Specialist Contributor

FEEDBACK FORUM - Let Us Know! (INTERACTIVE)
1

Have seen a couple of new members registered with this tag

Just being curious (OK nosey) but what is the difference between a member/senior member (I know about the post count) and a specialist contributer?

(ps no disrespect intended to said specialist contributer’s)

2

Semtex:
Have seen a couple of new members registered with this tag

Just being curious (OK nosey) but what is the difference between a member/senior member (I know about the post count) and a specialist contributer?

(ps no disrespect intended to said specialist contributer’s)

Me curious too :slight_smile:

3

It is used to identify someone who has specialist skills or knowledge within a particular subject and posts from that standpoint.

4

can i be a specialist contributor for royal navy logistics? :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

or making the wife choke by ■■■■■■■ on her? im good at that!!!

5

and i can be a specialist on Mexican food… :blush: :blush: .or any food really

6

Krankee:
It is used to identify someone who has specialist skills or knowledge within a particular subject and posts from that standpoint.

And do they all have secret little forums that the rest of the members are denied access to :unamused:

7

tachograph:

Krankee:
It is used to identify someone who has specialist skills or knowledge within a particular subject and posts from that standpoint.

And do they all have secret little forums that the rest of the members are denied access to :unamused:

Probably there are loads of them that we dont see :wink:.

8

Well its fair to say that its ■■■■■■ me off!

9

Krankee:
It is used to identify someone who has specialist skills or knowledge within a particular subject and posts from that standpoint.

How can ‘normal’ members identify a specialists area of expertise? In ROG’s case it’s obviously training but in other cases it’s not clear.

10

‘Normal’ members can make clear their areas of knowledge by putting it in their profile signature - like I do!

11

A few people are going to be helping Krankee update and renovate the FAQ section, this involves a lot of work collating existing posts in the FAQ forum, looking for and adding to existing posts in other forums and creating and formatting new threads

Alot of this stuff is at the moment posted on other forums…

An example of the stuff they are producing is here
trucknetuk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=36632
and here
trucknetuk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=24823

While those people are not moderators or admins they do have access to the super secret “work in progress forum” where they can create and work out the proper formatting of their posts .

The title is

  1. a recognition of the work they are doing
  2. An easy way to ensure they get all the correct access and editing rights via a user group
12

Semtex:
Have seen a couple of new members registered with this tag

Rikki-UK:
The title is

  1. a recognition of the work they are doing
  2. An easy way to ensure they get all the correct access and editing rights via a user group

  1. How can it be recognition of work they’re doing if new members have the same status.

  2. As far as I can see anyone in those threads can still edit their posts so why not edit openly like everyone else, this is after all supposed to be a discussion forum is it not, and just because someone takes the trouble to write a long post doesn’t mean that other people will not have a contribution to make.

I recently asked in the “Last Chance” thread if there was any news of when this forum would be upgraded and nobody bothered to reply, but there seems to be no problem finding time to come out with this type of nonsense :unamused:

13

Rikki-UK wrote:-

While those people are not moderators or admins they do have access to the super secret “work in progress forum” where they can create and work out the proper formatting of their posts .

The title is

  1. a recognition of the work they are doing
  2. An easy way to ensure they get all the correct access and editing rights via a user group

So the chosen few then - maybe the title is what has upset me most. Should have maybe been something like Admin Member, after all there are many other specialist contributors to the forums (tachograph springs to mind), who are not singled out for ‘recognition’

I am in no way decrying the contributions some of these members make, but presumably they like me post on here because they want to. It’s just the uprating of some above others that wrangles with me.

14

Firstly the reason I havent replied in the last chance thread, is because at this moment in time I really dont know, as soon as I know something i will pass it on…

There should be no “NEW” members with that tag… if there is point them out and I will take a look and see…

as to the actual title, there is no reasom why it cant be changed if it upsets people that much, It was discussed amongst the mods and that was what they came up with, if it is really that big a problem then we are open to other suggestions

15

Well it upsets me - but then maybe i’m in a minority. I made my suggestion further up the posts.

BTW telling everyone that these members have access to the super secret ‘work in progress’ part is not exactly tactful either IMHO.

16

Rikki-UK:
as to the actual title, there is no reasom why it cant be changed if it upsets people that much, It was discussed amongst the mods and that was what they came up with, if it is really that big a problem then we are open to other suggestions

I made a suggestion in THIS THREAD :wink: :laughing: :laughing:

17

Having thought long and hard about this, I’ve had a look at the posts on this topic up to now and I’d like to offer my thoughts to this discussion…

The site rules are what every member agrees to by joining. If they didn’t bother reading the rules or FAQs first, then that’s entirely up to them, but I think they’ll find that they’re still bound by them anyway. :wink:

:arrow_right: Link to this quote from the FAQ for this site:

What are Administrators?
Administrators are people assigned the highest level of control over the entire board. These people can control all facets of board operation which include setting permissions, banning users, creating usergroups or moderators, etc. They also have full moderator capabilities in all the forums.

