2000 posts

[allenb1963]

Out of the people in the top 10 list of antipoint earners, most of them got all their antipoints for posts that had absoutely nothing to do with computers. People think that they are a status symbol.......I will probably get more for this post, because I just fronted off most of the people on the top10 list. And if you don't believe me about their posts, go look at them sometime. See how many posts that were computer related actually got points and how many from other areas.

/me stands up and offers himself as proof of what the soulemman says concerning APs. Most of the points I have come because of my opinions, not my technical knowledge and I for one freely admit it. I've managed to help a few people here and I too must credit most of that to Google, not my own abilities.

Happy 2000th post, soule. You said some things that needed to be said, which only serves to make your 2000th post a milestone that makes a difference. Keep up the good work, and good luck in the job hunt.... whomever hires you is getting a good man according to Deb.

[bimmer]

heads up souleman, 2000 posts is a good number, well many members has a high nomber of posts but the most important part is !!! how many of these posts are usefull.
as for ur profile, your APs says it all brother
general chit chat and cosmos are not useless forums, if this forum wasn't there where would you post this thread !!
we learned allot from these two forums, things we couldn't learn by our own. we knew lots of peeps in these forums too.

back to issue:
Congratz on ur 2000 posts, me and all members know a believe that you are a gr8 senior addicted member to AO community.

cheers brother, hope to see you all the way here, coz' AO wouldn't be if such members do not exists.

-bimmer

[tyger_claw]

While this might seem like kissing up to some, Souleman, I totally agree about the AP system.

When I first joined (which is still not that long ago) the points seemed to have value and was much more difficult to obtain. Now, it seems that any type of post will get you some greenies.
(ie: Birthday posts, Jokes, Cut&Paste, Annoucing something (ie: driver's license, finals)etc.....)

I was proud to obtain my 11 dots, but it just seems less of a prestige now....

I guess I'll just have to distiguish myself with the quality of posts...

Anyways...
Obtaining 2000 posts after a lenght of time is quite the prestige since it wasn't a flood of useless posts, but quality information!

For that I say, congrats souleman!

[debwalin]

But what do antipoints mean now? Absoutely nothing.

I was happy when I started getting a lot of greenies. Then I realized that for the most part, they were either guys putting comments about me being a "cute girl" or kissing my ass cause they thought I would return the favor. It changed what it meant to me completely. I'm almost ashamed of having 11 green dots, and being on the Top Ten list...I have *NO* right to be there. I have so little knowledge of computers that me being where I am on this site is an embarressment to the site.

I will admit that a lot of the points that I receive now are negative, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. What makes me angry is that I see so many points being thrown around, both positive and negative, that it totally cheapens them. If you are having a birthday, congrats, good wishes, all that but you don't deserve greenies for it. We all have them.

Some of the most respected members have decided to take a powder on this site because of the amount of crap that goes on now. We got a lot of new members all at once, which is good on one hand, but on the other it seems like it was too much at once and a lot of things went wrong all at once. However I think that some of the older members here, myself included, have given up on the site, and if we don't pull our own weight, and post useful things, it's never going to get better. My plea here is that you read the technical threads, you reward those who are making a concerted effort to revive the site, and ignore some of the stupid stuff. If you read a joke and enjoy it great...but do you really need to post that it made you laugh? It's a joke, that's what it's supposed to do.

As far as Mexico goes, there better be a beach and some drinks w/ little umbrellas in them Soule.

Deb

[don]

Everyone seems to be bemoaning the state of this site to which I am pretty new. However if
one wants to fix it then do what you can. Post some on topic posts, and when in irc "actually"
talk about computers. This seems to me to be a very simple solution. It does not matter if your
not a computer guru just talk about what you know and or ask good questions.

