You sneaked another feature in on us Dave.

I like it.

I love it! I just noticed it and it is band new! Wow, I have been a chatty one at ATP. I have a lot of posts.

I am not sure I like it. Will have to wait and see if it grows on me.

feels like a contest of some sort.

No contest, just a way to recognize when we have a newcomer, so we can welcome them to ATP.

As ValleyLynn explained, we will soon have a designated icon next to our name that indicates our status from newbie on upward. It's not meant to be competitive, just so we can recognize people who are new and may be reluctant to jump in and post away, so all of us can make these folks feel welcome. Others will be automatically recognized as 'Old Hands' and so they might be a good source of information.

Dave is always improving this site!

Definitely not a contest. As Lynn says, it's intended to give everyone a view of members who are new. So when you see a new member you know they are new.

My intention is to change this to not show a number, but instead show a little button that indicates your participation status. Those who have only posted 5 times, for example, get a little seedling graphic, then when you've posted more your graphic becomes a large plant and finally a mature tree. Or something like that.

Hee hee, going to post here just to see how noisy I've been.

Now that I understand the purpose & future "icon" usage for it, I think it's a swell idea!

I would prefer the icon to the actual numbers too.

This is going to be another one of those awesome new tools Dave is always creating for us.

Personally I find it distracting and a bit annoying . Would prefer it be somewhere else or smaller , My eyes are forced to read it when I look at who is posting and date and time. That is info I need to respond but this is well? I am not sure just not needed info for response .


Thanks for being a sight where we can speak our thoughts
Cinda

I agree that it can be distracting and I'm finding myself looking at it all the time.

I've disabled it for those who have posted a lot and now it only shows for those who have less than 10 posts.

good move.

Definitely don't like the number for reasons above. Little icon better idea. As usual, I'm sure people will get used to it.

Thanks for disabling the numbers. Earlier on this thread I posted nothing but two little smileys. I wanted to see if they counted without words. Of course they do. So the numbers include the smiley stand alone posts too.

I think I agree with Bev. If we intend to do this, then a little icon is a much better idea.

Some of our members have very few posts, but the value in what they have to say is priceless. Just randomly thinking, and forgive me J and Kent, but Jmorth doesn't post often but I hang onto every word he says, same with KentPfeiffer. Their words are truly valuable. Same with Janet (JRsbugs). Same with a lot of others.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. ATP is very quickly becoming an excellent social gardening site as well as a valuable source of information. I love seeing it grow in positive ways. Somehow seeing those numbers didn't feel very positive to me.

Sharon, you made some very good points regarding value of posts. I also noticed that some people on here since 2010 appear to be newbies looking at their post numbers and some people are newbies just coming onto certain forums (like succulents) but with high number of posts probably from hanging around the iris and lily forums...

Sorry, where is this number or icon?

I went to the Welcome and Help Center forum to see if I could find it, but the closest I saw was "New ATP Member" under a name in a post, where we might have seen "Moderator".

Too late Rick

dave said:I agree that it can be distracting and I'm finding myself looking at it all the time.

I've disabled it for those who have posted a lot and now it only shows for those who have less than 10 posts.

Things move fasssssssst here.