What are Moderators?
Moderators are individuals (or groups of individuals) whose job it is to look after the running of the forums from day to day. They have the power to edit or delete posts and lock, unlock, move, delete and split topics in the forum they moderate. Generally moderators are there to prevent people going off-topic or posting abusive or offensive material.

What are Usergroups?
Usergroups are a way in which board administrators can group users. Each user can belong to several groups (this differs from most other boards) and each group can be assigned individual access rights. This makes it easy for administrators to set up several users as moderators of a forum, or to give them access to a private forum, etc.

How do I join a Usergroup?
To join a usergroup click the usergroup link on the page header (dependent on template design) and you can then view all usergroups. Not all groups are open access – some are closed and some may even have hidden memberships. If the board is open then you can request to join it by clicking the appropriate button. The user group moderator will need to approve your request; they may ask why you want to join the group. Please do not pester a group moderator if they turn your request down – they will have their reasons.

How do I become a Usergroup Moderator?
Usergroups are initially created by the board administrator who also assigns a board moderator. If you are interested in creating a usergroup then your first point of contact should be the administrator, so try dropping them a private message.

From the info posted in this topic up to now, it seems that the Administrators have decided to set up a usergroup, so IMHO, that’s clearly within the rules.
Users can be asked to join a usergroup, or they can apply to join. In my case, I was asked. From the quote above, that’s also clearly within the rules IMHO.

Within this usergroup there are Moderators, who can edit posts as per the definition above. IIRC, the usergroup under discussion here has been formed for:

  1. Some people to edit and prepare long(ish) or technical posts that have lots of formatting to get them to display correctly when placed in the general forums, AND…
  2. For the overhaul of some of the info around the various forums that has clearly gone out of date, or where links no longer work.

Now let’s pause for a moment, and just imagine that you need some info…
You rely on this info, then you find that it’s out of date, or otherwise incorrect.
Then you’d be entitled to complain.
Would it be fair to say that the Administrators might have seen this coming and are simply putting measures in place to deal with it. :question:
Would you expect anything less of a good forum website?

To do the required amount of work with normal posting rights is very time consuming and creates problems when posts are compiled by using multiple ‘live’ input from more than one contributor, therefore some of us have Moderator status ONLY WITHIN THAT FORUM in order to edit each other’s posts, which does ease the workload. Our names appear at the bottom of the forum index page like other Mods, but we AREN’T ‘general’ or ‘roving’ forum Mods, because we’re of the new toothless variety of Mods, and can’t ‘Mod’ in the normal way. :laughing:
Effectively, ROG and I just get to ‘Mod’ each other. :open_mouth:

From some of the comments made so far, I thought it best to attempt an explanation, because sometimes comments are made due to a lack of explanation or understanding, probably because people begin to wonder what’s going on. For those interested, my own area of expertise is as a classroom based ADR instructor and a person who writes presentations and student notes after 25 years, including 10 years in Europe, as an LGV driver.

dieseldave and ROG:
Now for the ‘Specialist Contributor’ tag that ROG and I seem to have acquired after some discussion in the Mods’ forum.
To keep everything on the level, I should first explain that ROG has asked me to make this point, as he feels exactly the same about it as I do.
Firstly, ROG and I don’t have access to the Mods’ forum, so any discussions were private, as per that forum’s rules.

There seems to us to be some inconsistency in approach here.
Both of us wonder how/why were were singled out for this new ‘tag.’
The inconsistency appears when we compare ourselves to other Senior Members.

For instance, on the subject of driving knowledge / qualifications, we have gardun who is also an IAM Senior Observer the same as ROG, so the tag didn’t appear to have been earned by qualifications…
So was the tag awarded on whether they were a current LGV instructor? We have several of those, so we think the tag couldn’t have been awarded on that basis either, since the others didn’t get the tag.

Was the tag awarded due to the fact that our names appear on a national database of ‘specialists’? That’s possible, because both ROG and I appear on such databases, but then so does Smart Mart, and he didn’t get the tag, so that probably wasn’t the reason either.
Try as we might, and this has taken a whole afternoon to fathom, we can’t come up with anything that differentiates us from any other Senior Member on this site. That’s apart from the fact that we’re in a usergroup, that’s clearly constituted within the forum rules. We are quite happy and honoured to continue within the usergroup and perform the necessary work, but could we please have those hideous ‘Specialist Contributor’ tags removed?

As has already been mentioned, both of us make long posts generally designed to help or explain things to people, but we unanimously feel that that hardly makes us ‘specialists.’

We both appreciate that Mods and Site Admins do their work on a voluntary unpaid basis, but some valuable time could have been saved if somebody had PMed or phoned us before they went to the effort of discussing it. Alternatively, would it have been possible to have asked us about the ‘tags’ after the discussion had taken place, but before the change was implemented?

We feel that we could have saved the other Mods some time, but we do thank those concerned for their kind thoughts in recognition of our efforts. :wink:

Thanks for reading this.:grimacing:

18

Just to confirm that I endorse the above statement made by dieseldave.

19

ROG
SENIOR MEMBER

Thank you Site Admin :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

20

A Big Thanks to Site Admin from me too. :grimacing:

We’re happy bunnies now. :smiley: