WRT wish list: I have seen a "reputation" system on other forums, and I've always wondered how it would work on a board like TTW. I'm not saying it's a good idea by any means, but the variety of discussion types on TTW is very, very broad. IMO, General Pro discussion is the "wild wild west" of the boards, seeing as it's HUGE, the volume of traffic is mind blowing, and the people who post there are very, very passionate.
A "rep" rating would help new users understand who the non-rational fanatics are relatively quickly, and those who post excellent content (stats/reasonable/logical counter arguments) can get + votes for well thought out content. Obviously there will always be the "rep points" wars, but it has interesting implications. I think boards like Racquets/Strings & Stringing/Machines/techniques could also use a reps system. Those people out there who spout info without a real/useful background on the topics shouldn't have their posts taken as fact/law, and it's easy to impression people who are new into learning about different topics. I see a LOT of regurgitated "rules of thumbs"/"facts"/etc that have no scientific/empirical basis passed off as hard rules. I think this is dangerous for the long term.
I see that the tt boards when you change your signature all your old post the sig gets changed. So this can be misleading because all your post prior to being a MRT now have MRT on them
it means this vBulletin software that tw uses has a bug
. just means as an IT professional by day I wouldn't use vBulletin
IMO, the system is fine as it is, but I'm happy to agree to disagree. If someone is testing (and passes) the MRT test, it's not like their advice (at least reasonably-recent advice) is useless. Sure, having an indicator of when they passed their test is useful, but IMHO this is an isolated case, and slightly nit-picky.
Well how ever you put it the software doesn't work correctly
Message + sig = post
What they did was just have message = post and just tacked on the sig so hence when your sig changes all your previous post changes
This is pretty much exactly how it is rendered on the page. They take the post you type in, and then tack on the sig to result in a post. One example of your idea above not working is: What if a poster has this in their current sig: "My favorite player is currently Roger Federer"? Context is useful when reading a post, but something superficial (not all sigs have useful information in them!) doesn't need to be kept for legacy/archive purposes, IMO.
@mikeler - no it wouldn't be a big deal to change the way it's written they could do it with out adding another field. #justsaying would be better because some times you base what you read on the persons expertise.
I'm not sure if you've ever written any code that is big enough to really compare to a VBB type release, or complex enough. You mentioned above that you're an "IT Professional," but that doesn't really mean anything to me (no offense intended). An IT professional can range from a desktop support type role to a network admin. Neither of these necessarily means that you're well enough versed to really comment on the complexity of a code change. IMO, you're simplifying/glossing over a code change and I don't know how I feel about that...
As far as context, yes, i agree with you. It is NICE to have some frame of reference when reading posts, but it should be universally understood that ANYTHING you read online (be it from an expert/MRT or a beginning stringer) should be taken with a grain of salt. Spending enough time around these parts gives you some "filtering goggles" so you know whose opinions are worth their salt..
If some unknowing person searches these archives and sees a post from a MRT before they got MRT certified they might over value someone's post.
Being only txt in the sig it wouldn't make the database any bigger. The database if designed correctly can keep growing with out issue such as partitioning the database by year.
Storage is cheep even considering the floods
Like I said before, there's limits to your first argument. What difference is there really between posts <3 months before an MRT certification? What's the limit? 6 months? A year? I personally value the opinion of MANY posters here, and a large proportion of them don't have an MRT.
I'm not directly referring to size, there's also complexity. If you aren't adding a field to the DB, how are you storing separate sigs? You HAVE to add something to the DB, and that implies code rewrites. Even if the change is simple, small changes can have cascading effects throughout multiple code modules. I'm not saying it's going to be painstakingly hard, by any means. However, this sort of change is on the developers of VBB, not TTW.
Additionally, I'm not sure of TW's hosting agreements, but if you're being hosted by someone else, additional storage isn't 1:1 cost with market value. Unless you're self hosting or using a Colo, it's unlikely you can just drop in a few extra drives and call it a day. Besides an array rebuild (assuming you have enough slots, etc), there may be host limits. Having to have someone else rebuild and "install" drives (regardless of how cheap they may or may not be) is going to cost a lot of money. I know from an IT perspective a few grand here or there isn't that much, but IMO it's non-trivial when TTW is only an indirect revenue generator.
No it won't be. So how would you address the issue of it updating the old post with current sig?
What do you think of dates so like MRT 2012
A date is fine, but that's entirely up to the poster. I don't think it's something that has to be tracked as a necessity. My summary of this current feature wishlist is: Everyone should be reading things with a grain of salt. Online advice is NEVER guaranteed to be useful.