Can you provide a screenshot (obviously without your personal details) showing what you believe you saw?
So there’s some stuff in here that confuses me…
BUT (I think) this starts out with a fair point - a few existing users in this thread did express concern when they were prompted with a new, unfamiliar popup (myself included), compounded by the inability access the site & find the relevant explanation
I expect this can be resolved by adding a brief description to the popup explaining the change, if possible @mods
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After filling out the warning page, I clicked the button at the bottom and somehow ended up the profile page. I never fill out profiles, so this was my first time on the profile page. I figured that if I was redirected to the profile page, I should fill it out. I declined and closed it.
The initial pop up was definitely jarring with no explanation - im not inherently opposed to what this is trying to solve for, but the suddenness with no explanation was a tad rough.
Is it possible to make it direct to the post that explains it first before you make a selection?
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Truly an irony isn’t it. Felt like one of those EULA where you must accept the t&s before you can continue on with anything, well, it was exactly like that. Even if done in good faith, this is a horrible rollout, and I’m glad people are pushing against this arbitrary hierarchy model.
Prevent Mislabeling or lying (In general just the fact we can choose any experience level rather than having it be determined by actual activity is what needs to be fixed), experience levels as in the ones I proposed? If so they should be self explanatory? And like what the system is being inspired from goal’s is (not the same but similar)
I have commented a little further on the post Jonah made on my take
No idea if this was mentioned before, considering the number of replies, but there should at least be some kind of guide to roughly point someone toward which group they should pick.
Just having a three-tier system without any more information has little value for users choosing their level or for others who would take the level into account.
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This is explained in Jonah’s post and it addresses it just fine if you ask me.
Which one?
The announcement he made yesterday:
How does this answer my reply? When you get asked to pick, there is no other information provided.
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It answers for why the change in the first place. To me, that answers it coupled with this announcement.
Sure, but only if they’ve already seen that post. If they’ve not, they’re still forced to choose between three rather unclear options before they’re allowed to do anything else. Which is just backwards and bad design.
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After selecting your level*, it takes you to your profile page. I can see why some users would get the impression that filling out location and age are mandatory, especially considering the current state of the internet where you’re bombarded with KYC and age verification crap at every corner.
*I too had no idea what level I’m supposed to be at. I’ve compiled source based Linux distros (years ago), installed OpenBSD on router boards and flashed Valetudo on a robot vacuum, yet I couldn’t for the life of me get banking apps to work on GrapheneOS and have completely forgotten Debian’s dpkg/apt syntax. I just selected Beginner in the end, since I figured my preference for iOS/iPadOS would relegate me to the dunce cap corner in most privacy classrooms.
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It still does not answer which one is safe to pick
I initially thought to choose as someone who’s in the forum for one year and have enough knowledge to choose advanced but considering the backslash I’ve decided to choose intermediate
And tbh I would consider myself between intermediate and advanced, not either but there’s no inbetween option and Of course it would be nice to be guides if it’s safe to choose advanced or intermediate in my case.
Again this isn’t to brag about it I’ve bragged enough but this is exactly why I think my foundation to improve it on is solid (Basically: add a trust ranking like system that determines based on user activity the experience level (with good and/or positive interactions overall improving your experience level coupled with stats shown on the public profile summary (alongside positive reactions and approved flags the user reported) and bad ones being unaffected (bad ones would be with flag counts, negative reactions, nuisance, spamming etc.) alongside the other reasons me and others mentioned (forced with no explaination, people can lie about it, people thought they were to be KYCed etc.)
I agree that the current menu does not clearly indicate what it means and what it does. It simply asks you
How familiar are you with the topics discussed here?(see image below)
According to the topic where Why is Experience Level required? - #70 by JG quoted, there are indeed some indications about this toggle, I will quote them here:
I would suggest, in Jonah’s post, to provide brief guidance ON THAT MENU to help users to decide.
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The last part I agree or at least add an option that gets inbetween intermediate and advanced as I confidently consider myself around that.
Better yet just implement a system that I’ve been bragging for the last 1 days and change experience levels into
Getting Started → Newbie → Rookie → Veteran • (no professional rank for obvious reason) with optionally a client-side “mutual” experience level shown only to those following each other (basically replicating VRChat’s “Friend” trust rank) [eg. JG follows me, I follow back, the forum client now shows “Mutual” as the experience level on both of us just like if you friend someone in VRChat and they accept you and them get the friend rank]
I personally think the previous provisions are enough to serve the purpose.
While I don’t mind if this “feature” is reformed and become what you are suggesting, I still don’t think that would be a good metric, simply because the amount of time you spent reading/ commenting does not really mean much, as I mention in Why is Experience Level required? - #40 by TinFoilHat
From Jonah’s announcement, I think the whole point of the “new feature” is to simply help (or should I say advocate) forum members to respond to posts matching OP’s self-assessed level. Nothing else.
So if someone picked advanced but they are not actually knowledgeable in that issue, they might struggle to understand the response they get. Likewise, if someone is too knowledgeable to be at Beginner level, they might get sub-optimal suggestions.
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The plan is you don’t attribute from just how long you read and all that good stuff
It is combined with all the stats shown in summary, positive reactions you got and flags you’ve made that got approved. Also combined with the time you spent.
And any negative interaction like spamming, nuisance, flags that got approved by mods/staff that you got reported by others and negative reactions you make can affect the experience level or not move it up all together.
And as a former moderator who we got limited admin privilege, discourse actually does have a trust rank, just not visible to the user and would be separate of the experience level if possible, the trust rank determines a lot more than how active you’ve been and stuff like that and specific ranks can assign titles
For example when you’ve reached Trust rank 3, obviously you would get the regular title, and there’s an upper rank up to trust level 4 that if I understand correctly only can be manually assigned by that staff but could take the opportunity to use the various trust level and function of discourse to reflect the experience level or otherwise a system of its own that uses the underlying trust system by discourse and just adds a few more factors, preferably
I see what you mean, I think we have different perspectives in this topic.
When I see a post / comment, I usually don’t care who wrote it, I simply look at the content.
To me, every post / comment, should be backed by sound logic and preferably evidence, not by the commenters themselves. That’s why I don’t find the “Trust Level / Reputation” thing meaningful in this context.
There are times where I do care who write certain comments / posts, but that’s usually triggered by moral / ethics issues.
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