Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

How are members classified?

as Junior, Senior, Full, Preferred Members

         

Chndru

9:42 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



How are members classified in WW?

jeremy goodrich

9:45 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Post count :)

Symbios

9:45 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I think its by the number of relevant posts, I now hold the grand title of 'Junior Member' due to posts no doubt.

I did do a search on this aspect of life in WW, all I could gather was that posts in Foo do not count.

jeremy goodrich

9:52 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



None of the posts in the "local" category count towards "member ranking".

The relevancy doesn't matter :) Purely volume.

Mohamed_E

9:53 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



> that posts in Foo do not count.

Neither in Foo nor in Community Center.

The cutoff points change over time, Brett attempts to keep the proportions in each group roughly constant over time.

Some time ago 500 posts were required to become a Senior Member :) . Shortly after I crossed that threshold and celebrated the bar was raised to 600. My self esteem crashed :( :(

Symbios

10:16 pm on Jul 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Volume is tempting.................

But I'll try to resist the temptation, as I wouldn't like to get to many stickies or worse still get removed for posting to many 'me too's'

Apart from this one of course community ;), I'm guessing that banter is ok in some threads, all part of the community thing :)

mil2k

7:11 am on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



A recent addition has been that posts in Google update threads also don't count :)

Skylo

12:42 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



A recent addition has been that posts in Google update threads also don't count :)

Yay finally. They have to be the biggest and best "me too" threads around. The banter grinds me.........

takagi

1:05 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The 'Homepage' field in the profile also depends on the post count. The field is filtered if the post count is too low.

limbo

1:34 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Post counts
0-49 = new member
50-149 = junior member
150-300 (I think) = full member
300-600? = preferred
? senior

not sure how many it takes to become a senior member - shed loads would be my approximation

Tor

1:37 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Senior member: 600 posts

takagi

2:13 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Senior member: 601 posts ;)

Most likely the '+1' will also be needed for the other limits mentioned by limbo.

peewhy

2:21 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



But if you have 600 right now and reply to this ...someone might move the goal posts to 800;)

Not too long ago I posted like mad in foo because it didn't need any effort and I was really hacked off to find I was still a Junior Member after a trillian posts.

As previously posted, post counts gets you up the ladder. Foo and community get you zero points. If the Dance is on then you may get zero then.

Admin giveth and admin taketh away.

dragonlady7

2:22 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hm. That's interesting.
My first introduction to any of this was at one point when I was on something like a fan site for a band or something, and there was a forum I clicked through to. Interesting, I thought, and browsed around. I was a bit turned off by the elaborate flame wars that were resolved by moderators virtually eviscerating (in gory detail) the offenders. Yow. Well, there was one whole thread that consisted of people posting single characters, ellipses, etc., just to get their post count up. It was really stupid, and convinced me immediately to leave the forum and never come back. I don't know what kind of crack the moderators were smoking. Obviously it was a pretty shoddy forum, but I'd never seen one before so it was representative, to me. (This was _years_ ago now.)
So ever since then I've been a little leery of post-count-seniority. But there really isn't any other way of doing it that's reliable, objective, and feasible. You can't have moderators reviewing members' posts to determine whether their status should be upgraded, and you could never have a system like that that would be guaranteed not to get somebody's knickers in a twist.
I look at my growing post count and feel geekier by the minute ;-) and even moreso now that I realize that all my silly Foo bantering doesn't count. Good heavens, I've got this far without Foo? Yowza.

peewhy

2:34 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It is worth adding that repetative posts, me too and worthless retorts can backfire...I just hope than no one sees this as a worthlees repetative post.

Me too:)

peewhy

2:36 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



....and it won't count anyway! :)

martinibuster

2:57 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Not too long ago I posted like mad in foo...

Yeah, I noticed- I think the low point was when I saw you posting replies to your own comments- like you are doing right now. It certainly has the appearance that you are in a race to lift your post count...

Speaking generally, why do people do this? Is it to have their member profile spidered for a PR boost?

Speaking in general, others will know a poster by their contributions; and if a poster leaves behind 600 frothy and flippant posts, they reach a point where their contributions are merely white noise- what kind of reputation will that give them?

What if in the future a potential client stumbles onto your WW posts and they find you chasing your own tail with one sentence posts? I doubt it will establish that poster as much of an authority. It could happen, all they have to do is google your web site and up comes your WW profile, followed by some inane comment.

There are some folks at WW who hardly post but when they do, I pay close attention. There are some folks who haven't been at WW very long but it's immediately apparent that their contributions are valuable- their post count doesn't matter. What does matter is the quality of the post.

There are some around here who may not be as proficient at HTML, applications, or seo but who ask some very good questions. I think it's the ones who ask the good questions who end up being interesting members.

I think that the deeper answer to the question, "How are members classified?" relates less to Junior, Full, etc. and has more to do with the quality of their posts.

