Not when you have people like T28 who generate endless aliases. Peer decisions invite abuse and ET is incapable of handling it.
I think Willy is going to wake up under his pickup again with an empty bottle of hooch and a blinding headache.
also, under each person's name, there is when they joined and how many posts. How is calling someone a "Senior Member" because they were here 4 years with 7000 posts going to help? I appreciate the simplicity and the avoidance of personalized icons. This is a trading forum, not a dog show.
Yeah, the idea as I explained it was not to award seniority solely on duration and prolific postings, but a combination of components that comprise the ingredients of seniority. Similar to the working world; number of years in occupation does not equate to senior title. Anyways, I think I get it now. And although the majority of potential problems could be dealt with, it's clear that neither mods, nor Baron, have any commentary on the issue, which speaks mountains. I sort of like MandelbrotSet's reasoning. Thanks for all the replies, though.
The important thing, is to implement a change that has a SERIOUS value-add. When tweaks are floated, then you run into hundreds of forum users who have different desires and may not agree with the idea. For example, I have suggested perhaps a dozen times, that ET prevent people with only a handful of posts from being able to post URLs. They seem to represent >= half the SPAM and shill websites that appear here. To me, this is a HUGE value-add to discourage spammers, but I don't even get a response from ET. So apparently, simplicity is always best.
There are several provisions on ET for achieving a measure of a poster's relative position in trading. Profiles could be volumtarily filled in. There is provision for a signature that could hve substantive content. All of these require the reader to "accept" the tells of the provider. When done this allows trust to appear in the space. trust is followed by "value". It is often a good idea to review the initial posts of a person who keeps his handle over time. There you learn about the person's quest (needs) rather than his developing agenda or trading character that comes into view later. If the current capabilites of the site were to be converted to more productive analysis tooling, then the counting could be more useful to the sectors that make use of counts. Here is a simple set that could vedry well define a member in terms of other's opinions: 1. Views of the posts of the member in contrast to the number of posts made by the poster in question.. this yields a ratio. 2. Locus of the poster's thread participation combined with his OP level and transfer to chit chat level. 3. Complaint level of the poster as a ratio of complaints received versus complaints made. Post delections by moderators could be included as well. 4. post length. There is a distribution of length as compared to total posts that could be made. The quipper is easily ID'ed as well as the person, who is someone like me who posts long difficult for impaired minds to read. 5. Sentiment could be measured as well by key words in posts. Track the top ten key words (subjects and predications) and attach them to a signature as is done in library of Congress coding. 6. For me the most important ID would be the scientific orientation (rationality) of the poster. It is simply a sorting process as we all know. A and B people are simply separated by the science/non-science split. An induction/non-induction determination is easily made. Anyone using induction is headed to the dust bin as is seen by he turnover in ET membership. In business and the real world there are givers and takers. In forums ET, this measure is being made always, as well. the bulk of the world is neither giver or taker but moreso the masses are just the common denominator of the cultural and life style makeup. Being right is probably the most significant bias of most ET members. This just brings to the fore things like due diligence the "have nots" focus upon; in its absence they draw "being right" conclusions, mistakenly. A calculated "character set" defining a person is easy and will become common over the years. That means the relationships of characters (members) can be compared continually and what you want comes out of this analysis quite clearly. You want to "know" a member in terms of the membership's opinion of the person. You can easily think up aboput 25 opinion/activity based character sets and see the Venn diagram of their mapping in the universe of members. Popping up the "GPS" of a member will be automatic and relatavistic. People can easily gravitate to who these people are and who has the resourses for their needs. Here are five character sets: 1. Mr. Entertainment. A guy who can't advocate for any trading concept and just entertains other members. 2. Mr. Giver. Someone who associates with one of the many many profitable approaches to trading and is willing to discuss his experience, knowledge and skills. 3. Mr. Taker. Someone who is a member to "get" what he determines he wants. 4. Mr Failure. Someone who is learning failure but may not quite know it yet so he continues to show up. 5. Mr. Unconscious. This very undifferentiated guy is seeking but he can't be a taker since he is disoriented vis a vis trading. He bounces all over the place and never responds to anyone who answers his pleas or whining. Who relates to whom? Why? How? Look at the forums and the forums that are absent to get in the ballpark. Look at thread lengths and longevity of the threads. What often sustains threads are two types: givers who contribute and entertainers who slam, piss and moan about what someone else has (a giver) that they can never get. What often kills threads is a taker only thread or a Mr failure only thread where the taker or failure is an OP of a thread that has been started over and over. The Unconscious often prey on these threads and give their ad nauseum mantra to the topic of the new taker or failure. The unconscious confirm the failure's and taker's difficulties for the OP topic. Obviously moderation focusses on the beginning of key word search. It is designed to elimiate non contributing posts that are entertainer oriented. "Complain" is functioning as well; here member's posts are eliminated because they trample on the quality of the thread and the givers. "Entertainers" are the banning category; they get banned when their entertainment value is less than the commercial value of their hit rate. Ignore is a powerful statistical sorting device as shown above. Finally, there is one more character trait that is really important for connecting learners and the learned. both these people have the trait. And there are several others as well that are important to be conscious of. I use 100 Q's under six topics to better understand the path that one goes through to success or failure. The significant trait is: "the open mind". Where this comes from is many small streams under the six topics that, in turn coalesce into the ability to grasp, ultimately a full understanding of the market, the partnership the expert trader has with the market and the 8unlimited offer the market continually makes. The spectrum from junior to senior in terms of knowledge, skills and experience has members with open minds. This is the transient stream common trait that is primary from the very very junior to the very senior. Is the want of the OP an attempt at a shortcut to satisfaction? Could this inevitable development come sooner or later to the web? Will any forums or web sites develop that are capable of selfpolicing by member behavior? All these things are emerging. Even the government is capable of admitting it does not know enough about trading to regulate it. I have had the, yet once again, the experience of having to explain to the government that they have mistakenly evaluated how things work and do not work. It is probably a good idea to have peers evaluate those they interact with. When they do so based upon thier intrinsic qualitfications it could be informative to the potential learning trader if that very person is capable of going through learning to learn and going through a learning process.