The SETI Brownbelts... ;)

[per©oDåN]

Ummm... sorry... I did a bad thing: I posted this in 2 forums... @ck!


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Okee, so this is my 1,000th (not to be confused with 11,000th) post here...

I'm not out here as much as I'd like... And usually, to be quite certain, I'm not even fractionally as helpful as certain other folks out here (unless you want to discuss obscure coffee, palindrome, music, or generally phr34ky stuff -- then I'm your man)... but I was just wondering if there might one day be an intermediate 'rank' for persons @ some posting level... something to add another color to the board (other than black, green, red, and blue, if ya know what I mean).

I know I sound a little pretentious saying this, but am not really posing the question for me. Rather, it's more suited for ppl that actually post helpful and more On-Topic content regularly. We've already seen some of Sensei's stats on who's the top [L]users here, and most of us could tell you who's actually quite helpful, and who (like me) just kinda fills up useless bbs space... In either case, I kinda see a need for a Grasshopper+ kinda rate, where true newbies can kinda know the person has been around for more than just a few posts.

Granted, it's no indication of the quality or reliability of the persons posts or their ability to help you, but if this is to be a community, where you can look forward to posts from some of the trully experienced users, I think it's warranted (becuase, unlike the name implies, there are SO MANY users here that are NOT linuxnewbies, and without them, it woud be very much more like blind leading blind). I trully feel that many newbies might take a little more comfort in knowing that their post was ansered by one of the brownbelts. I mean, it's neat to see Strike's HAL rating on a response to my question, but other than him, how many HAL's do you see that are able to reply as much as he is (he must 'got no job, mon'). I think we owe it so some ppl here.

Again, not that it would make anybody better, it would just mean that the person must have been around here a while... and knows the community or thread of his/her preference pretty well.

Maybe I shoulda posted this in the LNO Ideas forum, but not a whole lotta people read that... mebbe I'll cross post it (like a bad grasshopper), so Sensei will read it.

Anyway: again, this is not so much directed at [true Linuxnewbie] me, as it is to people that are really active in the forum of their choice and do help out... (not that I'd mind getting my brownbelt, though, dammit!)

Oh, and BTW: I'm not partial to BROWN, but was just using that as a metaphor to give you the idea of what I'm talking about... Brown would actually suck.

Comments?
Suggestions?
Amens?
F-Me's?
(tips?)

-per©

[KumaSan]

I hear ya perc. I feel there is definitely a need for some sort of intermediate ranking. Like you said, not for me, as I am firmly stuck in the land of the "newbie", but some people here are incredibly knoweledgeable(sp?) and it would be nice to kind of show that somehow.

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jaa, mata-ne...

[Sensei]

Good news is coming in 3 days:

These are some of the new features of the newest verison of this BBS software:

User Ratings

First off, the entire feature is optional. Admins can disable it if they don't want it. Otherwise, registered members can rate each other on a scale of 1-5. Only registered members can rate, and they can only rate a particular member one time (no stuffing the ballot box!).

Admins can elect to show all ratings or just display ratings for users that receive 4 or 5 stars (to keep lower-rated members from feeling bad).


I will enable this. But for 4-5 star only I don't want to make lower starred individuals feel bad unless we disagree otherwise.


Individual members can also elect to disallow rating for themselves. The rating is fairly intelligent-- all averages are weighted based on the rating of the person doing the rating. Thus, a member with a 5-star rating carries more clout in the overall averaging than a member with a rating of 1 star.

This feature is a great way of identifying "experts" on particular boards. User ratings are not actually available publicly yet, but I will be adding it to the beta group within a few days.

Bingo?! http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif


Private Messaging

How it works: A registered member can send a private message to any other member. The message can only be read by the person it was sent to. This is not email, BTW. You check your private messages on the forum (but you can also configure it to notify you by email when someone PMs you).

Members can add members to Ignore or Buddy lists- basically, if you put someone on your ignore list, they cannot send you a PM. Buddy lists are simply handy ways of keeping lists of people you commonly PM.

You can configure the UBB to only allow PMs between forum leaders (admins and moderators) or of course you can turn the feature off entirely. Members can keep a maximum of 100 people on their ban list and 100 people on their buddy list.

Private messages also act like topics between the two parties. If you send me a PM, for example, I can reply to it and you will see the entire "conversation". Each PM is in essence a topic between just those two people.

Individual members can determine whether they want to receive PMs and whether they want to be notified by email if they receive PMs.

All PMs are also marked as read or unread. You can also close a PM topic when you send it, preventing the recipient from responding directly to the PM.

Admins can remove individual members ability to send PMs.

I see this feature really opening up new communication lines between individuals. Such as people being thanked directly where someone might not be inclined to thank someone in the public forum. Or Mandeep can scheme to find 11000's home addy with someone in private instead of on the bbs http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/wink.gif lol.

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Sensei
LNO Seti Black Belts Team Stats
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_11027.html

Join the Linuxnewbie.org SETI Black Belts!
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_join_form&id=11027

[This message has been edited by Sensei (edited 28 January 2001).]

[YaRness]

ugh, rating? gee, and how many people have multiple usernames?

i said this i think in reply to the OTHER place perc posted this: the worth of a person's post is what's in it, not some number or word or picture beside their name indicating some arbitrary rank.

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"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind."
Registered Linux User #188285 http://counter.li.org/