Member 'rank' on this forum? (question for mods & all)

#1 · 06-05-2010 11:09am #1

I've been wondering lately if there's any way to highlight various members posts here? There's a lot of serious professionals here who give great advice to beginners, but there's also amateurs and hobbyists giving very bad advice. Often I see good answer drowned out by 10 bad answers. I always try to add 'thanks' to answers that are good, but it's not a great solutions.

Is there some mechanism to help that situation at all? As people currently have no way to tell the difference between the good & bad advice and experienced people and amateurs.

What do people think?

Eoin · 06-05-2010 10:22pm

Sounds a bit elitist to me. If there are people giving crap advice, then the professionals should be able to point out why it's bad advice while not being abusive. Who should be the judge of what advice is best?

06-05-2010 11:01pm

eoin wrote: »

Sounds a bit elitist to me. If there are people giving crap advice, then the professionals should be able to point out why it's bad advice while not being abusive. Who should be the judge of what advice is best?

Elitist is putting people on a pedestal for no real reasons. Acknowledging that someone who's working as a professional web designer/developer for a few years might have more knowledge than someone who's made 3 websites isn't elitist. Also, someone like that may be able to give a 1 sentence answer that's correct, and someone else might right a much longer post.

The people answering the questions can be the judge of what they choose to follow, but I consistently see very smart and experienced people writing answer that get washed away by the other's who are just throwing their oar in. That's fine, this is a forum, but if people knew a bit more about the posters, it could help them weight those answers more effectively.

Eoin · 06-05-2010 11:42pm

That's not what elitist means, but I think you know what I mean. People can always put their portfolio in their signature. Putting in a "rep system" has been mooted many times on this site.

07-05-2010 8:59am

Well, I still don't think it's elitist to highlight people with experience.
Checking people's portfolio's is a lot of work, and not something newbies will neccessarily be able to understand.

It would have a lot of benefit, but probably not applicable on such a general forum as this.

Axwell · 07-05-2010 1:12pm

I understand your point P but a lot of the time the advice given is opinion based rather than a set answer or solution to a question.

Most of the time the questions asked on here are in the form of

Whats the best
-cms
-book
-way to start web design
-course to do

After that its people looking for a review of their new site, again a lot of the stuff is opinionated rather than a definitive answer.

It wouldnt be right to rank or highlight one users opinion ahead of others and would be too hard to apply this method to just certain type questions I would imagine. It would probably only work if the questions were filtered more where opinion based ones are on one forum and direct code or design problems were on another.

skelliser · 07-05-2010 2:12pm

I agree with this suggestion. I would class myself on the beginner/novice level so any oppurtunity to see answers and opinions from people with loads of professional experience can only be a good thing.
I beleive if newbies see experienced professionals offering advice and opinions it will encourage more people to post.

I also beleive that this will also contribute in a small way to setting some proper standards of work and particularly a framework of education that this industry badly needs.

Eoin · 07-05-2010 2:38pm

Well, maybe something like a sticky "Introduce yourself" thread where anyone can put one post with details of their background. I just don't like the idea of ranks and/or emphasising certain people's posts. Who would decide who the experts are?

ocallagh · 08-05-2010 1:48am

Short term this might work. Medium to Long term it wold be detrimental to the forum. It would create a divide, discourage new users from posting. Forum would grow stale IMO

jmcc · 09-05-2010 4:51pm

Good idea. It might stop newbies offering me advice on domain names.

Seriously though, it could help with identifying the quality of advice given in the forum. Some of the stuff I've read here has solved problems. The problem for a forum like this is in maintaining the signal to noise ratio and many good posters don't post here as much as they used to. That's not down to poor moderation but rather from having to wade through piles of newbie threads before finding an interesting one. A lot of newbie questions could be simply answered by a FAQ thread that could be stickied.

Regards...jmcc

Bob_Harris · 10-05-2010 12:30pm

Years of "experience" does not imply good up to date knowledge of the area of their "expertise".

mewso · 10-05-2010 3:32pm

When it comes to html for example there are many ways to boil an egg as it were. If someone asks how to make a page look a certain way and someone replies with a way that works often the original poster is perfectly happy with that even if it's not standards compliant, accessible or whatever. When people are happy with something that just works then it doesn't matter what the credentials of the respondent are.

People don't often ask here whats the best way to do this in a standards compliant and accessible manner or how can I make this javascript work in an unobtrusive way. They just ask how they can make it work.

I don't post here too often due to time constraints but if I do I try to give the standards way or the unobtrusive javascript way but you can only be told "I just want it to work. I'll figure out the best way once I understand it" so many times. As has been said above if there are a number of replies it's up to the person asking whose advice to take.

Pixelcraft · 27-05-2010 1:57am

I personally think something needs to be done. To take recent examples, someone comes on looking for good software, and they're recommended a cms, or vice versa. That's just bad, wrong and impractical advice, nothing to do with elitism or differing opinions. A lot of the forums here are heavily moderated (thinking of the soccer & rugby forums), perhaps something here needs to be moderated in a similar way, have a mod that know's their stuff, with no agendas limit bad advice

Axwell · 27-05-2010 11:57am

I think as Jmcc said above, a lot of the questions that are on here could be answered in FAQ type stickies.

I wanna get into web design,
- What books,
- What software
- What CMS
- What course/tutorials

That would remove a lot of the standard threads and leave only ones where people need specific adivce or solutions to a problem with their site or a piece of code.

27-05-2010 1:11pm

Yea, I agree, that will probably help people get good advice to the most common problems.

red_ice · 07-06-2010 2:58am

I don’t agree with this idea at all and with all due respect to P, it does come across quite elitist to me. It’s obvious that P is well established in this industry and i know first hand he gives great advice, but it doesn’t mean he deserves more attention in his posts than joe soap. It will cause friction in certain areas and because someone may have a firm grasp of one thing but no understanding of another, yet their word will be taken more seriously than someone with a lesser 'rank' than the other.

However, if the system was to work it would mean that their 'rank' would have to be divided into multiple categories. Coding languages/Design skills/Design Areas/3d and so on. tbh, im not going to pay more attention to someone because their advice is higher 'ranked' than another persons because everyone’s word regardless of relevance is important.

Member 'rank' on this forum? (question for mods & all)

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