Senior Membership Criteria

[Rubber Nursey]

Jackson,

Does this software allow for ratings?

If so, perhaps if regular members had a 'ratings' button on their posts, senior members - and only senior members - could rate the QUALITY of the regular members' posts? Then you could set your software (again, I have no idea about the actual capabilities of the software) to automatically grant senior member status after the regular member reaches a certain number of 'approved' posts?

This would stop regular members achieving senior member status after 25 'me too' or 'nice pics' posts, or asking 25 inane questions in 25 different threads, and ensure that only the people posting quality information become senior members.

______________________________


Sorry - I've just gone down the page a bit and realised that I'm the millionth person to suggest a ratings system. I'll leave my comment here to bump the subject up a bit, but otherwise...forget I spoke. :)

[Rubber Nursey]

As much as it hurts for me to agree with anything That Asshole says, I have to add my support to his last comment.

That Asshole might 'take it for granted that we are all men', but there are a (albeit small) number of women who post in the various sections - plus the women who sign up for advertising purposes.

I think 'male/female' under the username would be a good idea.

[That Asshole]

1. left click on user name
2. select from menu: - view public profile - find more posts -**view personal library**

This is the proposed improvement that I suggest. In fact it would do away with the whole "senior member" story - which has really proved nothing. Scores of so called "senior members" -with hundreds of posts each- have amassed credits for absolutely worthless comments.

Instead I suggest: ....to have each member maintain his/her own little library of contributions. All it takes is an hours of work, simple links to your best comments/reports that shows to others who you are. Also communicates to Admin about your "real status" and not just a meaningless number.

Like this:
This is a list of my most significant contributions (10-15 links max)

Thailand forum........link, link...
Indonesia Forum....link....link

Mexico Forum....link...link

I have had problems (as had others) with jerks complaining about everything and anything. Senior members? What kind of? Who are they? My problem still has not been resolved but that's another issue. Just as an idea, the following links demonstrated the kind of "link-library" I mean. So easy. We need no "Senior Members"! Just "Contributing Members" please!

Also, this way your laborous "works of art" don't get lost under the general rubbish but are easily available to anyone.
--------------------------------------------------------

The story on how I was forced to come up with the idea:

letters to editor:
http://www.internationalsexguide.inf...6&postcount=59
complaints:
http://www.internationalsexguide.inf...&postcount=566

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Another improvement:
Can please the membership profile include the "gender" of the member? We take it for granted that we are all men. It is far from the truth though. Would make it a bit clearer of who really a member is and what he/she is trying to mean. Just think about it for a moment.

[XXL]

... consider adding a feature whereby we can "rate" each others' posts as to their usefulness (as is done on some other sites like amazon.com ...?

That's a great idea but wouldn't it put contributors to less well-known destinations at a disadvantage? The 10000th contribution on Bangkok would be rated by many members while a (badly needed?) contribution on some godforsaken place in Africa would get little attention.

One might argue "who needs to know about godforsaken places"? I think many people do, even, or rather especially, if the place is one to be avoided because of crime, civil war, scams etc. Speaking for myself, I think a forum like this one comes into its own when it features lesser known or unknown places.

Another thing: too many contributors click on the "quote" button rather than the "new report" button. The whole forum becomes cluttered with full-text repetitions of previous postings. This is off-topic here but I couldn't find out where to post my comment.

[Swirl]

I am a member of couple of years, but due to my bad english(my fourth language) did not post any reports. Now, to access all threads and photo gallery, I have to pay. Discrimination? Ok, it`s not a big deal, but now when I would like to start new thread, it seems impossible. So, that`s why it is off topic.

I would like to say, that our P. gallery in need of improvement. I can see the fat hairy stomach and a flabby d*** every time when I look to the mirror and I am not very excited to see the same vital parts of mens body in P.gallery again.

More photos of girls, that`s what I would like to see in Photo gallery!

[Admin]

Greetings Everyone,

For the first four years of this Forum, Senior Membership was awarded to those Forum Members who demonstrated their willingness to adhere to the Forum's Posting Guidelines (standard capitalization & punctuation, no chat room style writing, etc.) However, I eventually came to the realization that this proved to be ineffective as an inducement and time-consuming to manage. Thus several months ago I quietly suspended Senior Member Upgrades as I searched for an alternate method of achieving the same goal of both recognizing the Forum's most prolific contributors and maintaining a minimum level of writing quality.

The conclusion I reached was that Senior Membership would become strictly a recognition for the Forum's most active contributors. This would allow me to use the Forum's built-in functions to automatically upgrade Regular Members to Senior Membership based on criteria that are easily quantified, such as number of reports and length of membership, which brings me to the subject of this survey:

What should be the requirements for Senior Membership?

The two basic criteria are number of reports in combination with a minimum length of time as a Forum Member. The purpose of this poll and the accompanying thread is to obtain some feedback from the Forum Members as to what they believe the exact criteria should be.

Of course, I anticipate the possibility that the Forum's Regular Members may stack the results of this poll, so I'm advising everyone that I will be giving much greater weight to the votes of the current Senior Members, and in fact it's quite probable that I will filter the poll results to display only the Senior Member's votes, but we'll see.

Thanks,

Jackson

[Daeng]

Jackson...

