rather wait before announcing it.

In general, we are looking for ways to make the best of of people's willingness to cmmunicate and be involved in the community. We think that communities is what makes the business stronger and more successful - for the community as a whole as well as for the individuals. If you have any ideas, we would love to hear them.

Am I correct in saying that you guys don't count the 1st post in a thread because, when a thread is started, the "replies" area shows a zero?

& IMHO, you should be ranking things by the "views" area - hell, you already have it in the search results - just change the script to look one cell over for the totals :D

I agree that there is no formula for quality. And really, the only problem I have is that "replies" are clearly the easiest to inflate. I point you to a past "Greenguy Rant".
http://www.greenguysboard.com/newsle...sletter31.html
I have no idea if you guys tracked then but if you did, clearly the board mentioned in the Rant would have ranked number 2 if not number 1 for a month or more. Although BoardTracker would have ranked that board that high, BoardTracker would have been the only site, program, person that would have thought that an accurate number.

So, I guess here is an idea. Why not ignore threads that are started just to inflate the numbers? It seems it would be easy to do...you have all the numbers. If you see a board jump much more than usual, take a look and see why.

It has to be views because posts are just the content of a board. Views are a measure of how many people read that content.

A lot of posts I see on other boards just contain a quote and a smilie.

:D

Have a coke and a smilie :D

Damn - now I feel bad for inflating our reply totals |jester|

|jester|

that is what i was getting at when i said use the mean reply count and remove outliers, if a board gets an unusal amount of replies to a thread, the forumla would ignore that thread. it helps to keep the data focused, sort of how the judging in an olypmic event works, the highest and lowest ratings are thrown away. but in this case, any extremely high or low thread when be thrown out of the dataset, not just the absolute highs and lows.

Is there a way to include length of posts in the ranking? I know with sig files & constant quoting of the original post it wouldn't be exact, but would certainly exclude the useless posts.

the problem with doing that would be the amount of data that the boardtracker spider would have to parse would be huge. imagine continuously spidering every thread on gfy for new posts and keeping track of the average length of all those posts.

a) the demand for a "proven" ranking system would have to be there to constitute such a ranking system

b) that ranking system would have to be proven to work substantialy better then a "quick and crude" ranking system.

That makes sense, Bret. The trackers are already handy as hell, so no worries. :)

I vote for views, I am always here but may not post. I soak up all the knowledge I can and unlike some of the other boards you can really find USEFUL information.

Besides the posts containing a quote and a smiley or WTF, some board owners pay per post, 25-35 cents so it is ridiculous imo.

Oh yes we can unban certain people and let them start long and silly threads which annoy the hell of us so we all reply and we will have tons of posts or post I'd hit it threads with pics .. but quantity is what matters.

|couch|

YEAH !!!!!!!

lets say I have more links then the hun
that dont make me bigger then him

he has the most hits (page views) so therefore hes the biggest
thats how we always did it


like for instance counters like sextracker dont count content, they count page views

Why rank boards at all? Doesn't make any sense since there isn't a mathematically accurate method - leads me to question the intent of the entity performing the ranking and puts that question in the back of my head of what are they gaining by doing it - would there be a board that might make it to the top because they happen to pay off someone at the ranking entity :)
Sorry - the conspiricist is coming out tonight

That's a good point: Why rank boards?". Advertisers are more likely to look at who operates/owns the board and who actively participates on it.

Because we all like to pretend our cock's are bigger than they really are & stats helps us do that :D