astra, i truly don't beleive that anyone stays here just to build up their post count or even (despite the beliefs of a certain minority) their karma points. those are not the essential elements of the experience here. nobody is winning a prize for the most posts or the highest karma. i am sorry if you feel they are an important indicator of status on the site and that some posts are less worthy than others of contributing to them and should not be included in the totals. we have already talked about new ways of indicating activity in specific aspects of the site, like the badges for technical assistance, ebook creation, etc. which will be implemented (soon, hopefully) as part of the site re-design, and which will be distinct from karma. perhaps that will make you worry less about the impact of lounge posts on other totals.
in the meantime, i'd personally appreciate it if you would not refer to members as "flooders" because if i understand the connotation (perhaps i don't...) it sounds rather derogatory. posting in the lounge doesn't make someone a spammer, if that is what you're implying (it sounds like it to me), and it also doesn't exclude making a lot of helpful posts elsewhere (inside AND outside of the lounge).
for example, i have a pretty high post count. a lot of those posts are in the lounge. but some of them are in the ebookwise forum, where i've tried to share the information that others shared with me when i first arrived, and some of them are in the Gen3 forum, and quite a few of them are helping organise meetups (which help spread the word about ebooks in general, and i hope you'll agree that that is good for everyone), and a lot of them are in the french forum, and those posts are all quite serious and often technical (go take a look, if you'd like some proof. google translate is your friend, and we welcome anyone in the french forum). and guess what ? even some of the posts and discussions in the lounge are quite serious.
just because i'm silly sometimes doesn't mean i'm useless. and believe me, if it weren't for the silliness, i wouldn't spend nearly so much time here, and then poor hadrien would have to help all the french n00bs all alone.
and that would be pretty hard work, because as i mentioned, there are more and more of them.