What are influential authors?
The Influential authors list is something that we’ve introduced recently to replace the old Top posters listing. We discovered that a number of our users were attempting to manipulate the top posters list by posting many times in short burts, simply to increase their post counts, with no regards to the quality of their contributions to the site. This isn’t something we wanted to encourage, so we decided to take action and remove the list before the negative behaviour got out of hand. We’ve replaced it with the new influential authors listing, which more accurately reflects (not perfectly, of course, but it’s a lot better) which authors are participating in the site in beneficial ways. Post count still has a little to do with how influence rankings are calculated (a relatively small percentage), but a number of other factors come into play as well. Think of it as a measure of an author’s reach in the system, combined with the quality and volume of their work, weighted on certain factors
