I'm on vacation for a couple more weeks (and will soon have very intermittent web access), but in the meantime I thought I'd put this out there. If anyone has suggestions for new (or different) user titles, I'd be glad to consider them when I return mid-April. Currently they are: 0-19 posts, Seedling / New Member 20-99 posts, Climber / Established Member 100-999 posts, Plant Enthusiast 1000+ posts, Plant Expert. Criticisms / problems with the current scheme: 1) Some people find "Seedling" and "Climber" confusing 2) Biased toward green plants Keep in mind that after someone has been registered for the forums for 30 days and has 30 posts, he/she has the ability to generate a custom user title, so anything above 30+ posts is a default title.
Maybe make it more consistent by maintaining plant growth theme initiated with 'Seedling' through whole sequence. However, I would not suggest establishing an advanced participation category named 'Fruit'.
I think they're cute, personally. I find a sense of humor absolutely necessary, though I'm glad I'm not a sapling. A fruit, seedy, an old snag. (Oh, we could have such fun with words! Where's my plant glossary...) And what's wrong with being biased toward green plants? As opposed to what...fungi? I don't want to be a puffball either, lol. Or a spore. The only reason the terms are confusing is because you have to dig around a bit to find out what they mean. I like the terms, I see no reason to change them. There's really no one place that details all the user privileges and levels. They're sorta linked all over in several threads.
how about senescent for high post counts? I think the plant xpert one is misleading, just because one might be loquacious does not mean one is an expert.
Lets include some of the other gardening basics, like fertilizer. For instance "Full of ___" for the high posters. Ralph
Perhaps we should consider having the user-defined title appear after the one that is system-assigned rather than having it replaced all together. Here's a 'tell-it-like-it-is' version: Newcomer Up-and-Comer (nixed Dabbler) Regular or Frequenter Resident or Longtimer If you want to get fancy, the title can be italicized if a member hasn't logged in for a specified period to denote an inactive member.
Yeah, but that would make me dabbler. Which is sorta like a diletente. Which I'm not. And I only post if I have something to say...which is hard because Ron always says it first. On one hand you don't want to assume high # of posts equals expertise. But on the other hand, a lower number of post doesn't equal a lack of it either.
