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"newbie" Considered Harmful


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In one of the other forums someone wrote:-

By the way - I am a "newbie" only because I recently re-registered for the site. I actually have been playing about six years and done simple repairs numerous times. Can a guy get reclassified as "experienced"? I don't really care, but I would think the "newbie" classification affects people's responses.

 

This person obviously didn't realise the ranking is based solely on the number of posts made, and after all that isn't overly obvious. Clearly I am not alone in finding the word "newbie" at best clumsy and at worst condescending. Probably scrapping the ranking system (my preferred alternative) is more trouble to Paul and Ken than it's worth, but could we not at least find a better word?

 

Suggestions: Newcomer, New Member, Recent Member, Recent Joinee. There must be plenty of others which don't carry the same overtone.

 

Chris

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The "newbie" classification will not affect people's responses, IMO.

 

The person who made this post seems worried that we will judge them by the label next to their name. I don't know about you, but I never look at those labels. I just read the posts. I haven't heard a peep about it. It doesn't seem to be an issue. Folks will judge you here by what you type, not the automatic labels imposed by the server software. Paul would know for sure, but I think this is a feature embedded inside the Invision software. We aren't rewriting or tweaking it much, for reasons (time, inability to upgrade) already covered elsewhere and which I won't rehash here.

 

On a lighter note, what label would you use for new players? If we avoid calling them newbies, then maybe...? Newcertinists?

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On a lighter note, what label would you use for new players?  If we avoid calling them newbies, then maybe...?  Newcertinists?

Ah, there we get to the nub. "Newbie" is being interpreted as new to the instrument instead of new to the forum.

 

As to what to call new players: how about "lucky bugger"? After all anyone who takes up any variety of concertina is undoubtedly a winner in the lottery of life!

 

Chris

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, I've passed 600 in total posts, and I'm still only an "Advanced Member", with three tiles to my name.

 

I believe I have more total posts than anyone else, but I suspect that another individual has surpassed me in volume (total number of characters in all his posts). Ken, does the Invision software give you the ability to check that statistic?

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Well, after a tiresome faculty meeting, that is an interesting question, so I fished around. The only answer I find so far is the same one any of you can do by searching members and ranking by posts in descending order I find (sorry, name, category, date joined, and no. of posts is all run together here):

 

JimLucas Members 19-August 03 612

Helen Members 19-August 03 282

David Barnert Members 19-August 03 259

goran rahm Members 20-August 03 212

Chris Timson Members 20-August 03 183

Richard Morse Members 20-August 03 162

Sharron Members 25-September 03 108

bellowbelle Members 19-August 03 107

d.elliott Members 23-August 03 105

Rhomylly Members 22-August 03 102

Paul Groff Members 27-August 03 98

Ken_Coles Admin 19-August 03 95

 

and if we skip down a bit,

Paul Schwartz Admin 31-July 03 24 [The wisest say the least?]

 

Interesting! I didn't find a way to count characters (Paul would probably have to write a script to grep each member in the dynamic files and count the characters), but I did run into some features I didn't know about that I will explore more this weekend if I have time and my own computer back from warranty repair. Until then,

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