Poll: The Top Ten Posters List.

Here is a image of the choices.

I don't see any reason to get rid of it.

I don't see any reason to get rid of it, unless people are posting "me, too"s just to boost their post count. If that's a problem, maybe it could be replaced by the "Active Members" widget.

Without seeing how they look, it's hard to say whether any of the other widgets would be useful. Maybe the "Hot Topics" or "Web Links", but I don't feel like I'm missing those at this time.

it should stay - only because i'm currently in 4th place *evil laugh

It should stay as it's a great way to see who has the most input.
We need "more input"

Should have known you'd get the pun...

I'd forgotten about that movie even though its such a classic.

So far the results are for keeping the Top ten and eliminating Mattb4 from the side bar (Less input, less input). The issue of whether this discourages new folks is still open. I have conflicting thoughts regarding that. Having used Forums of differing kinds for years I lack the feeling I am truly new (to any Forum usage) although I might be new to a particular Forum that I had just joined. Thus my opinion of what a new Forum user would care about is colored by my previous experience. It is like the first time I tried Linux is completely different than when I load a new Linux distro now.

I tend to suspect that we would need some opinions from those relatively new to the process. Sorta of a Catch 22, What attracts/repels new members? How do we know unless new members tell us. If they are not comfortable with doing that then it can be hard to winkle out from guesswork.

My guess is that getting them here in the first place is the hard part. If we could get them here then we could ask them; maybe in a "Read Me First If You're New Here" message you could ask for feedback about the forum.

Well if we tell them the top posters get all attractive members of the opposite sex, free beer, pizza, and front row seating at the forum that should incentivize them to post.

I voted that the list should stay, though for the record "no opinion" would have been a better choice for me. In the past, I have not been a prolific contributor in other forums. Somewhere along the road of life I learned that if I was totally clueless about something, keeping my mouth shut was often times the most intelligent contribution I could make to the conversation. But now that I have a few years experience with Linux and more confidence, I am reminded of this quote:

"The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it." -Linus Torvalds