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Jackson,
All of your reasoning seems sound for senior membership guidelines. To me, senior membership has always meant nothing more than being judged by you to be a trusted, contributing member of this forum. Hell, anyone can post to this forum as long as their original registration is accepted. Not being given senior status just means that your posts will not appear in real time. Big fat hairy deal! Life goes on. Anyone who wants to participate here needs to understand that it is a privilege, and that privilege can be taken away unilaterally by you. They need to understand that you have a life, and you can not spend all of your time dealing with their petty BS. If they don't like the rules, which are extremely fair and accomodating, then they can go try to find a better forum. Ain't gonna happen.
Thanks again for all the hard work that it takes to run this board and thanks for letting all members - senior [b]and regular[/b] - have their voices be heard.
Wow, first one here.
O.k.: I spend most of WSG time in Brazil -- a fairly well-detailed section on this site. I've noticed a tendency over the last few years toward a heavy degradation of content (away from focus on sex). This may be an inevitability given that the scene down there is so well canvassed by the many excellent archived reports. People, in other words, want to talk about the place in some way -- so they fabricate discussions around the ancillary concerns of the commited sex-tourist (phone cards, hotels, transpo, etc.). Questions, in other words, that could be answered through the purchase of a travel guide.
So what is a senior member to do in this arena? Well, beyond the tight and detailed elucidation of a new scene, or an old scene done in a new way -- it has to be about education and advice. It has to be about improving the aforementioned scene by the elimnation of the Griswald-factor in new-or-early hobbyists. So in the end it comes down to preserving a good thing (for myself) by not spoiling the girls due to undereducated rookies. Dunno.
So the Senior-or-Regular Member question becomes a little blurry given the excess of information available in some of the sections on this site. If it's a question of, "What roles (generally) do each play?," senior members should be defined as those capable of providing wisdom for any given scene -- which of course comes from experience with that scene; and regular members should be defined as those less comfortable with the exact details and procedures.
So, then, in the end senior member have to be considered more valuable because they hold more info -- but much of that info's already been archived (and thus is only being repeated when it's delivered "anew").
It's funny -- I hobbied through about 30 countries before I even found this site. Hobbying was always sorta a no-brainer for me. It made sense and the rules were clear. I guess some people need a little more coaching.
Maybe this is the solution (and it in a predicts what might be the next forum discussion):
Synthesize excellent older reports into the beginning section of any given city/scene -- answering all of the classic questions for that scene -- and then let the day-to-day posting continue (as it has been). This will let the "regular" members hit the ground running and let senior members fine-tune the discussion around maximizing the dollar-to-ass ratio.
Jesus. Whatever. It all comes down to the point that most people are too lazy to read the archives (much less a tour-guide). Sorry I wrote so much and said so little.
Forgive me for this novel,
JWadd
Jackson,
Regarding Question 1:"What does Senior Member status mean to you? "
It means you've been here a while, though in the Washington State boards those that post regularly are known.
Regarding Question 2: "Do we need Regular Member/Senior Member designations?"
I would prefer Moderated, Regular and Senior. There are a fair number of Regular members in the Seattle section that are posting good information that winds up being posted after some of the value has gone.
Regarding Question 3: "Are the criteria reasonable? Are they too restrictive? What would you modify? "
Yes it seems reasonable to have a standard to allow us to continue to have access to solid up-to-date information. Though I would really prefer not to have to change my login name (see below)
Regarding Question 4: "Is the review procedure reasonable? Is it too cumbersome? What would you modify?"
I like the review, if you can keep up with it!
+My question for you:
Will my login "I Twenty-Five Hundred" meet the requirements for Senior membership? Maybe some of the logins could be grandfathered in? Or should I request to have it changed now?
Keep up the good work!
