This smiley emoticon always makes me think of a drunken smile/laugh. Think I'm just a full member? I don't know...
Some forums have "Master Brewer" ones...it's like, really? I'm not master brewer because of the amount of posts I have.
+1 On HBT at the beginning of last year there was an individual with over 2000 posts and only a member for less than two months. That's something like 33 posts a day... He had a sticky already which he defended aggressively. I thought he was an ass. Up to that point by his own admission he only had two extract batches under his belt! But that's HBT's bizness...
Honestly, we shouldn't even have this sort of score-keeping. My opinion.
1. As a co-moderator of a very large (9000+) discussion list for 14 years, my observation is those people show up on every large list. They also typically resent and will challenge true expertise/leadership. Having dealt with these people for a long time, I know that in RL a number of them will probably have similar issues... I've known several to have restraining orders.
2. I at first assumed a "full member" was an *AHA* member and couldn't understand why I was "junior." I made that assumption because AHA is supporting this board (I'm guessing that for AHA, primarily through member dues) and therefore, a full member was contributing to the board's upkeep and that other levels referred to the depth of participation, with junior being a fellow traveler who hadn't written the check to AHA.
I'm ok with seeing how many posts people have as a rough indicator of their participation, but, referring back to #1 and to euge's post, correlating post frequency with value to the community is not reliable. Someone like Denny is obviously of great value, but as noted above, post frequency could simply refer to a wack jobby with way too much time on his or her hands.