Why is Experience Level required?

[olanography (Parjaunideen Olanski)]

@anon57862721

A tag or a label next to their name should indicate something to show that this person is brand new and we ought to take it easy and always ELI5 when answering and addressing their questions/concerns^[1]

@anon63378639

I think there is some benefit in having a beginner tag so others can help them orient themself

I don’t think this is necessary at all. We don’t need to label people as beginner in order to realize that they need extra help and more explaining than usual. They are also free to communicate to us that they are new to this space, which is usually the case anyway.

@anon39279085

this is exactly why VRC also doesnt let you just choose “Trusted user”, instead it ranks based on your activity

@anon39279085

the experience level can be determined by stats or points (and badges to determine say link poplularity) and new users can start their experience level as beginner or “Getting Started” then let the system gradually level them up based on the activity

There’s already days visited and read time to indicate activity. And even then, activity on the forum doesn’t equate at all to level of expertise. I don’t see how gamifying forum activity helps distinguish expertise. If anything, it’s community reputation-building like the leaderboard.

@anon39279085

Would you rather users potentially lie about their experience level or have a Trust and Safety-like system that makes the determination, at this point it can’t be inbetween

Neither is how you measure expertise. If anything, measuring expertise has to be manual process.

@phnx

This is a beyond useless feature that should not exist

100%

@anon39279085

Techlore was way more gentle when it comes to privacy and security to the point we would feel a-ok pointing out recommendations like iodeOS or Calyx and yes Graphene can be involved too. And even point out Filen or Mega for E2EE cloud storage no problem etc.

Meanwhile PG, it’s basically, GrapheneOS, take it or leave it, oh you can’t buy a pixel and flash GrapheneOS? Well you could try LineageOS or debloating the device or SOL.

Techlore: oh yeah Filen and/or MEGA is fine if you want the E2EE in your storage files
PG: FILEN? MEGA?! DISGUSTING NO, USE PROTON DRIVE OR TRESORIT (or whatever else is recommended here)^[2]

The premise is that we need to distinguish between varying levels of expertise in order to make Privacy Guides more approachable? Is there evidence that the forum is driving people away with its supposedly “high level” of advice?

Let’s suppose that there is. OK. But would adding a “beginner” label to the forum suddenly stop forum users from recommending Pixels and GrapheneOS?

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1. Techlore shut down its forum - #35 by anon57862721 ↩︎

2. Techlore shut down its forum - #30 by anon39279085 ↩︎