This is.
MrToast
In my opinion, a “quality” post is most of what has been said (non-repetitive, few or no errors, no incorrect info, etc.). In every post, though, you should ask yourself one question: is this post contributing to the discussion? If the answer is no, then don’t post. I use it as my benchmark for every post, both when making my own posts, and reading others’ posts. If you can honestly say that your post is contributing something new and valuable to the discussion, you can’t go wrong.
I honestly dont see the differnece in the “okayness” of repetition in this thread or in a thread discussing Gear ratios or wiring methods, or anything else for that matter.
What do you mean by targeting someone/some group? As in answering a question for someone, commenting on something someone said? Maybe give me an example of a post of mine that doesn’t and/or does do that.
P.S. This is not a worthless post. I think.
–EDIT–
Oh, yeah, I have no none-repetitious opinions on post quality. However, I do get what Aignam means by this being an opinion thread and repetition being more understandable. It’s like a poll; you don’t look at the results, see that the one you’d vote for has already got a vote, and then don’t vote.
Er, it is fine. If you think I’m complaining about it, you’re reading into my comments too much (and incorrectly).
Also possibly a poor supposition, but you are partially correct; while the rep point system rewards the deserving, it also rewards the undeserving in a select few cases. Anyway, this is the point I was trying to make - the abuse of the system. I said in my previous post that I didn’t take the system too seriously, so long as it didn’t start to affect the quality of posts, though you appear to be ignoring that comment, instead suggesting quite the opposite. I presented an idea that rep-bait could potentially lower the overall quality of posts in very specific cases, and while I’m not going to point fingers, let me say that there’s a huge case of this going on in certain parts of the Chit-Chat Forum. My point was that other people took stock in rep points too much, and that while I don’t, it does result in prejudging, and thus not reading posts. **Edit: **remember that my original thesis was that you’ve made a quality post if people want to read it. I probably have enough green dots for this to not be a problem, but others aren’t so lucky.
Any post that is helpful or states an opinion is a quality post.
The shorter the post, the better, IMHO. If a post is more than one paragraph, I usually just skip it. Especially if it’s for some trivial topic. I can’t bring myself to start reading a long post. It’s daunting.
Bullet points are great!
Oh, and funny posts get extra ‘quality points’ in my book. 
A good post either:
Asks a question to help a team / team member
Tells about a specific event (with accurate information)
Answers the question asked, in an accurate, factual manner
Causes the readers to think about something new and challenging
Or acknowledges a person or team for something extraordinary
i have to say after reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, and questioning on the word “quality”-- it well, i have no idea really what quality means at times, but it’s what u interpret it as and the same thing here with posting-- you have to def. though keep it a reasonable size and def. too stick with the rules of cd-- without the rules it gets too messy
enjoy writing all the great quality posts!
Flashback: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2108&highlight=sprocket+source+buy
I really appreciate not only that post, but all of the posts referenced there.
There are some technical threads that read as chatty conversations – a million short posts adding snippets of information or incite here and there as the thread grows. There are other threads that spontaneously develop into a short series of well spoken people writing full treatises on the subject at hand, covering all the bases and presenting their argument in full and at one. A couple of fantastic drive train conversations from last summer come to mind as examples of the latter. I think there is a place for both, and whichever personal preference is at least part of the friction over “quality posts.” I submit, however, that the biggest element of quality in my mind is a posts utility for people in the future. There are some threads out there that will still be pertinent and oft-referenced years from now, and there are others that won’t make any sense when you wake up tomorrow morning.
As an example: try to do a search on this board to figure out what the internal gear ratios are for high and low gear on the Bosch drill. There are a million posts to sift through in identical conversations with uninformative titles and one line posts disseminating only one precious statistic at a time. When someone asks for the specs on a drill motor, a million people chime in with one number representing only their best recollection of its free rpm.
Support your Local Wiki.
Most of what I believe makes a good post has already been addressed in this thread so I am going to skip the bullet points on that end no matter how much joy they bring.
However I think there are more sides to the “why” we need good quality posts. Obviously bad posts can be very annoying but also we are eating up Chiefdelphi resources. “Bad posts” should not be present on Chiefdelphi in the same way that we should not have “bad logins.” I think this is an issue that goes hand in hand with bad posts and one that has not been addressed yet as much. When I check the main page at this very moment I see 141 users on the board. 16 of them are spiders so there isn’t much we can do about that. However the rest break down to be
1 - Announcements
16 - General Forum
1 - Rumor Mill
2 - Career
16 - Robot Showcase
5 - Technical Discussion
4 - Programming
1 - Control System
1 - Pneumatics
4 - IT
1 - Championship
1 - Regional
1 - Off Season
6 - FIRST Related Organizations
9 - Chit-Chat
1 - Televised Robotics
1 - FIRST in the news
That…unless my math is terrible…is 71 users. It is not very likely that 53 users decided to move to a new forum exactly as I hit my refresh button.
Considering the new announcement about having to limit access to the board to 300 users I think we should all start making an effort to sign off and leave the site alone when we wander away. 1/3rd of the people here wasting resources is too much. That isn’t counting people who have just left Chiefdelphi running in a specific forum while running off to eat dinner. I really do not believe that a faster time before accounts are automatically logged off is the answer, especially in a league centered around Gracious Professionalism. I just think that when we are talking about using Chiefdelphi resources in a non-constructive manner we should consider all ways me might error and work to correct them all.