#51 Prison Talk Online bogus post counts (retro)

Prison Talk Online bogus post counts

How many of you read my blogs on this issue about two weeks ago? I wrote a blog about how many members of prison support sites brag about how many posts they put up. I shared with you about how I argued about how most members don’t write to help people, and mentioned my 1500 posts on Prison Talk Online. One die-hard servant of the site tried to argue against it, saying, “so what if you have 1500 blogs, I have 15,000!”

Idiot.

She missed the entire argument of what I was saying. People like that go to so-called prison support sites to rack up numbers so they can look better than other people. I saw people on PTO with 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 and even more posts… and the site itself is not even 10 years old.

So what I did a few weeks ago was took a look at some of the members and charted the posts they made. To me, if ANY member of PTO has more than 5000 posts, they are bogus. Why? Because there is no way a person could sincerely write THAT many posts on a site and act like they care about the members.

The truth of the matter is that members and moderators who have that many posts are actually using members and stepping over them with a cheap one, two or three liner like, “hi and welcome to PTO”. The best way to see this is simply to go to the “introduce yourself” forum, and see how many people jump on newbies like rats on cheese.

It’s funny because in prison the stereotype is that a new guy is seen as “fresh meat”.. well, on PTO new members are seen the same way. What really bothers me is that most of those members and moderators don’t really care about anybody else and often times won’t even READ the post before rubber-stamping a “hi and welcome to PTO” on it.

I challenged that a couple of weeks ago by picking two members and watching their post counts through the next 7 days. I won’t go over all that again, you can easily bounce back a couple of weeks to see the results. I picked a moderator that had 23, 284 posts in less than 3 years, and a member with 29,145 in less than 6 years.

After one week, the moderator’s post count jumped almost 350 posts… in one week. The other member’s count jumped about 140...in one week. That was by February 16th.

Today, March 1st, just for kicks, I decided to check and see where they were…interesting.

The member that had just 29,145 before I started the test now had 29,571. Meaning that from the end of my “test” to now, she added about 380 posts to her count… understand, this is only two weeks! But get this, the moderator went from 23,284 at the start of my test to 24,552.

From the end of my test on Feb. 16 to now, she has put up about 950 POSTS!!!!

How in the world do you claim to be some member of a prison support site while racking up THAT many posts in a couple of weeks???

This is one of the problems I have with Prison Talk Online, too many people on that site like to swear by it, but so few really care about anybody else. I say this to you, NOBODY with that many posts can really care about a member. It is very obvious what these two people, and others like them, are doing on the site.

The log on, and start scanning the site for people who are either introducing themselves or people talking about their problems. They MIGHT glance at it, but most times they likely just run to the end, make a reply and paste a cheap one liner that they slapped on 10,000 other posts.

To me folks, this is heartless.

Last week I spent a lot of time writing about prison fear, and I put up 5 parts. I think all together, it might be about 40 pages worth. I didn’t copy this from somebody, I didn’t rip it off from another site, I sat down and was determined to share something that can help anybody who is looking for hope.

Maybe in the last 3 weeks I may have written about 25-30 posts, maybe less, but I think it is 100 times better than the hundreds of posts those two people put up together. I say that not to brag on myself, but to say to you that if you are going to claim to help somebody, then DO IT.

It kinda gets me upset when you have members on PTO that are stalking around the site, looking for cheap posts to slap a one liner on, so they can walk around the site bragging about their 20,000 posts…and none of them meaning a single thing.

If you get on a post, and read it, and drop some cheap line on it, then you wasted your time and theirs. I really get upset when moderators and members use people that are hurting just to rack up a post count.

You can tell who really cares about you on PTO by looking at a few things. If you still go there, here are the key ways you can tell a sincere member from a bogus one:

Post count: Simply put, NOBODY with over 5000 posts has you on their minds or hearts. It takes a real effort to sit down and write from the heart. I am a pretty good writer and I type fast, and even I can’t write 5000 posts in that period of time, but I won’t say it is impossible. But I WILL say with no doubt in my heart that anybody with 20,000 posts or more is bogus; they don’t care about you, they only care about themselves.

Number of stories ripped: A lot of people claim to be “experts” on prison sites, but many of them spend a heck of a lot of time ripping off stories from other sources. I am not saying that if somebody shares a story from another source they are bogus, I am saying if they share a LOT of stories from other sources, that can be bogus. Again, it takes no effort to steal somebody else’s story, even if you give credit to it. That does not make you an expert, it just makes you lazy. If you check and see that a member tends to do that a lot, they don’t care about you, they care about their reputation.

Number of posts started: This is key because a lot of members have a bunch of posts, but when you check to see what kind of conversations they started, it is very small. I don’t get it; if you have 17,000 posts, how much conversation are you starting? Too many members of PTO like to jump in on other’s topics just to raise the post count. I mean, after all, it takes less effort to add to a post than to start one.

If you get the chance, take a closer look at these members, these are the kinds of people that make prison support sites a failure, because while some are there looking for help, many are there looking to create a false sense of reputation.

That ticks me off, because I was banned because I didn’t go with the flow. They asked me once to become a moderator, but I didn’t want that. I also didn’t like the way the site was run, turning more into a cackling hen’s party than a true help site. And sadly, most of those people running it were those with the high post counts. It’s like a high society club with people with no clue.

So check into that if you still go there, I guarantee you that once you take a look at it, you will think twice about that member that posts on your intro and says, “hi and welcome to PTO”. PTO ought to stand for “Posts To Order”

Or something corny like that.