In the near future I will be adding a new member classification system that distinguishes members based upon their length (years) of steady commitment to posting and sharing at Lottery Post.
Actually, I started developing this as a way to cut down on the number of people who register a membership for the sole purpose of spamming the boards. I was looking at identifying new members based on the number of days in which they come back to Lottery Post and post new content to the forums.
That's a lot different from the number of posts, and a very important concept. Someone who shows the commitment to come back several times and post in the forums show that they are most likely interested in lotteries in general, rather than just posting a quantity of messages in order to reach a certain level and gain access to what they need.
Therefore, a "New Member" will not become a "Rookie" until they have posted for a certain number of days. (For example, they post a message on August 1st, and then wait another month and post a message on September 1st. That counts as 2 days, not 31.)
That got me thinking about how the concept of posting days, in comparison to the overall number of days that Lottery Post has been around (somewhere around 2,300 days at this point), would give a nice unbiased indication of how consistent someone has been in sharing ideas, numbers, discussion, etc., without regard to number of posts or membership level. (I refer to the number of days that Lottery Post has been around as Lottery Post days.)
I refer to the calculated ratio (number of posting days divided by the number of Lottery Post days) as the member's rating.
If a person posted every single day since the site was launched (or close to it) they would have a rating of 100. If they posted a handful of days or less they would have a rating of zero (0).
This is a new idea that I've come up with. I have never seen another web site use this kind of rating, so this is some real out-of-the-box stuff.
It is my feeling that someone who has a high rating is by extension someone who has developed a very deep knowledge base of lotteries in general, as they would have been exposed to literally years of every type of information about the lottery, and in fact have participated to a very high extent, regardless of whatever their opinions may be, or whatever games they enjoy playing. If you were to mention any particular lottery topic to a member with a very high rating, it is very likely they will have a good deal of knowledge about it, and would be able to help others to understand the topic.
In short, such people would be excellent resources on Lottery Post, and that is exactly what a rating system should capture! Hence, I would consider this new rating system to be a breakthrough concept for identifying important resources on Lottery Post.
Will there be people who receive too high a rating? Maybe.
Will there be people who receive too low a rating? Perhaps.
Will there be people who agree with the ratings system? Yes.
Will there be people who disagree with the rating system? Yes.
Will some people be resentful of their rating? Almost definitely.
Despite whatever flaws will exist (nothing is perfect) I believe the rating system gives a much, much better measure of lifetime achievement/participation than a raw post count.
Plus, the fact that people cannot manipulate post-count ratings (because it is based upon days, rather than quantity of posts) means that hopefully people will not feel the need to post higher quantities to either achieve a higher "top poster" rating, or to keep their existing rating.
To date, I have built most of the back-end database code required to generate the ratings. I have also built new graphics and terms for the various rating categories. I still have a bunch of inter-connecting code to write, but hopefully it won't take too much longer.
Undoubtedly, I will continue to fine-tune the rating system over time.
As always, I welcome feedback, whether it is positive or negative. I cannot promise that I will agree, but I promise that I will listen to, and seriously consider, all input.