'TA'; Territorial Army, an island in Micronesia or what?

[Lucien Nunes]

So I've gone from being 'esteemed' and 'respected' to just 'TA' which I assume means trusted advisor, although I am not sure why we have to be cryptic about it. People who want quick pointers on whose advice to trust are those outside the forum who don't know the contributors, who also won't know what 'TA' means.
Oddly, a poster from the USA gets badged as a 'USA advsior' (sic, it's misspelled on the badge) simply for being in the USA even if they post a lot of nonsense, whereas UK members have to work to earn a 'TA'.

BTW, what happened to that post 'quality' index that was going to drive the 'Esteemed' badge? Is it behind the TA or a discarded concept? I sort-of liked it up to a point, not least because I was good at it!

 

[littlespark]

Maybe our USA Advsior (?) is high up in the US version of NIC, or has certificates coming out his ears to prove him worthy of the title?
We don’t know what they have disclosed to @Dan

There has been discussions on threads about removing or changing the badges.
I would hope people would take some of my advice with or without a “trusted advisor” or “Sparky God” badge


Sparky God! Dan!!!! Make it so

 

[telectrix]

still think pete999 should get badge " Jedi Spark".

 

[Lucien Nunes]

My reference was to a hypothetical 'USA Advisor', the point being that with traffic on that side of the forum relatively low at this stage, badge ownership is not highly contested and may be awarded to posters without an extensive, reviewed history of post accuracy, helpfulness and relevance.

I agree that ultimately it is the post content that counts and not the poster's badge collection, however for the newcomer who receives conflicting answers to their question (a very common occurrence) it is helpful to have some quick indicator of likely accuracy. For amusement, I once trawled a random set of threads ranking contributions purely on technical merit. IIRC about 1/3 of the advice and suggestions were wrong, misleading or irrelevant. I was not looking at individual contributors at first, until I noticed a few who gave out advice that was more often wrong than right, although in many cases it looked OK superficially.

 

[Risteard]

So I've gone from being 'esteemed' and 'respected' to just 'TA' which I assume means trusted advisor, although I am not sure why we have to be cryptic about it. People who want quick pointers on whose advice to trust are those outside the forum who don't know the contributors, who also won't know what 'TA' means.
Oddly, a poster from the USA gets badged as a 'USA advsior' (sic, it's misspelled on the badge) simply for being in the USA even if they post a lot of nonsense, whereas UK members have to work to earn a 'TA'.

BTW, what happened to that post 'quality' index that was going to drive the 'Esteemed' badge? Is it behind the TA or a discarded concept? I sort-of liked it up to a point, not least because I was good at it!

I would agree that "TA" is far too cryptic and unlikely to be understood.

 

[static zap]

Do we need a Badges KEY page.
(I've still got the "Food -traffic light system " in my head -Green=Good .. I must be more hungry than realised )
RED - no alcohol for those "AA" memebers.

 

[telectrix]

agree Trusted Advisor is easily underst

 

[Strima]

I have to agree that some of the advice given by our American advisers does contradict and add confusion to some posts that are pertinent to UK installations. If taken literally this advice could lead to serious injury by some inexperienced person following said advice in good faith.

I personally think that advisers should only be permitted to advise on matters that are within their specific knowledge set for their country of expertise.

 

[buzzlightyear]

So I've gone from being 'esteemed' and 'respected' to just 'TA' which I assume means trusted advisor

having just read the post regarding TA ,me thoughts that you have just joined the terrier army dog patrol lol .

 

[Dan]

It stands for Trusted Advisor. But I don't want newbies on the forum wanting it or trying to get it. It's a bit elitist.

I haven't finished with the groups yet to be fair. Need sort the forum categories out first, then those might need groups applying to them.

So the staff and I will decide where we go with that.

The esteemed that automatically gets dished out, broke. So I need to fix that. Not priority to be honest. But I'll get back on it.

Respected member changed to TA. And I removed a lot of users who trash the forum elsewhere or swear on here and loads of other reasons.

I remember when it was called Elite Member!! They used to vote for other members to come in each month!!!! Wouldn't get away with that these days.

So hang in there. It's just a badge on a website online at the end of the day don't lose sleep over it. We played on it a bit too much years ago I think. And it helped back then. But it developed a clique that was horrible for newbies to be near.