Junior Member -> Member?

[ShawnDev]

I can't seem to find any information about the criteria for moving from a Junior Member classification to a Member. I assume the number of posted messages - and maybe the length of membership - has something to do with it. But I'm curious about the particulars.

For example: Does participation in highly rated threads speed the transisiton? For that matter, is there anything that can speed the transition?

I used to hang out here a few years back, but either my account has been disabled or I've forgotten what I called it. So I've signed up again, but now I'm once again at the bottom rung.

[Yves M]

Does it really matter ? ;)

[JeffB]

I think it's only "number of posts" depending and nothing more, highly rated thread participation will not help your status to change... The old forums versions was more caring about "rated answers (good one)" than "number of posts".

Take care of your number of posts and tell us when you'll cap the Member status! :D

Edit:

Oh and the answer could reside here:
http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=198166

JeffB

[ShawnDev]

Does it really matter ?
Not really. But perceptions often do :(

Thanks, Jeff. I like the old way of being able to rate individuals and their posts better, as well. (Not saying you do, just commenting on the comment in the thread you pointed to.)

[Deniz]

i think its after 50 posts you become a member


i know, its stupid, hey?

[Yves M]

I'd definitely like better a ratings system as you describe it. Luckily this forum is not suffering too much from spam... Arg imagine people just posting to upgrade their status and get over 2000 posts... :eek:

[Elrond]

You don't care. The fact of being junior, full member, or even elite member does not change anything. So even if one does a lot of Spam to get to the elite member rank, it won't give him any additional rights, and most people will have seen him spamming and will not count his answer as as good as "Real" elite members.

By the way, the values are:
0-49 Junior member
50-999 Member
1000-1999 Senior member
2000+ Elite member

The old rating system definitely had a real value :D

This one is just for fun. But I ain't coming around CodeGuru for being rated, even if I liked that :p

[JeffB]

It was also interesting to be answered by someone and to discover that he is highly rated, so you know his answer mean something. People posting dirty messages to improve their ratings will be in an inferiority , CodeGuru is more a serious forum than any other you might meet...

But we all miss a little bit about the old ratings.... It is possible to have such a feature, vbcodelibrary forums use it and it works well.

JeffB

[Brad Jones]

vbcodelibrary has custom software running.

vBulletin doesn't currently have the ability (or a hack-- add-in) to do the ratings. This would be a great project for someone to try to do if they have some free time. vBulletin has a web site that includes a bunch of information on how the board operates. I've got it on my list to look at a hack for ratings; however, there are other issues that always seem higher.

back on topic with this thread....
SPAM is generally deleted. If someone starts posting a bunch of unnecessary messages to increase their ranking, then there are a number of people who will let me know. I have a number of things I can do in such cases that include setting that person's title, decreasing the counter for their posts (I can override), and more.

I agree that ratings were a better judge; however, there were serveral major issues with such ratings that are just as bad as the current title assignments.

As to the number of posts to switch titles, I also control that. If there are suggestions that are better -- or wordings that would be preferred over the wordings I've used for titles, feel free to make suggestions -- however, the Feedback forum would be a better place for such comments.

Brad!

[ShawnDev]

I think the junior member/member/senior member/etc. label has value. It indicates that the person posting has been around and contributing to the forum. I'd be likely to be less skeptical of any claims they may make, and I'd expect others to do the same for me.

Thanks for getting me fixed up, Brad :)

[Yves M]

I don't know... there are some people who post only 1 message but it is really well informed and contributes quite a lot. Then there are people who are always on the board but don't have the knowledge to be able to answer the hard questions.

Then again it's nice to get a response from an Elite member which is great and to the point ;)

[ShawnDev]

Certainly. But when somebody says something like:

The Err object (in VB) clears all its properties after invoking the local error handling routine (which actually hasn't been my experience).

(Note: I made that up. Nobody has actually posted this claim that I know of.) I'm going to be much more inclined to be accepting of their statement if they are a higher member status. At the very least, I'm going to be more accepting that it may be true for them and persue/investigate why.

It's not about altering my opinion of an otherwise useful and informed post. It is about giving more weight to claims that I might find a bit... off, or that don't quite jive with my experience.

[Yves M]

Yes, I see your point ;) Then again, you might still be mislead. Just look at the c++ (non-visual-c issues) forum...

I would think it to be very very strange for someone to create an account just to post misleading information on some post. Then again, they might not know better...

