User Titles

[Brandon Martus]

Hey,

We need some suggestions for user titles.

What is a user title you ask?
Look over to the left, under my name.

It says 'ChiefDelphi.com Webmaster'.

After a certain number of posts, you can customize that.
But until you hit that predetermined number, you are classified by your # of posts.

So, reply to this thread with suggestions on these ranges:


0-50 posts
50-100 posts
100-150 posts


(after 150 posts, you can customize your user title)

Thanks,

[Jessica Boucher]

0-50 = Forum Newbie
51-100 = Forum Regular
101-150 = Forum Addict

but thats just another early morning post of mine

[Ken Leung]

0-50 = Quite surfer
51-100 = Regular speaker
101-150 = Addicted Posters
150< Post-a-holic (with custom title)

[Andy Baker]

Here are some more creative ideas:

0-50 = Bolt sorter
50-100 = Fabricator Extraordinaire
100-150 = Robot Assembler
150+ = Designer

0-50 = Wire cutter
50-100 = Solder King
100-150 = Programmer
150+ = Designer

0-50 = Fuse
50-100 = Spike
100-150 = Speed Controller
150+ = Robot Controller

enough for now.

Andy B.

[Jessica Boucher]

....just not my thing, I guess...every time I look at robot-related levels I think of the back of our team t-shirts with the different funding levels: Nuts & bolts, Energizers, Power Pistons, & Circuit Breakers.

[Matt Reiland]

Here it is

0-10 Posts - New Member :confused:
11-50 Posts - Member ;)
51-500 Posts - Cool Member :D
500+ Posts - Dr Joe Wannabe :cool:

[Paul Marshall]

0-50 Newbie
51-100 Junior Member
101-150 Member
>150 Custom

kinda bland, but i like it :)

[Grivooga]

Forget the titles. They don't serve a useful purpose, they make new users think that there is a level of l33tness that they need to achieve before they will be acknowledged as being equal with everyone else. I've seen it happen on other boards. I think that the people on this board are mostly above the petty issues that I've seen on other boards. Nevertheless many people will see the titles as a kind of ranking to be won. Some people will post for no reason other than to add another number to their post count. This just adds confusion to what can already be an intimidating experience for new users who aren't familiar with the experience.
I suggest foregoing the intermediate steps and allowing people to use custom titles after only a few posts. Maybe 20-30. Anyone that's interested enough to post even that few number of times can probably be trusted with a title of their choosing.

[Bill Whitley]

I like the idea of titles, it's a neat little gimmick as a sign of dedication to the forums... But I wonder if we again will get people posting just to add another notch to their belt...I hope not. I enjoyed the rankings, we shall see if these work. I hope so.

Bill Whitley

I am looking to start a U of Michigan team next year
interested in helping? email me. bill@billwhitley.net

[Matt Leese]

Anything that makes me sound big and powerful is fine by me. ;)
But seriously, if you have levels, one of the top ones should most definatley be FIRST-a-holic. And to those who don't think that having some sort of ranking is important, I believe it is because of the type of advice given out here during the season. In general, those who have a long posting history tend to give reliable advice. Not to say that unreliable advice has been given here but as the forums grow that's more likely. This would help people weed out the trusted sources (those who've been around awhile) from the untrusted.

Matt

[Jeff Wong]

I agree with Grivooga. Ranking will make people feel inferior to others. I post on lots of other forums and see people jus post a random post just to get themselves to the next level.

However there is a good idea for rankings. For people that wants to have a higher rank they will have to post more which means that more people will be involved in the conversations that happens around here. So there is a good and bad side to rankings. I really don't care if there is a ranking or not.

Jeff Wong :cool:

[Justin]

I agree with Jess' suggestions. :p

-Justin

[Andrew Dahl]

I have to concur-
just posting for posting sake really increases the noise to signal ratio in the forums-

(i hope no one takes this badly as I was a horrible lurker this past year just reading and not posting)

But I pledge (stop boooing) that all my post will have some semblence of coherence (except for this one)

dahl
Project leader- and loving ever minute of it!!!

[Erin]

I viewed other vB boards... how about this..

"Junior Member"
"Member"
"Senior Member"


wow. how hard was that?

didn't your teachers ever tell you to keep it simple, silly?

Erin

[Brandon Martus]

yea erin,
those are the default values
but they're customizable....

i just thought we could all get creative :)

[mike o'leary]

0-50: newbie
50-100: needs-a-life
100-150: CDA member
150+: custom title

CDA= Chief Delphi Anonymous

[Joe Ross]

Seeing as how it would take most people a year to reach 50 posts on the old forum, I think that the first milestone should be 20 posts (or at least something smaller). After that, I would suggest the next milestone to be 100 and then 200.

Possible sequence: Rookie, Vetran, First-a-holic

Based on the experiences I have had at other forums, getting that custom message is quite a milestone, enough that it causes people to post too much. To alleviate this, would it be possible to not make the custom message occur at a specific number of posts, but when a moderator thinks that a person has earned the right to stand out from the crowd?

This would keep people from posting too much just to get the custom title. It would also reward the people who spend thier time hear making meanifull responses.

