Forum Qualifications

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

I hadn’t noticed that the first letter is a Greek letter alpha! Μιλάς Ελληνικος, Walt? 

No, I don't. However, I encounter Greek text fairly often while proofreading old books online at Distributed Proofreaders, and helping others with the proofreading and other work there as we prepare digital versions of the books for publication at Project Gutenberg.

[walt.farrell]

Suddenly, today, the Member Title field is showing up on my profile. Perhaps it appears after 500 posts, since this one makes 508 for me?

[catlover]

I'll keep an eye on the post count then....

BTW : how did you get that greek text in there ?

[Pšenda]

On 16. 5. 2018 at 10:21 PM, αℓƒяє∂ said:

albeit unnecessarily discriminatory!

The level of qualification should correspond to the user's knowledge, and his relevance to advise others.

If anyone could write anything, it would lose importance.

 

On 16. 5. 2018 at 7:51 PM, αℓƒяє∂ said:

based on your post count

This is not a sufficient sign of the quality of knowledge :-) 

[Alfred]

9 hours ago, catlover said:

BTW : how did you get that greek text in there ?

 

I pasted it, but thanks to @walt.farrell I now have a Greek keyboard that I can switch to.

 

5 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

The level of qualification should correspond to the user's knowledge, and his relevance to advise others.

If anyone could write anything, it would lose importance.

 

This [your post count] is not a sufficient sign of the quality of knowledge :-) 

 

Agreed in all particulars! However, I suppose it could be argued that a ‘Dedicated User’ is only noted as being dedicated to frequent posting, not necessarily dedicated to posting anything useful and/or interesting.

[Pšenda]

7 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

is only noted as being dedicated to frequent posting

This can be determined from the number of posts, so this is an improper rating / qualification.

[R C-R]

15 hours ago, Pšenda said:

The level of qualification should correspond to the user's knowledge, and his relevance to advise others.

First of all, I think an ideal qualification system should be based on helpfulness, not just knowledge. That includes knowledge & relevance, but it also includes accuracy, completeness, & clarity. Clarity is particularly important because a reply a user does not understand is not very helpful, even if it is 100% accurate & complete.

 

But more to the point, how could any such system actually be implemented? Who gets to judge how knowledgeable or helpful a user might be, or for that matter how relevant or complete their advice typically is? For one thing, the OP often is not clear about what the issue is, or does not provide enough relevant info about it, so it can take several replies asking for more info (often from different users) just to determine what the issue is or the most relevant kind of advice. For another, topics often start off about one thing & then branch out to include several others, with different users asking questions & several others trying to answer them with varying levels of completeness or relevance to the original issue. Beyond that, some users don't post anything because they have found the answer they were looking for just by reading what others have written.

 

I don't think there is any practical way to objectively quantify how qualified any forum participant might be -- too much of it is subjective, varying from person to person.