Forum Moderators: open
I guess dragonlady is right when she writes that with time you learn to know who the knowledgeable people are. With more time, you will also learn who knows what exactly (i.e. SEO gurus are often not very good at SQL or Photoshop).
The only system that would give you a real hint on what degree or rank a member has would be to separate the forums and have a special, subject-related classification. E.g. in the Google forums, a member could only be Senior if she/he has at least 1 site at #1 for a common keyword. Or in the HTML forum it would depend on how their pages fare on the w3 validator.
As this is clearly impossible, we have to stay with the current system which if not really valid still makes it nice to achieve some rank. Yep, I like being Senior ;).
Well, the sheer number of posts a user may have may not really mean anything terribly deep, but it does give you a general idea from the get-go whether this person has been around. If somebody in their first post on the board ever says hey check out this product it's awesome, it means something entirely different than if someone who's been on the board long enough to make several dozen posts says it. The one with several dozen posts may still be a moron or a spammer, but if he's either then he's a darn persistent one who might deserve some credibility through sheer longevity.
As long as you realize that that's all post count means... well, at least it helps you tamp down the urge to make a bunch of fluff posts to get your count up. :-D A little bit.
LOL