In other words, you wouldn't get a custom message by only posting in the chit-chat forum ;)

[Joel J]

How about using a progress bar to indiciate a user's standing in the forum...

it could get a little wider every 10, or so, posts and would be replaced by a custom title after 150....

http://robofreak.com/progress.gif

[mike o'leary]

i could very well be wrong, but from what i understand its not possible for the user titles to be for any ranges other then the 0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150+...or is it?
does anyone know the answer to this?

[Lora Knepper]

Originally posted by Joe Ross
Seeing as how it would take most people a year to reach 50 posts on the old forum, I think that the first milestone should be 20 posts (or at least something smaller). After that, I would suggest the next milestone to be 100 and then 200.

Possible sequence: Rookie, Vetran, First-a-holic

Based on the experiences I have had at other forums, getting that custom message is quite a milestone, enough that it causes people to post too much.

I've seen the same thing happen on forums I frequent...so much so that often the admin has just let everyone have a custom title from the moment of registration. It helps solve the issue of "title-envy". Though if you want to do the graduated system with post number, I'd have to say I think Joe's ideas are the best.

~ lora

[Joel J]

Originally posted by mike o'leary
i could very well be wrong, but from what i understand its not possible for the user titles to be for any ranges other then the 0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150+...or is it?
does anyone know the answer to this? Those are the forum's default values, but an edit to the templates can easily make this customizable to anything the admin wants.

[Brandon Martus]

yea

if we got real creative i could specify it for each individual post :)

the admin area lets me choose 'once user hits X #of posts, their title is _________'

[Jay Lundy]

If it is possible to use a image as your title you could do this:

Make a table and decide how wide you want the maxiumum so be (say 200 pixels)
Make a picture of a star and make it 40 pixels wide
Set that star pic as the background of the table (it should tile exactly 5 times, making 5 stars)
Use the # of posts the person has to set the length of the table; say you decide 200 posts = 5 stars, then all you have to do is use the number of posts as the width of the table! (Say you want to make 300 posts = 5 stars, then you need to multiply the number of posts by 300/200 or 1.5 before using that to set the width of the table)
[/list=1]
I think that would be really cool because people would have say one star, and then a portion of another and it shows an image representation of how many posts they have.
With the numbers I used above,
[list]
1 star = 40 posts
2 stars = 80 posts
3 stars = 120 posts
4 stars = 160 posts
5 stars = 200 posts

Oh, then after you reach past 5 stars, you can start getting into leutenant, general, colonel, and all that stuff with different pictures for each one

[Anthony S.]

too many random posts

I agree with whoever said that. If there is a goal number, people will be just saying stuff just to put raise their status. It would make things too complicated. Those numbers are kind of high. Just my opinion.

[Jay Lundy]

Originally posted by Anthony S.
people will be just saying stuff just to put raise their status.
Yes, I have seen some of the stuff people have done on other forums to increase their status (create threads then proceed to post "spam" 400 times in them (BAD :o )), but I highly doubt we'll find anyone on this forum who will stoop to that level. This is not exactly a public internet community like most places where random people can do whatever they want and no one will ever meet them face to face, so they don't really care. Here, almost everyone knows everyone else and has seen them in person, so it's very unlikely people will do that. And even if they do, Brandon has complete control over this forum so there can be consequences. Plus, if you notice, at the bottom right corner of each post there is a link that says "report this post to a moderator". Random posters beware...

Also, those numbers I came up with were off the top of my head and can be changed really easily, heres another example:

max table width = 100 pixels
table height = 20 pixels
star image width = 20 pixels
star image height = 20 pixels
100 posts = 5 stars
table width = #ofPosts

that way:

1 star = 20 posts
2 stars = 40 posts
3 stars = 60 posts
4 stars = 80 posts
5 stars = 100 posts

As you can see, these numbers can be easily customized.

[EDIT] Here is an example of one of these bars. It's not a table, it's a picture, but this is what one of them would look like. In this example, someone has 34 posts, one full star (20 posts) + a portion of another (14 posts):
http://dagnabit.org/~krazikamikaze/star.gif

[mike o'leary]

Originally posted by Jay Lundy
[B]
Yes, I have seen some of the stuff people have done on other forums to increase their status (create threads then proceed to post "spam" 400 times in them (BAD))
dont spam in these forums...its not good

Plus, if you notice, at the bottom right corner of each post there is a link that says "report this post to a moderator". Random posters beware...


that might be a bit harsh for random posting, especially since theres a whole forum practically dedicated to it (chit-chat)
however...if anyone were to spam on these forums, reporting them to a moderator is certaintly an appropriate course of action

maybe if the moderators notice someone who seems to be doing a lot of random posting they could send him or her a private message or email or something and tell them to cool it

[Jeff Wong]

that might be a bit harsh for random posting, especially since theres a whole forum practically dedicated to it (chit-chat)

Mike, The Chit-Chat forum is for Off-topic discussions. That does not mean random posting of stuff. There is still something to talk about and not ramdonness like you post, Mike. That also goes with Andrew Kostka.

[mike o'leary]

i dont post much random stuff anymore...or at least not too much
im being good...i swear!