Thanks,
i25
Hi,
Thanks for bringing this issue up, I was just telling myself I should find and read the instructions one day, to find out how to get senior membership. :-)
My comments :
Number of posts : I always return to the same places for ages, so I no longer post descriptions of my own experiences or reviews of a place. Places I go to have been already reviewed times and times again and, for my own experiences, I would just be repeating myself. On the other hand, I can reply (more) quickly to questions as I know my places inside out. Most of the time very briefly (just giving a link, name of a place or a girl, short description, etc...), no detailed reports. No sure this fits in your planned policy, but I think my contributions can be more relevant than a ten paragraphs long report buried many months back.
Review procedures: Request for upgrade must be seconded by a current Senior member. Most of the time, I reply to questions from newbies who, by definition, are regular members, not senior ones. Not sure many seniors will bother going to the Upgrade Request forum, then to find and read posts they are not interested in and give support. You can then end up having posts ending like this "if you appreciate my contribution, pleeeaaase go to the Upgrade Request forum and support my nomination" ;-). Most of other forums go the other way round. If a senior member finds spams or irrelevant posts from another senior, he reports it to the moderator/administrator, who can then decide to delete the post and/or downgrade that member.
Just my 2 cents
1. What does Senior Member status mean to you?
For me, Senior Member status only means that I have passed some meaningful measure of trust, so that WSGF can safely assume that I am not a spammer and I can post without delay (important to me). The delay slows down communication. The delay also makes it a little more complicated to stay on top of all new posts, including the delayed ones.
2. Do we need Regular Member/Senior Member designations?
Only to the extent:
a) to protect WSGF from spammers and other nuisances
b) to minimize inconvenience to members.
3. Are the criteria reasonable? Are they too restrictive? What would you modify?
I have not minded my "waiting period" too much, as I understood that it helped keep the forum uncluttered, pleasant, and effective. I would not have minded if this 30-day period were longer for that reason. This is assuming that posts would be placed in the forum within 48 hours of posting.
4. Is the review procedure reasonable? Is it too cumbersome? What would you modify?
a) I just hope that upgrades would occur at a reasonable pace.
b) It might be reasonable to give some time delay after a decision and before deleting. Some members might not be able to read WSGF often enough to catch the decision (and any posted Forum Administrator reasons) made on their requested upgrade. I wonder if the Forum engine allows for an upgrade request post (and perhaps and all related posts) to be moved to a different Topic, say "Decisions to Upgrade" or "Decisions to NOT Upgrade". Perhaps then, any posts older than say two weeks would be deleted within these "Decided" Topics. Also, new posts may or may not be allowed in these "Decided" Topics.
Jackson,
Thanks as always for your work on all this, which shows the careful hand inherent in all you've done. On to the questions...
1. What does Senior Member status mean to you?
Simply that my postings show up when I make them, and are thus connected to the flow of discussions. The single most annoying factor about regular member postings is that they sometimes appear in a thread after I've read several messages further along, and I can miss them.
2. Do we need Regular Member/Senior Member designations?
I understand the need to keep serial spammers off the board, something especially problematic in a non-threaded open-registration system, and so clearly some kind of filtering function seems necessary. The regular/senior approach, or something like that, is similar to what other systems seem to use with success, and seems a reasonable solution.
That said, the differences in designation as you've laid them out seem to do more than simply act as a deterrent to serial spammers, since you make the distinction between those who give and those who primarily ask for information. In truth, you've also moved people up and down in status in at times rather mysterious ways (I mostly understand your position on Samus/Z, but never got the whole thing with Skinless being moved down and then back up, for example. And, no, this is not a complaint or request for more insight on that -- I said my piece at the time) and this has ended up being perceived as a status and/or puunishment issue, which I suspect, is part of what leads to the vanity plate issue. Having a clear process will help de-mystify things, if nothing else.
3. Are the criteria reasonable? Are they too restrictive? What would you modify?
As I see it, the core of what you're asking for to gain senior membership designation is sharing information, which is the bottom-line purpose of this board, so the real issue is the specifics.