Anyways, the point I was trying to make is that there are a lot of good programmers who don't post here (strange huh ? ;) ) but some of them might be browsing the site, the forum and stumble upon an interesting question that they can answer to the point.

[ShawnDev]

Agreed. There are always exceptions. Not a hard-and-fast rule, just a loose guide :)

[Ungi]

0-49 Junior member
50-999 Member
1000-1999 Senior member
2000+ Elite member


I dont think, thats correct. I think you get a Member with about 30 posts. I have seen many members (like ShawnDev) who have 30 posts and also are members.

But I think this changed just a few months ago. I know I got "member-status" with 50 posts.

[ShawnDev]

Around my 26th post I noticed that my member status had changed. Brad was going to go back and find my old post numbers (under a different account name) though. I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

[Marina Vaillant]

Originally posted by ShawnDev
I think the junior member/member/senior member/etc. label has value. It indicates that the person posting has been around and contributing to the forum. I'd be likely to be less skeptical of any claims they may make, and I'd expect others to do the same for me.

Thanks for getting me fixed up, Brad :)

I think something like "new member, active member, hyper active member" would better illustrate what those title really are.

I forst thought one was Elite because he had written books on the subject, or was well-known in the domain, because I remember criticizing a book with a guy I realised later was the author !!! ;-)
But I was wrong, I had to meet Xeon to know that.

I keep on rating good thread, because it can be useful when you make a search and want to see thread which gave good results to the poster.

Regards,
Marina

[Yves M]

hyper active member

Well, who except Xeon would qualify for this ? ;)

I keep on rating good thread, because it can be useful when you make a search and want to see thread which gave good results to the poster.


Yes, I think that is very good practice. Unfortunately many of the questions are just straight : "look it up in MSDN" type. Sometimes though the discussion is really interesting and I tend to give the thread a good rating, just to show my appreciation.

What I really hate on the other hand are people who post a question and rate it 5* on the spot, just to attract people's attention. The best thing would be that you should not be able to rate the threads which you posted initially, maybe.

[Elrond]

Originally posted by Yves M
What I really hate on the other hand are people who post a question and rate it 5* on the spot, just to attract people's attention. The best thing would be that you should not be able to rate the threads which you posted initially, maybe.

I hate that too, but it would also prevent them to give a rating to a good answer ...

The problem with that is if you give a bad rating for a bad answer, you are not able to correct it later for a good answer (and the opposite). So it's sometimtes hard to give a relevant rating.

[Yves M]

Yes that's true too :/

The problem with that is if you give a bad rating for a bad answer, you are not able to correct it later for a good answer (and the opposite). So it's sometimtes hard to give a relevant rating.

I think that if you recieve a bad answer on your question, you should just wait till either somebody gives a good one or the thread disappears. I'm not sure that giving a bad score is actually of any help, except maybe in cases where the post is already rated as good and you definitely don't think so.

[Ancient Mariner]

I think the bigger question would be is it a bad answer or a poorly worded or poorly explained question. If the answer does not provide the specific fix for the one instance, is it bad?

[Marina Vaillant]

Ancient Mariner, that sounds like an already discussed subject...
Is it a bad answer or a badly formuled question? ;-)

We will always have both.

Marina

[ShawnDev]

The whole problem with the current rating system, though, is that you're not actually rating the answer - you're rating the entire thread.

What if you have a thread full of 50 posts that are nothing but whining, flaming or just plain wrong. But buried in there is a single post that gives a good answer. IMO, that post may be good but the thread as a whole isn't.

[Yves M]

Have you seen any threads that are 50 posts long here ? ;) Well, except for the poll, most questions / answer posts tend to be quite small.

And even if there is a heated discussion, it might be worth reading / interesting to read. For example the flames on general C++ between A Mai and everybody else mostly do not contain real "answers" to the question at hand but are still quite interesting to read.

The problem of badly formulated questions is of course acute. There seems to be a natural selection process going on whereas badly formulated questions never get any answers anyways. Sometimes they do though and the answer may be way off what the poster intended. It is his duty then to refine the question and provide missing information.

Well, in the best of worlds, bad questions don't exist, just bad answers :p

[proxima centaur]

On another forum, namely http://holonet.swrpgnetwork.com (sorry about the publicity ;) )there has been user rating implemented. However, this has led to many many threads on users being pissed off and rating down the user for revenge. I think we have to find another way to assess a person's competence.