It seems only logical! And possibly, fair if not highly informative for the good of both StarDock and its membership.

Hey i'll be the first to admit that Karma is not indicative of one's forum presence/activity or expertise. It does go part way to doing that but is open for abuse...or for comedy/flaming.

I think the ranks do at least somewhat fill that gap, if they were used a bit more often. Having 3M citizens obviously does nothing, but there are many folks that should be Veteran or higher (i won't ever remember the new rank names).

The prefect system IMHO would banners that were reflective of the native site a user is from and included the rank/title within it. It may be more helpful to the community to show other that a user is a known and adapt modder than a veteran or citizen. Same goes for a skinner.

On sites other than WC when conversing with a skilled and experience skinner one cannot tell. the Karma does not reflect it on other sites and the rank is not reflected.

The banner system tied to ranks or titles would solve this.

As Mumble said, the sites are so interconnected now that we converse with users we never would have before, and vis-versa. If the sharing of threads over sites is the direction SD want to go then some level of consistency must follow as well.

It would seem that the ranks would be too difficult since they hold a purposeful function on WC.

A system put in place by SD where everyone has a default banner then selects either WC, SINS, GC2 JU, DEMIGOD..etc and then selects from a predefined list...Skinner, modder, rank, blogger..etc would allow everyone  easily to see where you post from and what your area of interest is.

Plus it advertises the other sites to each other......

I hope this hasn't been discounted already Kryo?

A simple "Descriptive term" for ranking would be enough for me - but, i'd also add some sort of gaming proficiency (as reflected by your own row of Medals) or expertise symbol. This way for example, a 500+ games played is certainly a good reference for someone looking for some solid advice, etc. Sure forum members would be "categorized" in stuff such as Coding, Modding, Helping, Playing.. and many more by some SD staff subjective decisions and yet, i could use something like a wrench (Mod) logo with the word helpful as my banner since Moderators DO have a "floating jacket".

And certainly, the site source of the posts.

I actually think that the moderator symbol is one of those orange relfecting vests like traffic directors wear...

Aside from that, I approve.

As in what Peace Phoenix has, yeah that's the only one i know of. Though Drengin many moons ago did have something similar IIRC.

Apart from the time needed for someone to make up the images and the application for us to select the predetermined text, i can't see this being hard to implement.

It's obvious the structure is there for banners to be shown in the user info area, it just needs the support i guess.

I can't stress enough to SD how easy this would make the cross posting and across forum interactions between us users.

True, they have so many great Artists staff but i doubt we'd be the ones choosing the "text" for ourselves; some kind of algorithm would need to parse through a number of parameters in a huge DB.

I only meant that we would perhaps get to choose if we wanted our rank shown, or a title. You would choose a title of modder (or equivalent other wording) over Citizen i would assume.

We, if it were so, would only get to choose from a drop down list (that's how i would envisage it) predetermined by SD.

I'm a lapsed philosophical anarchist, so the rank stuff rankles me a bit. But I suspect it has 'manipulative' value for Stardock, if they choose to continue using it. When I unexpectedly got a promotion to Veteran over at GC2 (I'm typing from Elemental), it both made me uncomfortably pleased and left me feeling mildly obliged to pitch in more often and generally try to be a bit of an NCO on the boards.

As for karma, I'm trying to give it out regularly now, especially to reasonable new folks with little or none, but mostly I wish it would go away. I hate the pesky nature of my own vanity and I strongly dislike the few-member karma loops that can run up totals that say little more than "I have at least one really good karma-loving buddy on the boards." I've actually developed a rough rule of thumb and try to avoid giving karma to a karma-rich poster if I've given some in the past fortnight or so, even if I especially liked a particular post.

p.s. You should all give lots of karma to psychoak. He says he hates getting karma and seems to greatly love being irritated.

To which i can only refer to the "warning" provided by SD;

Karma is a way of letting other users know who is helpful, nice, or just a fun person. Only give someone Karma if you feel they deserve it.

Knowing this, i believe that if you can make a lot of Friends, you can have as many Karma Points as you deserve or not. That's the nature of the beast as it is now.

I stopped judging people (as it relates to the above "rule") the minute OFF-Topic threads chit-chatting background noise matched up value based on the above formula and for everything else found in these Forums.

Thus, why a solidly implemented "Member Banners" system (even if simply symbolic, btw) would probably solve this weird chaos of an egos contest.

As far as differentiating between posts and replies on the various sites, I have the same issue where it can be kind of confusing knowing where it came from.  For the moment I do not have a solution in the pipeline, but I'll see what I can do as far as an elegant solution.

Unfortunately, I did not have time to read this entire thread but I figured I'd post a reply just to let you know I'm listening   I have this thread bookmarked for future reference as well as added to my todo list of things for the forum.

Bara

Great, now THAT's what i call being dedicated to multi-tasking.

When decisions get taken and implemented, we'll sure be here to watch in awe how efficient your (as in SD & gang!) solutions will be! I'd certainly use a fixed GC2-Library access sooner or later, but won't ever try determining or influence priorities in your place(s).

I highly respect the professionalism and the constant care people like you provide, bara.

Btw, congratulations to our friends at Ironclad for the official release day of DemiGod... some servers were a bit busy this late afternoon with the initial but expected rush i heard - but it's always reassuring to know that things went right back to normal with SD sites in such a quick time!

And Kudos -- on behalf of many more, from the GC2 Forums.

See Zyx, not only can we actually agree on somethings but when we work together we can actually make a difference.

@Bara. Good to know that someone was paying attention. Though some of what Zyx and i were proposing might perhaps be a little too much to do, the basic premise is too good to pass up.

I have no idea what forums you post from, though i have seen many posts/threads from you. Having a small banner showing this i think would make life far easier for you guys in support too, especailly when i see many threads that say "i have an issue with xxxx" but of course the poster leaves no further info to add you.

More so, and since i assume Brad's idea of the cross-loinked sites was for cross promoting of the individual applications and their sites, it could only be of more use to advertise those sites with SD to each other.

Advertising sells.

I look forward to seeing something from this in the future, even if it is distant.

Btw... pay a visit to this weird Wish you were here! thread of mine (i feel Australia might very well become the next Hunt of the Hunts, pndrev is currently "designing" his clues!) when you have a few hours or less of pure intellect to spare!