General > General Technical Chat

Designated "Expert" Forum Users?

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magic:
There are natural laws of social interactions that can't be meaningfully changed by voting either, but what was the topic supposed to be? ;D

Voting by members is a trainwreck. There exists a whole social media site built around the concept of voting on every single post and it's a hive mind where popular or simply novel and somewhat plausible ideas get upvoted regardless of their factual correctness. (More accurately, it hosts a number of sub-hives which sometimes spit on each other, but hardly differ in their nature). Certain clones of that site that claim to be better are only better to the extent of having a narrower and more specialized audience where slightly less BS could fly uncontested, although countering already upvoted BS is still a bit of an uphill battle.

Voting who gets an expert badge? Not sure how that could work. Do I get a vote too? :-DD

I suppose Dave could curate a list, but it's extra work for him and I'm sure there will still be some occasional "democrats" unhappy with his choices and demanding that he listens to the Voice Of The People (them specifically, and a few who agree with them).


And speaking of analog experts, who would actually get this title? There doesn't seem to be much analog going on on this forum in the first place. Some PSU here, a dummy load there. The most likely candidates to my eye are mostly voltnuts rarely seen outside their own playground section.

T3sl4co1l:
My instinct is, I like it, but, it won't matter. :-DD

Ain't no one gives a shit who you are on the internet, and that's pretty plain to see in most [technical] disagreements here.



--- Quote from: Cerebus on February 15, 2022, 04:32:57 am ---There's a little too much possibility for self-promotion here too. An observation I've made is that anyone who chooses a user name that includes words like "export", "wizard", "master", academic titles, and other such like terms is usually (but not infallibly always) a walking talking example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

--- End quote ---

I should probably put that below my avatar as well, huh?  (Or perhaps, apologize (in part) for your having to make that parenthetic exception.) :-DD



--- Quote from: Circlotron on February 15, 2022, 07:02:45 am ---How about instead of expert, professional. That is to say, someone who actually works every day in a particular discipline vs someone who plays around at home. Not that that's an infallible guide to competence of course.

--- End quote ---

Interesting, but there are plenty of amateurs more capable than the average professional.  Technically, it's just whether you get paid for it or not.  I think to really make it valuable, it would have to be fleshed out much more: okay you're "professional" so what, that means you get paid, that means you're advertising that and want to get paid -- it could be fleshed out into a "professionals for hire" section where, in short, work-wanted profiles might be posted.  Which would be interesting enough, probably something of modest value for the participants -- and Dave can decide what tradeoffs should be with respect to forum readability / not spammy-ility and what value to charge for such advertisement if any.  I don't know that it would really be all that important overall?  A fair number of professionals do read this forum, but very few that are shopping for labor.  (I will note, I have received a handful of leads over the years through this account, so it's been a net positive, professionally speaking; if hardly anything to stake my livelihood on.  In return -- at least, I'd like to think so, and if I do say so myself -- the quality of posts here has materially increased from my participation, a win-win situation.)


A related angle, might be allowing a donation button on user profiles, for those that opt in; merely pushing a "thanks" button is one thing, but if you want actual meaningful answers, put your money where your mouth is, right?

This probably has all sorts of financial as well as practical (forum integration) issues, though...


Disclaimer: I mean, look at my post count, obviously additions like the above are likely to benefit me. :P

Tim

tom66:
"Maybe".  I would say it could be implemented but it risks becoming a competition rather than a mark of genuine expertise in a field.

Quite happy with the status quo, and add that the 'Thanks' system is quite a good way of doing things as it stands.

nctnico:

--- Quote from: PKTKS on February 15, 2022, 12:09:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: RoGeorge on February 15, 2022, 11:14:54 am ---- The most important counter argument is that science does not work by voting.  Science is not a democracy, and it is not about what people like or what people think.  Science and its derivatives, like engineering, are independent of crowd's belief.
(..)

--- End quote ---

That would be funny if science would resolve itself by voting....  ::)

--- End quote ---
Actually it kind of is. Science is truth by consensus.

Which circles back to my view that a system where people are labelled as expert on a forum leads to opinions getting more weight added to them. But who is going to guarantee that these opinions are 'right'? Also, some people are better (like politicians) at phrasing their opinions than others.

The way I see it, a forum is a place where you go looking for informed opinions on a subject and share information to have debates. If you look for information, find literature (Wikipedia is often a good place to start) and read that.

Ed.Kloonk:
Worth giving this a little run again...

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