The five and ten report minimums seem ok in general, though I can see people who aren't in major US metropolitan areas struggling some to get to that level. Perhaps a detailed report option for the US might also make sense, though I recognize that there are LE issues that come into play.
I do think that people who ask questions, presuming they're ones that show some degree of care and aren't simply the same ones regurgitated over and over, can make solid contributions to the board. I'm also curious as to how you would see someone like RN, who clearly has been a valuable contributor to the board, fitting into the Senior Member criteria.
4. Is the review procedure reasonable? Is it too cumbersome?
It does feel a bit cumbersome, though not terribly so. I don't see Senior Members not being willing to make comments about member contributions, though one worry I'd have is the system being flooded with a bunch of messages saying, "hey, guys, please go into the Senior Member Upgrade section and support my upgrade." That will be every bit as annoying as some of the other repetitious posts. I'm less clear on the duration of this process, in terms of how long the comment period might be, and how you intend to handle situations where, say, ten senior members say, yup, this is a regular member who should be upgraded, and two say, this guy doesn't deserve it.
5. What would you modify?
Honestly, my main worry is that by making things more formalized the end result might be more and not less work for you, as you may well end up with a larger number of regular members, and thereby more postings you must read and approve. Though you do a truly admirable job at that, I'd personally rather have you freed up to focus on site improvements.
I also find the yearly review process less than clear, and running rather cunter to the whole openness of the upgrade review procedure.
6. How do other forums handle this situation?
Many other forums make use of moderators as a way of reducing the wear and tear on the system operator by sharing the workload. In some systems they are the ones who move people up and down. I would suggest you consider that as an option for, at the very least, reviewing posts by Regular Members as it has several potential benefits -- first, it encourages a cadre of senior members to stay involved, it would cut down on your workload, and, next, it could result in faster appearance of those postings and thereby a better flow. The board is far enough along that you can no doubt identify at least a few people whose judgement on approving postings you could trust -- that's obviously a different level of good sense that's needed as opposed to having moderators who actually prune discussions or ban or upgrade members.
I may have other thoughts later as I consider this more, but that's my initial take on things.
I certailly did not appreciate the difficulty in drawing the distinction between regular and senior. One alternative would be to consider "probationary" and "regular" members. Otherwise I have no problem with the proposed sriteria other than I'd eliminate the "I'm going to be in city X on date Y, can anyone tell me where the action is?". It seems that posting ten of these messages for the USA would qualify. It doesn't seem that it would be that hard to use a screen that a posting be either fact sharing or opinion sharing, and if that were the screen it might even be possible, over time, to lower the threshold for qualification.
Firstly, Jackson - great work, and thanks for maintaining a valuable resource.
As I see it, there are only 2 priorities to this membership status:
1) To keep crap and spammers off the site
2) To help eliminate or reduce your work load.
The third factor, of members getting a bloated ego from 'senoir' status is crap. Don't give it another thought. Earn the status, or get lost. It's not a measure of virility or manliness, just a measure of usefulness and credibility in this forum. We're not counting our episodes with women like schoolboys here - we've gone a step or two beyond caring about that.
How can this process be helped?
Well, if you haven't got a relatively simple software solution to categorising members, then forget it - it's too much of your time wasted still. e can't expect you to read every post in every forum. That's simply nuts!
I'm ignorant of how your database works, but it seems to me that you could probably enlist the help of senior members here.
If your system allowed senior members to give a 'yes' or 'no' response to posts, then the junior members could be automatically scored for you. Amass too many NO posts from seniors, and get banned (both senior or junior members can be banned). Amass enough YES posts and get elevated to senior (and get voting rights).
Get a mixture of YES and NO responses, and remain in a tentative 'junior' status.
From a users point of view, all this would take is two columns for tick boxes beside each post(one for YES, one for NO), and we (seniors) tick one or another to judge the poster and submit the result to the database. Even if only 10% of seniors bother to score posts, it'll still quickly weed out the spammers and the dreamers.