[neel]

Congrats souleman !!! I seems now you have 2000 it get's double as hard to post a number 2001... It's almost a shame to break that 2000.
I ain't gonna say anything about ...
erm...
so... about...
anyways, antipoints mean nothing, but if you don't have enough you're BANNED and you get the little middle finger guy looking at you everytime you login to AO. if you have grey/red dots you could climb up again (I did even), but it's as easy to just make a new account and screw it again. The middle finger guy (wich I will call "jip" from now on) won't motivate people to read a faq and won't motivate people to act intelligent... People get the system in no time.
"Hey, sign up for 10 accounts, make some friends, post some bullshit that you copied from the one or another bugtraqlist or newssite. Ow people find you l33t (makes you figure about those "people") give you +++, you give yourself +++: +++ + +++ = ++++++ w00t
Now it get's twice as hard, but well you have twice as many +++ so the last part goes even faster and hoopaaa... yes, now you're a respected member of AO, a senior member; you have 11 green dots under your name, you can flame newbies, you're on AO for 3 months..."
And there we go again. We can talk hours and hours and gigabytes filled with antipoints, we get swarmed with leprachauns who want to steal all those things, we form alliances to protect them.
We can say we don't care about antipoints, but it's nice to have many... Life is hard when jip is your friend. Antipoints are important it seems, else there wouldn't be so many. I just follow (are maybe lead) the masses to just fill another gigabyte with our...
etc.

Neel

p.s. I just found something... well ... rather stupid... antionline antipoints >> aoap >> this is brabants dialect for aap wich means monkey in dutch... hey I said it was something stupid

[Tedob1]

Congrats on 2k soulman!

Sorry you lost your job! Does this mean we can expect more posts from you?

Wish you would post here more. the quality of your posts is unsurpassable. There have been so many occasions that I’d be writing a response to a thread and upon seeing yours I’d just delete mine.

However:

The value of the anti-points system is to make it self policing and also give this site the power to take a direction the members want it to. If were not particularly happy with the direction in which things are going we can change it. If we only want to see security related posts its in our power to have this but I think the well roundedness of this site is a plus and as -DaRK-RaiDeR- stated saves us the time of shopping around for news and points of view that are of interest to us.

Members neg things they think are unworthy and would prefer not to see again and pos things they approve and want to see more of. Most newcomers want positive points so they stop posting things that give them a negative status. This is far from a perfect system but those that make it past the newbie point are pretty much in tune with the rest of the community. This is the same thing that happens when we try to enter any group IRT whether we like it or not.

If you go back and read the posts from a year or two ago they’re really pretty shitty. Long flame threads and 3117 dudes. The ones with the high AP counts got them by forming alliances even though their posts were excellent and would have gotten points anyway they wanted to own the system. If you wanted to be part of the community you had to belong to the ‘clique’. Nobody HAD to give negative points then so they would just keep greening each other. Although it wasn’t stated at the time this was AP abuse. It was later decided that it was abuse and a stop was put to it.

Now that we have to give negative points in order to give positive points flaming has come to a halt (relatively speaking). Though it was never really condoned... wanna be crackers and script kiddies cant fill the forums with their trash. They get gone real fast. Although the number of members today that are knowledgeable seems less it's because the membership has grown so much. In actuality the number of really helpful people and posts has increased dramatically. (I refrain from naming any because it would be to easy to leave some out) You can now ask a question on just about any computer topic and get a few and sometimes many really helpful answers. where in the past this would bring flames with comments like: “what does this have to do with security“ even if it was in general chit-chat or cosmos

it might be a nice feature if we could customise our start page to just see posts from the forums we want...but this is getting off course.

Today we have so many really knowledgeable new and junior level members that in a few months as their AP count grows and therefore their say in what is acceptable and not acceptable increases I believe this site is going to more awesome than anyone has ever dreamed.

I really wish that we could have more security related posts in the addicts forum where they’re not visible to the casual surfer but I think we will as more of the newer members reach this status.

