Topic: Hero members, also based on registration time (Read 697 times)

I agree with everyone saying that titles don't mean much if anything regarding a poster's trustworthiness, knowledge, or status.

However, like it or not it seems that many people, especially newer posters, do put stock in that. I've seen more than one scam be facilitated because someone had hero or sr. member underneath their name.

To that extent, I think it would be harder to game and abuse the system for a scammer/shill/sockpuppet/whatever if registration date played a factor in getting titles. Something like what OP suggests sounds reasonable to me. Knowing what the price of bitcoin was when a user signed up would be a neat feature too.

Even if the way titles work doesn't change, it could be a good move to just put up registration date (or year+month) next to post count. I think it would be helpful and I think people would be a bit more wary of users who just opened their account in the last week, have tons of posts, and are trying to get people to send them stuff on the forums.

You're missing my point. I'm more likely to trust a newbie than someone that's been here for two years because I have no proof their an asshole or a scammer. The really heinous things that have happened here have been done by long time "Hero Members." I wouldn't let LukeJr wash my car and he's a dev and a pool sysop! Pirate, Clipse and Zhou Tong were long time respected members and screwed everyone blue. The only way to do it right if your going to do anything is remove all labels and force everyone to judge people by their actions. Remove all tags and labels except those that can protect - like scammer. 

You don't even know you can trust my word. I've been here two years using two different nicks and have more than 2500 posts between the two. You don't get credibility just because you've been here a long time or posted a lot. You get it by not screwing anyone and being civil in at least the majority of your posts. MPOE-PR and Matthew N. Wright are actually very bright and sometimes have good info to share but their delivery is so caustic that it undoes any benefit. Phinnaeus Gage is very trustworthy (I'd loan him money because I know he wouldn't ask unless he really needed it and he'd pay it back) and started Bitcoin100 but screws around sooo much that its hard to tell. People need to be rated individually by you alone not by the forum admin.

I know I'll get some stick for this being a hero member myself but honestly, the silly titles and status' on your forum profile meant nothing to begin with, it's whether you actively trade with other Bitcointalk members and so on and prove yourself trustworthy that makes the real difference I've noticed. It's like this obsession people have with achievements in computer games, all they are are just a bunch of stats that a programmer has labelled, it doesn't necessarily mean you've done anything worthwhile with your time.

I agree
Of course those tags don't mean much but if you're ok with tags meaning nothing when tied to post number, why aren't you ok with tags meaning nothing when tied to post number+date of arrival ?

Everyone has his own way to value people they don't know (yes, reading posts is better but sometimes you don't have time), so we'll never all agree. Maybe a forum mod can allow us to chose which calculation we want

Those tags don't mean anything to almost anyone and even your system can't be relied on to mean anything. Learn to deal with each person based on actions and forget those stupid badges. I think they should remove them altogether.

Example:  Matthew N. Wright has been here for two years and... well... figure it out for yourself. He has almost 6,000 posts - looks like he's deleting because it used to be more.

               Chaang Noi has been here for a year and a half and would like to be a scammer but isn't quite bright enough to make it work. I wouldn't buy an apple from him if he married my sister.

               Vladimir has been here well over two years and ran his own competing forum where everyone had to drink tea and say cheerio and kiss each others ass or they would be banned. He went on a tirade once posting some shit in all his old posts about how bad this forum was and he would never return because of forum security or some shit. He is a Con Man extraordinaire and has 3500 posts.

               MPOE-PR has been here almost a year and a half and is an obnoxious bitchy old drag queen. He has 3500 posts.
               
               Nefario was here since December of 2010, used to be a mod and ran Bitcoins first bond exchange and is now labeled a scammer and left in disgrace.
     
              Phinnaeus Gage has been here for two years and talks about fucking goats in just about every other thread he posts in and has 12,000+ posts. (Love you Bruno  )

The list goes on and on but the point is deal with each person individually. Don't look at their labels - look at their actions. No amount of labels, badges or tags are going to keep stupid people from being scammed. Also, protect yourself and use #bitcoin-otc and the OTC web of trust. It's not perfect but it works damn well for weeding out the bad eggs.

Maybe we could also have a "Since $X", where X is BTCUSD when you registered on the forums. This way, you'll be able to see who joined near the peak ($200, etc) and who has being here all the way since $0.50 or $4 or $10

Yeh I too have noticed the increase in hero members. It definitely used to be something more or less special.

Then again I can barely talk  I'd be more than happy to give up my hero member in order to bring back credibility to it again.

My opinions on posters are based on what they are posting, not the post count or the title.

Come on

Hero member used to be nice. It meant something.

(I know I mean nothing, I'm just a junior or full)

Then you see a hero member in a post, instantly he gains credibility. Then it appears he posted 600 posts in 2 weeks.

What about something like:

- hero no sooner after 1.5 years active
- senior member no sooner after 1 year active
- full member no sooner after 6 months

?

(yes I'll be downgraded)