It's a built in feature of the forum software. If this site were being used for any kind of advertising you could see why it would be important.

Sites do this sort of thing naturally, and if you owned a forum and you saw that one section was getting lots of posts = lots of attention, you might focus some energy on improving that section over another for example.

Having that information is ultimately better than not having it. So why not have it since it's an easy thing for forums to keep track of?

You guys make good points. I guess that when glancing at a profile badge when posting, the numerical values (join date and post count) tend to catch your eye (or at least mine anyhow) pretty quickly.

I just don't consider someone's opinions more valid than anothers' based on those statistics (again, I'm not saying that you guys do either, simply thinking out loud).

But I still don't see why a well thought out lounge post does not count when an arbitrary music-related one does. Either way, it would inflate post count. If we are valuing posters' content, I don't think that we should count ones that simply require posting what song you're currently listening to.

When I joined, ALL posts counted. Then they deleted the count for all Lounge posts. Again, I could care less if I have a hundred posts or a million, but I guess I'm aiming for a little bit of continuity across the boards.

I'm glad the lounge posts aren't included. I'd be horrified to know my real post count. :shycouch:

Because the Lounge is only viewable by registered users. I don't think posts in the Mod forum count toward someone's post count either and it sort of makes sense if you think about it: the only posts that count are the ones that are viewable by absolutely everyone.

Yeah, if posts were counted there my actual post count would be soooo much higher than it is now. Another forum I post on has a lounge type section where posts are not counted either, but if you go into your CP or your own profile, you can see your active posts total. Like if you have 1000 posts in the general forums and 1000 in the lounge forum, under active posts it will say 2000. Beside your username, though, it only shows your general post count.

Exactly.

Because without my precious post count I'd commit suicide because my life is pointless otherwise.

Happy?