Maybe its not the same as it was but nothing ever is and its not always a bad thing

[-DaRK-RaiDeR-]

Guys,

I just can avoid answering to Tedob1. I totally agree with him, in each and all of his comments. Personally, i love to search the Internet for news (any kind) although i try to post here only the computer related (i said i try ). I really like to keep you "updated" with the last news. Tedob1 one is a great "threader" posting stuff and news that i haven't seen other members doing it like him, i really like his way. But if the majority of AO says not to post news anymore... well... that's OK then, i can stop doing it, no prob. But i think many of this posts have brought really good and interesting discussions. General Chit Chat forum have helped me to be a more "clever" person, i know a little more about security and computers related stuff now thanks to this forum. Anyway, i agree if we can personalize or hide the main page non security related posts so each member can decide what he/she wants to see and what he/she doesn't.

Then, about the APs discussion, well, it's not always senior members or old members fault that for example newbies get neged a lot. New members should read the site FAQs before posting, and if seniors or old members neg them it's because they're in fault or aren't following the site rules. I remember my first time here when i posted a thread to help newbies (i was one too) and seniors neged me a lot because i forgot to add the source of my info. I have learned that and many other rules and it's OK now. Maybe a little add in AO main page saying "New members: please, do us a favor and don't forget to read the site FAQs before posting" could be a good idea. JP doesn't say what kind of threads we should neg or what we shouldn't, he just say don't harass, don't answer misleading the thread starter, don't insult, etc., so maybe (as some of you say) we are having a new AO now with different opinions about what to green/neg.

Let's just see what happen of all of this... or let's find a way to fix it (if it's considered a problem).

Bye.

DKRR

[Spyder32]

Maybe a little add in AO main page saying "New members: please, do us a favor and don't forget to read the site FAQs before posting" could be a good idea.

Maybe to further your idea, maybe their can be a kind of announcement or message saying that, and have it their until that user reaches a certain amount of antipoints or posts. If they have recieved that many antipoints (however many is set) then they must know what behavior is right, and what is wrong. Same with posts (although I think point's is a better idea). I've suggested that once a user sign's up that he is automatically forwarded to the Site FAQ in which he could read to find the guidelines and rules. Just a thought, take it for what it's worth.

[gore]

Well, sowly congrats on your posts, it sucks you have no job, but then again you could come visit me now since youll have free time, hmmm, APs....
Well, im almost positive someones gunna get there thong in an uproar but Deb i refrained from givin you a greenie saying your cute just to be a smart ass, and sowly!!!!! you called my Bastard system Admin from Michigan posts bullshit!!!!, i have a mixed feeling about non helpful posts, like me, i got a **** load of greens from my Bastard stories, but if you think about it, people liked them and i wrote them myself, i think it was like showing a TY to the author for posting work for free (lol i coulda wrote em all in a book and sold it) and sowly (if you havnt figured that out yet thats what i call souleman) i think im gunna add you to my stories, lol you can be the PFY rip off or somethin, and yea, a newbie asked a question about installing Linux, i damn near wrote a tutorial on installing Linux, and even went at what screen would pop up next and what you should do at that screen to install, all written by me from when i installed it and i didnt get any points for it at all, now thats fine with me, but when someone posts a website in the tech humor forums about tech support horror stories and her post becomes extremly posotive and i respond saying that i made that post months ago heres the link, did i get any points? no, did i care? no, well, actually yes i did because she got em for the same ****in site i had already posted, i know how it felt to be Mettalica when napster pissed them off (cept im not a sell out ) to me, now, after iv gotten as many points as i have today, it took me forever, i may not have been here long, but go right ahead and read my posts and see why i have em, i either wrote a mini series and posted it for you all to laugh at or typed out a damn insallation manual, THAT is why i have points, and hell im hoping to be one of the top ten point earners one day for having posted GOOD things, like sowly has, he earned those 11 green dots, and sowly, when you visit im huggin you (and as usual if you get offended by my post, thats your problem, you should learn to hear sarcasm and have a sence of humor im not that damn bad)