Besides the fact that mods/admins should have gold dots by definition, I don't think anyone should recieve gold dots based on their current AP count. No matter how much someone contributed in the past, the AP system is too corrupted compared to the sytem proposed. And if you give a gold dot to one person, you'd have everybody asking for someone to check their past posts and confirm they deserve a gold dot.

On the issue of post count, I don't see why the actual reference to it should be altered or removed. I think people are intelligent enough to see someone's a post-whore if he posted 4000 posts but has a every low AP status (considering only on-topic discussions will be included in the AP system). I'm only saying that nothing "special" (forum/feature access) should be based on such an insignificant and unreliable thing as post count.

[edit]let's try staying on-topic [/edit]