N.B.: the following arguments apply to indicating user level on nodes in a thread, which I am rallying against – not to colorising the Other Users nodelet, which is harmless.

we can still click the link and see a persons XP.

Doesn’t matter. You might think it’s illogical because the information is available anyway, and I used to think the same, but that’s programmer-think; experience has shown me that forums suffer when such information is displayed openly and benefit when it’s not. I’ve seen this in several cases where forums switched from one way of working to another (and sometimes back). It is evidently true. Putting the information a click away effectively makes it invisible as far as regular conversation is concerned. Only those who are determined to find out about it will. If it’s openly displayed, however, it will affect all interactions.

why not reduce site load by eleminating that click in some cases?

That’s bogus reasoning. Noone’s going to visit every homenode in every discussion to make sure they know all user levels. Displaying it openly OTOH would require retrieving each user’s level on each and every thread view. So site load is definitely lower when the information is not shown openly.

individuals could decide if they wanted to color different names.

Would you also say individuals should be able to decide whether they want to see node reps prior to voting?

Some things are not a matter of taste or choice.

Makeshifts last the longest.

That’s bogus reasoning. Noone’s going to visit every homenode in every discussion to make sure they know all user levels. Displaying it openly OTOH would require retrieving each user’s level on each and every thread view. So site load is definitely lower when the information is not shown openly.

Actualy I beleive its already retrieved in order to get the users name, I'd have to look at the code to tell if that is true or not though. So I don't think it is "definitly" lower currently.

Would you also say individuals should be able to decide whether they want to see node reps prior to voting?

I'm not sure how that fits into any reasoning. I would think you look at a persons rep to judge how familar they are with the monestary and its ways. People here think you shouldn't judge a post by its author but that is bogus. If I didn't look at your rep I would think you were some newby crack pot. Looking at your rep tells me you have been here for a quite a while and probably know what you are talking about. That information is valuable and effects the way I view your nodes. You might think that is wrong or unjust, but its a fact. Since our votes effect the nodes rep directly and the persons XP indirectly, the premise that viewing a node rep is the same as viewing a persons rep are false.

Anyway I hardly care enough either way to keep this up, I just didn't want everyone to read the thread and go "displaying a persons level is bad and no one wants it!", although I think possible if there is this much negative feed back on it, then the good done by adding it would probably be outweighed by the people it upsets (whether or not your predictions are true.)


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Eric Hodges $_='y==QAe=e?y==QG@>@?iy==QVq?f?=a@iG?=QQ=Q?9'; s/(.)/ord($1)-50/eigs;tr/6123457/- \/|\\\_\n/;print;

Maybe making it more accesible is bad, I don't know, but it seems silly to pretend you can hide it by not making it easy to see.

Is this a bad case of "security through obscurity", then? No, seriously: despite the fact that I'm one of those who doesn't see major risks in an explicit display of users' ranks and would be curious at least to try it on an experimental basis, Aristotle's position, especially as explained in this reply is more sound than I would have initially thought. The basic idea behind it being, IIUC, that going through the links is somewhat a learning process that can be motivated by the lack of enough elements to judge a particular node, whereas colors associated to ranks would be too an immediate info that one cannot even avoid to notice, and would be associated to instinctive preconcept.

Again: I do not fully agree, but it's a sound argument.

So I'll settle for an emphatic MAYBE (if some feels the desire to implement it.)