dorf wrote on Nov 15
th, 2005 at 3:14pm:
In my opinion, if it was decided to increase the number of postings required as the threshold for each particular level of membership, which was a good idea since many of them were too low, members should have kept their previous status, regardless of whether or not they had met the newly imposed thresholds. It is that which concerns me - not reaching any particular coined or designated level.
Dorf,
I do not think most forum software, especially the Freeware YaBB forum software, is clever enough to do what you would like it to. Namely impose a new hurdle to pass to graduate to the next level for all forum members who have not yet got there whilst still allowing those who had got there under the old targets to retain their position. Also if one takes an analogous but reverse situation such as as New Labour moving the goalposts so 50% of GCSE and A level students get an A it is true they do not then uprate my old C grades at O level to the A grades they would now undoubtedly be worth if they were to review the matter retrospectively. But in my opinion this would in fact be a fairer situation were it to happen as it would also if my 1985 university degree grade was increased from a borderline 2:2 (about 1 mark short of 2:1) to the high 2:1 it would now be worth in modern currency.
Clearly what has happened here is that Daniel has changed the name of the top class of ordinary forum membership from Superior Member to Supreme Member and also changed the number of posts required. But perhaps Daniel didn't even do this and it was in fact Carsten, Spike and co over at
www.yabbforum.com who have made these changes in YaBB v2.1 And perhaps Daniel has not chosen to or is in fact unable to change where the bar has now been set to qualify for these various classes of membership.
Assuming that there may not be an option to add extra classes of membership then as the posts total grows the only option is to raise the level of posts required before a particular membership level is granted. Now of course in a school exam scenario you would still have the old qualification in your file but in this web environment, which does not repspect history or yesteryear, if a new pass level is required then we must all fall into line with it.
If you do not like it I suggest you make an On Topic post on the matter over in Site Related as I fear that if we continue the discussion here it will not be long before Dave and/or DaveM appear in this thread blowing their moderator's whistle and demanding that we continue this discussion elsewhere and not in the Future of 0870 thead.
Being a Supreme Member I can honestly say it is no different a feeling from being a Superior Member or even a Senior Member was. The only matter which I do probably derive some small satisfaction from is having the most posts in the forum. But as I said before I do hope that other forum members would not hope to takeover that mantle by cheating with short posts and would only get there because they have even more than I to say than I do about all matters related to legitimate discussion in this web forum.