Another precaution though, if a spammer were to sneak into 'senior' status, and then elevated other bugus members to senior, the database could look at who voted spammers into 'senior' status, and ban them as well, or drop them into junior status to prevent them elevating any more bogus members to a position of control. They'll stand out like crazy - as the few lone supporters of posts with a huge number of 'NO' votes against them. Simply cancel any members that have given a number of positive responses to members that the majority of other users vote NO to, and ban or reduce the status of those they supported.
This way we can eliminate all the crap without your continuous input.
Great work man. I hope you still get to enjoy the subject at the heart of this project, rather than toiling over the project itself!
Would it be possible to allow other senior members recommend a regular member to promotion? Ie, some type of automatic voting system to help alleviate the work load for you?
Bawlerz.
Dear Mr. Jackson
You are doing a great job of protecting the forum from spammers. I've been a lurker for a while before being a member and this is something to appreciate.
You have achieved an extraordinarily high signal to noise ratio, but IMHO, you are doing so at the cost of taking up a lot of work that you could avoid. Take this from someone who doesn't really know the actual work that it's taking to run this, or wether due to your personal circumstances you actually have the time, but I think editing the posts for capitalization and punctuation is a bit going too far, however exasperating, I for one, find poorly written posts.
Also, you can't check the truth in every post, and will never know wether that hut in Tanzania really offers the best bargains in the area. However if the post has a lot of '4 u' or 'u r ok', it may be a signal to the interested reader that the post is a fake. Editing it may lead to believe it rather than to doubt it, and this is a potential situation in which you may be doing a disservice to the readers, and it's taking you time! (which you could dedicate to the hobby rather than to read about it).
Similarly, It may take you a lot of time verifying the Senior member upgrade criteria. Has this guy written 10 reports on the US or only 8? Does he have a several paragraph international post?
IMO, Senior membership should be automatic. Spammers fabricate posts? Let's raise the number of moderated posts to 10 or 15. There must be a threshold in which the number of spam messages is minimized. You could have some other criteria that you do not make public, like number of paragraphs or characters posted. I assume that you can moderate posts quite fast, and can tell in one glance if the post is legitimate or not, while checking for Senior criteria may take you much longer.
I have otherwise no objection if you want to go on running the site the hard way. I just find this forum so good I don't want you to grow tired of it. The criteria for senior membership seems to me just fine as is the rest of the forum's policy.
Regards
Sinverg
Jackson, I will attempt to answer the questions you posted in the order that you posted them.
1. Senior Member Status, to me, means that you have contributed original material to this forum and that the information at least appears to be accurate. In other words, when a senior member speaks, you are reasonably sure that the post is accurate. I know that you cannot tell for sure, but, to me, if a senior member posts something, it is usually true, or at least perceived that way. I think that senior members also deserve some respect shown from the regular members. I am not saying that a newbies opinions or posts are not as valuable as a senior members, but I don't think a regular member should be allowed to disrespect a senior member right out of the gate, so to speak. But, that should be in-line with the no demeaning or denigrating other members policy.
I also feel that senior members have an obligation to help police this forum. If a regular member is just posting rehashed information or if all they are doing is asking questions that have recently been answered, then it is a senior members responsibility to point that out. Now, it should not be done in a way to demean or denigrate that regular member, only to point out what is expected in a post. If I see someone posting questions or posting old info, then I usually call them on it. I try to do it in a nice way, but, unfortunately, it is not always taken that way, and a little flaming may occur. I wouldn't want to lose my senior member status on one of these occasions. So, I wouldn't mind a little protection built into the senior member status that we would at least receive a warning prior to losing that status, if possible.
2. I think we do need Senior/Regular member status. It stops, or at least slows down the serial spammers. It shows who has been here for a while and the value of their contributions to this forum. And, it also strokes the egos of us old farts who have been posting for a while. lol.