[edited by: martinibuster at 3:05 pm (utc) on July 10, 2003]

Marketing Guy

3:01 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Junior members have to buy senior members beer at the PubCon.

Read the ToS.

Scott :)

peewhy

3:03 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yeah, I noticed- I think the low point was when I saw you posting replies to your own comments- like you are doing right now. It certainly has the appearance that you are in a race to lift your post count...
good point:) the exception being that I am acutely aware it doesn't count...that was the irony of it. Humour that probably wasn't funny.

satanclaus

3:08 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)



I tend to take joined date into account for my own classification of members. Just because I've been hanging around here daily for 2+ years and hardly ever feel the need to post.

rcjordan

3:11 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>Well, there was one whole thread that consisted of people posting single characters, ellipses, etc., just to get their post count up.

We can kill the post counts on those threads, too. It doesn't have to be in any specific forum. WebmasterWorld was started by a battle-scarred core of forum refugees, and many of us still actively participate in other forums as well --there isn't much that we haven't experienced. We've asked for defense mechanisms that other bbs apps just don't have.

dragonlady7

3:23 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



>defense mechanisms that other bbs apps just don't have

Yeah, this place is different...
Battle-scarred! It _is_ tough out there, isn't it?
Which is I guess why this forum survives and is popular. You've got a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes!

lorax

4:43 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



The current classification is strictly to be taken with a grain of salt. As it's been noted - numbers don't count for much. We're members of a community and it takes time and interaction with the other members to truly understand the quality of a members' contribution to the community.

Mardi_Gras

4:49 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I still think Brett should limit non-paying members to a certain maximum member level - perhaps junior or preferred - it could serve as a great incentive for people to pay. But I guess this is going off-topic...

TallTroll

5:35 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



A members contribution to the forum should not be measured in solely monetary terms. We have a couple of very well respected members from nations where the local pay scales, and $ exchange rate would make any non-trivial payment to this forum the equivalent of a couple of months wages - a high price by any definition

Post count can be inflated. Joined date tells us how long you've avoided being caught out;)

The best measure of any members quality is in their posts, ie the content and the usefulness, and that indefinable "community spirit"

dragonlady7

5:37 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I don't think it's important enough for Brett to bother limiting the member status by whether the poster has subscribed or not. It seems like a kind of... I don't know, petty reason to bother buying a membership.
As I'm on this board longer, I notice post numbers less and less, because I'm familiar with more of the high posters. So I'm already learning to figure out on my own who's relevant, who's got a clue, who's helpful, who's crabby, and who's most likely to lead me and my thread wildly off-topic. ;-)
It's not that I could list off the top of my head who I like best and who's a total knowledge factory, but I have a general sense of people regardless of their posting volume.

One thing that is entertaining is to look at very old threads and see totally clueless newb questions from someone who now has hundreds and hundreds of posts to his or her name. You don't see it much but it's startling when you do, until you look at the date. Ohhhhh.... right. :) There's hope for me yet!

Mardi_Gras

5:41 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If you don't think its important to people why do you think so many people post asking about it ;)

rcjordan

5:56 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>You don't see it much but it's startling when you do, until you look at the date. Ohhhhh.... right

That's why the board locks down the old threads. It's often aggravating to start a new thread (msgraph whines about it alllll the time, hhh!), but a time warp has a way of making a thread oddly disjointed --sort of an awkward disconnect in what was supposed to be contiguous thought/conversation.

>bother limiting the member status by whether the poster has subscribed or not

As M_G points out, it is important --when they first arrive. And, I guess it's important for those that are, ummmmm, challenged in the self-esteem department. But adding subscription to the mix would make for a have/havenot class system, imo. Since we're truly a global community, we already have trouble with the wide disparity in incomes being a segregation issue.

Chndru

6:11 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



As a newbie, i want to stress on the fact that, maybe there should be a page giving them an intro on where each post goes and how the forum is classified. I see daily annoying number of posts at totally irrelevant forums and mods have to move them. Or even better, have a common "Start New Thread" page and let them classify using pull-down menu, so that they can see where they might be relevant?

Also, I wish there is something better to do with the search ability of the old posts. If, given the nature of the forums, search is a tough thing to do, How about a Detailed FAQ on each Forum and an option to search it before posting a new thread?

Also, how about a little friendly remainder on the top of the Compose Reply Message page telling them to keep the post to the topic as well as a very small note on not to include specifics etc?

Since the knowledge level of people tend to portray with the duration of their membership, (as they read more here) something must be done to bring the new members to close to the same level.

Also, I wish there is an acronym page or a slang page for the newbies. (for e.g., it took a while for me know what "widgets" stand for, as well as SERPs, etc..etc.)

just my 2 paisa

[it is an another typical off-topic post..sheesh :( ]

lorax

7:00 pm on Jul 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Did you mean something more than [webmasterworld.com...]
This 33 message thread spans 2 pages: 33