My point was not that only my brother and I count, but that bragging about entering the 10,000th bill is like bragging about being the 100th person to climb Everest. No one remembers the 100th person to climb Everest, they only ever remember the first. That was my point in the previous message. For everyone else, it's simply the feat itself. You should be proud that you made it to the top, not that you were the hundredth person to do so. Because there are alway going to be people to come after you.
Bragging about milestones is not the reason for this site. The site is about tracking money, not being the person who entered the 45,00th bill (for example). There are a couple of problems that arise if it becomes a "big deal" to get a milestone. The first is that people just sit around and refresh the main page, waiting for a milestone to get close so they can enter the milestone bill. The second problem is that milestones temp people to perhaps enter fake bills so that they can get the milestone bill. Will this happen here? Perhaps not. But it has happened to other sites; any of you who are familiar with Slashdot will know what I'm talking about. When the site was small, the comments were thoughtful and insightful. Then the site got popular and it became "the thing to do" to post the FIRST message on a new subject. So, then the site was full of messages that simply read "First post!!!" or something along that lines. And in fact, people would just sit around waiting for a new topic to be posted and would then post their stupid "milestone" post. As a result the site admin had to change the way the site worked so that postings could be rated and such. Anyway, the point is that I don't want that to happen. Yes, it's not just my site anymore, it's OUR site; that is, everyone who participates here owns a piece of the site per se. And you do drive the features that I build and how things work around here. But, as with everything, there must be a few people (in this case me) who bring order to the chaos (if there is any). Right now, there isn't too much chaos, and I want it to stay that way.
How do I respond to the comment about no point in being here if you can't get milestones? As much as I appreciate that you may have entered in a lot of bills and it would be a shame to see you go, I'm not going to beg you to stay. I cannot emphasize enough that the point of this site is to track money and participate in the community, not to see who can enter the most bills or enter the bill that brings the total entered to $1,000,000 or anything like that. I've added the top ten stuff in there as, for the most part, it is harmless fun and encourages people to enter more bills and get more hits. If milestones are removed, there are still tonnes of cool things to do to keep you interested. Besides the top tens, there are all sorts of personal milestones you can try for (ie. getting your first hit, entering in 100 bills, getting hits in every province, etc…)
As a side note, the "other" site has a bill total that updates every XX number of minutes to prevent this very problem.
-dr