Ok, first off, let me just say that I already know this idea needs work, at best... but I wanted to throw it out on the table for people to bat around and perhaps for JP to do his famous "thinking it to death" (LOL - we luv ya JP - you know it... HeHe)

Anyway, I was thinking about having a thread's "popularity" reflect back in to your APs in some form... either positive or negative. Now that JP has some intelligence built-in to "rate" a given thread, perhaps it would be a neat addition to enhance the APs (or even split them off in to subcategory) for thread "popularity." Say, for each page worth of posts, the overall positive or negative balance of the thread somehow reflects back in to your APs (or even another "post starter" statistic... like "Top 10 Post Starters" and "Bottom 10 Post Starters" by overall rating, number of replies, etc).

Yeah, I know other people have suggested this elsewhere (as have I). But just thinking it might be a neat idea... though JP is (obviously) the big mind behind the magic of the APs.


Recap and general ideas...
1. Starting a thread is worth very little to the "point value" (which may or may not be the same as APs)
2. As more people reply, the thread is more "valuable"
3. As the thread shifts towards the green, the "point value" goes up in multiples
4. As the thread shifts towards the red, the "point value" drops in multiples


Yes... I know there's probably some possible abuses in there... post whoring would have a whole new ramification. Maybe the post count would have to take in to account "posters with positive AP values" and not count multi-posters (ie. someone like P2P posting would have a much greater effect than a n00b or a nearly-banned user posting).


In any case, I understand this idea is very rough (and probably tough to understand considering I think I've slept about three hours in the last 72 or more hours - and that's caffeine only.