[lumberjim]

static to noise is largely unquantifiable, no?

first of all, 'static' in the sense you refer to is subjective. second, who's to say that of my 13.89 posts per day, that X amount of those posts are noise?

I'm not saying that every one of my posts is gold, but i would say that at least half(6.945) of them are more than just chit chat. the missing ingredient is time spent reading other posts. there are no statistics for that. I'd bet my wallet that I spend more time reading than most of the folks here, so it's only natural that i will have more to say in response. In addition to that, the 'good' posts that i make certainly number more than most on sheer statistical odds. The 'bad' ones too, if we assume a 50/50 split of good/bad posts..... ( most of you have averages below that 6.9 mark)

All of this focus on post quality will probably be good for us in the long run, so you could say that HB is doing us a service by taking the role of watchdog here, and sacrificing some good will he has surely earned over the years. Either, HB cares so much that he is willing to take one for the team and not back down, or he doesn't care much at all for the people behind the posts and therefore risks nothing in offending them. (which he said himself that he expected) If I had to bet, i'd go with the former.

And yet, it is natural for people to react when they are rebuffed by someone they feel some amount of respect for. For the newbies, we look over there and see a registration date in 2001 and must assume that that person is one of the 'giants' that HB has exhalted. I still think that if you're going to dump the post count, you should dump the reg date, too. I mean, is the date that you discovered the cellar more indicitive of talent than post count? or is it equally irrelevant?