Well i had vote...
I note that some regular member with 20 report of
just chatting some 'info' has been upgrade to Senior..
When i read his report it just turn up to be review
of other report...none of his report could be
regarded as a his personal FR...just crap..

My 2 cent of opinion...

[Cyberspace]

I think that the senior membership should be given if the posts have a certain quality standard. The number of posts is not as important: 25 high quality reports are more useful than 200 medium quality. For the same reason is also not important since how long one is a member, as long as he prove to be able to write very detailed and useful reports.

I'd like to echo gg's sentiment in that there should be some form of weighting for more qualitative posts. If for each post there were something like a checkbox for the Admin which could indicate that a post is counted toward membership, maybe such a task would not be overly burdensome. Of course the idea here is that for posts that state little more than: "Hi, I'm going to be in Bumfuk Egypt on a layover for a couple hours, please tell me how to find anal providers for almost no money" - would not get the check.

[Dacian]

Criteria for senior membership should reflect benefits of being made a senior member … ie .. “Senior Members are not held for review and thus are immediately displayed in the Forum.” This says to me that a senior member is given and therefore must assume a role of responsibility within the forum.

The number of posts and time as a member, does not in itself preclude a person who may have posted 25 post over the last 6 months but has also been an agitator, irritator or down right dickhead, from becoming a senior member.

I suggest that in addition to the 6month 25 post criteria, to become a senior member one should also have their application posted for a month and subject to acceptance or rejection by other senior members. If it is not rejected senior membership is therefore approved. But if rejected, senior membership should be delayed for 3 months. An explanation should be provided and the person then has three more months to continue posting before they can reply. They may use that time to improve their posting methodology or just lift their game. Just a though.

[Guido88]

Banana61,

I get the same error message "POST requests from foreign hosts are not allowed" if I try to log into the main page. I am based in the US.

The solution I found was to go to the individual country page and then logging in with no problems.

Hope this helps.

Guido88

[Be There]

Jackson and Friends: I think your current policy is fine. It seems to be a workeable alternative to what could be very restrictive and/or confusing guidelines. At the end of the day, what we all want is that the Forum grows and prospers and shares information between all of us. Certainly we members can distinguish between the wheat and the chaff. My only comment is whether you would not want to migrate towards some sort of 'Country Manager' criteria where there are some super senior members in each country that you could turn to for help and help you manage any issues that arise in each country or region. Argentina is a super country, but it is a long way from Asia or Europe. It seems to me that you must have an enormous amount of work managing the Forum by yourself and, heck, even God recruited Archangels to give Him a hand. " ...on the seventh day, He rested."

Relax and enjoy.
Be Safe,
Be There

[Il Cobra]

I think that the senior membership should be given if the posts have a certain quality standard. The number of posts is not as important: 25 high quality reports are more useful than 200 medium quality. For the same reason is also not important since how long one is a member, as long as he prove to be able to write very detailed and useful reports.

[Night Cat]

Hi Jackson, this is an addendum to my previous post. Would you consider adding a feature whereby we can "rate" each others' posts as to their usefulness (as is done on some other sites like amazon.com and imdb.com, e.g., "69 out of 86 users found this post to be useful")?

One reason would be so that the aggregate ratings of a user's posts could then be used to partially determine their promotion to Senior Monger status, helping us not to lose the "usefulness/informativeness" factor in promotion to Senior while still being able to automate the promotion process. Another reason would be to provide a way for "reports of distinction" to get visibility without users having to browse a separate "reports of distinction" folder (as I've seen recently, but I tend never to go in there), and also having their "distinctiveness" determined by consensus rather than the opinion of one person.

Just my two cents, I'd be interested to know if you think this would be useful. Best regards,
NC

[Banana61]

I would like to vote in the survey, but I keep getting an error message: "POST requests from foreign hosts are not allowed" presumably because I am not based in the US. Is this an editorial decision?

Whatever, my vote is 25 posts/6 months, which seem to be sufficient measure to distinguish those who occasionally pass by.

[Shsdlux]

Greetings to all of you,

I think the criteria for Senior Membership should be as hard as possible to obtain!

Time, the type of report, feedback and informational content should all be a contributing factor. If everyone can obtain a sernior membership then what is the point. I only browse this forum from time to time because of all the reports that i can verify and check out due to my extensive travels in Asia. Right now i am in Shanghai and i can see that many of the reports are a pure waste of time and money! I am not sure if it is my standard or just the poor informational content even of some members who have 50 or more posts.

With that said, i am sure it is not possible to monitor every post at all time.
For me even starting out i still would prefer and have voted for a Senior Member status of 100 report and 6 months time frame. This will however not change anything in the quality of reports. At this time i cannot even repond to some senior member that are sending me messages. So what is the point of Senior Membership if the information flow gets cut of? Limiting access to pictures and chargin a few? Well it might be a necessity, but it definately is not in the interest of this board.

Some members would be able to post valuable information, but with the new guidelines i think most of the info will get lost and never be available. I will give it a try and start posting some more information for you guys, but i am afraid this will not make a difference. In my posts however i will be different. I will give you guys a location ,description and a picture of the place so you can find it. So to sum it all up. What you post is what matters. All the comments and wrong instructions are what drives the cost of this board up and the result is what you see now. It is just funny that i had an angry Senior Member send me a message when i asked him if he could be a little bit more precise.

Result: It was nice while it lasted.