3. The criteria seems quite reasonable. I like the part of being a regular member for at least 30 days. And, I like the fact that at least 10 posts are required in the USA board. But, it is the quality of those posts that concerns me. I just don't want people thinking that all they have to do is post 10 times in a month and they are in. So, I think that it is necessary to have senior members second their requests for upgrade. Which brings us to question 4.
4. I think that the review procedure will help take a burden off of you. But, I don't want to have to search the upgrade request lists just to put my two cents in. (I probably will anyway, but if I am limited on time, I'm only going to be checking my local boards.) I would like to see the regular member request the upgrade on the board provided, then come back to his regular sections and request that senior members visit the upgrade board to register their vote on the upgrade. I think that would work nicely, and not be too cumbersome. I also agree that once the decision is made, that the info should be erased from the board, we don't need it once the decision has been made.
I would also provide a new board for other senior members to review themselves. What I mean is that there should be a board for senior members to report other senior members who are abusing their status. Just because you are a senior member doesn't mean that you have a right to that status forever. You have to maintain that level. If a senior member is doing nothing but trying to incite flame wars all over the place, then this board would be an excellent place for other senior members to vent their frustration with problem posters. It would also be an excellent forum for you to post the offending party's infractions and get other senior members to vote on if they get to keep their senior member status or not. But, that is probably another issue for later debate. I just don't want people to just work to obtain their senior member status only to abuse their priviledge of unrestricted posting in real time. You could also make it more stringent to lose senior status as well. For example, it could take a total of 6 senior members to vote for someone else to lose that senior status. That way, hurt feelings won't enter into the equation, 6 different people will need to have the same strong opinion to remove someone's status.
5. I don't visit any other forums so I can't answer this question.
Please keep up the excellent work that you do for all of us here. I love this site and visit it everyday. I try to participate as much as possible and encourage others to do so as well. I think these proposed changes will make it more enjoyable for all of us. Thank you Jackson.
Best Regards,
Box
Thank you for clarifying the review process.
I do think it will help to have clear guidelines. I have been wondering since I started here - have I met the guidelines yet? or is anyone really checking? Now I know what the guidelines are, can determine for myself if I've met them, and can initiate the process to become a Senior Member rather wait to be noticed.
I do have one area of concern.
Is it really necessary to recieve a support message. This requires that senior members monitor the 'Senior Membership Upgrade' forum - which, frankly, doesn't seem like it would be of much interest to those who already have Senior Membership.
Certainly, Senior Members should feel free to add comments to anyone's request. A comment could be in support of or in opposition to granting Senior Membership. But I think the board moderator should be capable of reviewing the a person's posts after he has requested membership. Reviewing the posts should be adequate to determine if he meets the criteria.
To require a supportive statement from a Senior Member may result in Regular Members asking their forum for support. I'd hate to see the forums become riddled with requests for support by Regular Members.
I know that I am not a major poster and I definatly get more out of this forum tan I could every repay so thanks to you and who ever else would read this post. For me the system as stand is ok I it was to be improved I think I like a longer waiting period or a more strict interpatation of what is a good report. not just to stop spammers but somtime I use the senior label along with the number of posts that the user has to determine how accurate the post is. I have read warnings about people posting as "pimps" and this s ofcourse good information on location but I may be a little harsher judge of talet than he is on "his girls". ofcourse this makes more work for you and so I dont say it is nessasary I think you have by far the bestsite I have found and I an proud to be a senior member or a regular member as you see fit.
Jackson, your requirements and the ability to upgrade to senior member status are reasonable and fair. As a long-time participant, I well remember the problems caused by spammers and hackers. This forum is an invaluable resource and does need some level of protection to keep the information current and useful to all members. The requirement to have posts screened is a minor inconvenience compared with the lost of functionality. The requirements are easily met and will hopefully reduce the amount of maintenance time that you must expend while allowing the members who really utilize the forum as an information exchange the opportunity to upgrade. I personally would like to thank you for the timeand effort that you devote to keeping this forum the best information exchange on the web.
Thank you Jackson.