Why the hell do people care about post counts? I know this has been asked before but could someone who cares explain it to me? I mean what the hell?
OK, I'll explain it. It's like this: if you have a higher post count, it makes you look like you know what you talk about. Newcomers listen to people with high post counts because it looks like they've spent enough time in the community to really understand cubing. There's no other way to tell when someone is knowledgeable, unless you've been around the community for long enough to know everyone.
The thing is, the idea about post counts representing expertise is NOT true. I know of quite a few people with over 500 or even over 1000 posts who are nowhere near experts - they are not fast at any event, don't understand cubing theory beyond the level of being able to blindsolve a 3x3, or type as if they learned English by reading 4chan. Hell, even shoot1510 has over 200 posts. There is definitely something to be said for socializing, but if a large number of posts on speedsolving have terrible grammar and are by people who don't really know enough to give decent advice [my typical example is jcuber, who often says random brands of cube are bad, and sounds authoritative about it, even though he has no clue what he is talking about and usually disparages brands that many people have gotten awesome times with] - well, I think it makes the community look bad.
Long story short, I don't like when people get high post counts just through spamming/socializing, because then it looks like they know what they're talking about, and quite often they really don't. If I was a newcomer here, I'd assume that the most knowledgeable, intelligent people here would be those with the most posts - and while it's definitely true that a lot of people in the most posts list are very experienced, there are also people up there who really can't tell their butt from a B', and I think this hurts the community. Fortunately this is nowhere near as bad as it would be if off-topic posts counted!
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