In basically every single game I play, I end up middle of the road posting-wise. I can, situationally, be like the top five (in, say, a mini), but usually, I am neither in the top of the posters nor in the bottom of the posters.
...But rules against hyperposting would still be punitive to me, in spite of me most definitively not being one.
Why?
...Because while I do not post 200 times in a day phase, what I
do
do is have bursts of posts, then long periods of no posts.I can go 1-3 days without posting, but then post 5-10 times when I do post. This leads to an overall average of ~3 posts per day, which in the current meta, I feel we can agree is not egregiously high. ~3 posts per day means that in a one-month-long game (this is about the length of a mini btw), I post a grand total of ~90 times. Even in a longer game that lasts 3 months (this is about the length of many larges btw), that doesn't come out to an absurdly high amount as it ends up being ~250 when you math that out.
Now, circa 2009 or so, ~3 posts per day
might
qualify you as a hyperposter, but even as early as 2010, it would not. Over the years that has gone from a lot of posting, to about the average number of posts, to now actually being fairly low
in posts.But I digress.
My point is, while my average for posts is on the lower end, the distribution of them is not consistent; the distribution of them is incredibly uneven.
I deliberately tend to try and post at times that I know nobody else is around--because it reduces the workload I have. It reduces the amount of back-and-forth to be had. It allows me to catch up in peace, get caught up, and then leave, without a need to continue engaging. (After all, if nobody else is posting, I don't need to keep posting, I don't need to keep checking the thread, I don't need to invest even more time.)
This not only reduces the number of posts that I make, but also reduces the number of posts people make in response to me.
If I am online at the same time as someone else in my game, I might make 5 posts and then they make 5 posts in response to me which may warrant 3 further posts from me and then 2 more posts from them and then me another post and so on and so forth until I run out of time/energy/things to say.
...But if I am online at a time nobody else is online, I might make 5 posts, and then that person who would've made 5 posts if online at the same time as me? Instead only makes
one
. Which in turn means I only need one
post to address them, rather than 3-5.However, there is a side-effect of me posting during times nobody else is around: it means I make multiple posts in a row. And it is
this
that would make me run afoul of most attempts to restrict hyperposters.I might only post an average of 3 times a day, but if I am posting zero times on 2-3 days of the week, that's like 5-10 posts on the 4-5 days I
do
post.And yet this style of posting actually results in a
lower
post count than a hyperposter gets. I deliberately developed a style that minimized the amount of posts that I need to make.There's a lot of logic behind my decisions.
If I first read offline (and thus, do not post during that time on instinct), it allows me to formulate a 'rough draft' of what I will say when I log on. This rough draft is never absolute/perfect/complete, as I typically log in to create my post without being
fully
up to date. (If there are ten new pages, on average, I'll have read only the first 8 of them, to give an idea.)If I give myself some down time, it can lead to more informed, precise, so-to-speak 'surgical' posts. I have a greater ability to focus in on what is important to reply to.
The looming threat of a prod forces me to post content, which allows me to generate content from places I may otherwise have missed. Because I read offline, I see what has been posted, and if I can't find anything to post, I don't log on to post at all if I can get away with it. But when I need to avoid a prod, suddenly, I have a need to generate content, so I find content that I otherwise would have missed if I was constantly posting the entire time.
Having down time allows me to mentally rest/recover. I
generally
read offline, but I am under no obligation to, and have the luxury of not needing to read offline. But, reading offline without posting is still less stressful than reading online while posting.Engaging in fewer protracted back and forths saves me time and energy I otherwise would have wasted on said back and forths.
And critically, what this style also does, is it gives the game time to have voices that are
not
my own contributing during that down time. Having my presence dominate the entire time can be detrimental regardless of my alignment. Letting others speak can give others the tools to react to each other. Letting others speak lets them generate their own content with breathing room. It increases the ability for them to see each others' posts, digest them, understand them, take them into account, etc., allowing them to formulate stronger, more solid opinions on each other.And then, when I post, my own voice is
also
more clear.If I am posting at the same time everyone else is posting, how do my posts stand out compared to anyone else's? They wouldn't, they'd blend in and get lost in the noise. But if I am posting at a unique time that nobody else is posting, then, suddenly, my posts are much much harder to miss, much harder to ignore, because they stick out thanks to not being mixed with the posts of others. Which, in turn, allows people to have my voice be louder and stronger than it would be if I posted in the mess of others.
Staying out of the spotlight, but then strategically stepping back into the spotlight when there is a need to, gives strong advantages as either alignment. Staying out of the limelight as scum allows for the town to eat itself alive and come out with clean hands by and large, and then when needed I can enter into the spotlight to direct things in the direction I need them to go as scum. Staying out of the limelight as town allows me to clear my mind, focus, and reflect, giving stronger, better thoughts when I decide to take center stage.
Imo, this approach is pretty successful. People tend to say they skip my posts, but the fact of the matter is, they actually tend to read them more than they admit/realize and what I say in them tends to overall stick with people more often than not. (Granted, people have goldfish memory these days it seems. But it is actually easier to
remind
people of a post you've made when you have less
posts. If you have 500 posts, reminding someone of a post you have made is difficult because YOU can have trouble tracking it down, so if it's difficult for YOU, how do THEY stand a chance? But if you have 100 posts, reminding someone of a post you have made is quite easy!)There's one more benefit to this approach, too: I am able to combine what would be separate posts if I was posting continuously, into a single post. There's obviously a balancing act: nobody reads long wallposts, but I don't want every single time I quote a post to be a new post. So what I end up doing is usually doing ~2-3 quoted posts in a single post of mine. (It also works out to be approximately one post of mine per page I have to catch up on. Sometimes slightly more, often a bit less. If there's 20 pages, I'll probably end up with ~10-15 posts; if there's 2 pages, I'll probably end up with ~3-4.)
This results in each post being of a readable length, which again, helps increase the rate at which my posts are actually perceived. If my posts are too long, they are ignored; if I am posting every single time I quote one post, my posts are ignored because I'm making too many posts in a row; if I make posts that are a readable length but I am making a smaller quantity of posts, then they suddenly have a much higher readability. (And to this effect, I often try to group related concepts as to cut down on clutter. If I am jumping from point A to point B to point C back to point A then C then B, due to posts 60, 80, 120, 125, 128, 150 being ABCACB, then it's a mess. If I regroup it to be all-A, then all-B, then all-C, suddenly there is structure/order to my post.)
People tend to shit on my posts for various reason. I am not succinct. I am verbose. I say in 20 words what could be said in 5. But for all the flaws in my efficiency, the thing about it is, I developed this style because it
works
. Ever since I have done this "on again, off again" style of posting where I alternate between posting and not posting, and balance my posts' lengths to not be too long but not be too numerous? In spite of how wordy I am, in spite of my verbosity, in spite of how bad I am at explaining myself? It's still much much much easier to follow along with my thought process than it was before I developed this approach.But this approach is still burst-activity. High bursts of activity, then lulls, followed by more high bursts, then more lulls. Punishing that style would be counterproductive to what folks wanting to cut down on overall posts in a game wish to achieve.