Syntactic Confectionery Delight | |
PerlMonks |
Re^2: How about coloured names based on xp's?by Aristotle (Chancellor) |
on Nov 07, 2005 at 13:42 UTC ( [id://506330]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
That’s circular reasoning. You already know merlyn’s status. Given openly displayed user levels, if you were a complete newcomer, and saw TimToady posting a hairy-seeming assertion about Perl, and someone with a higher level on this site claimed he was wrong, who would you be inclined to believe? If you were a complete newcomer but certain of something you said, and Abigail-III had just registered and proceeded to flame you, how would you react? The truth is, you have to stay around for a while to get to know the people personally. Looking at user levels is worthless for all but one questions: whether you’re dealing with a troll.
That’s what most people think, and I used to be of that school too. But I saw what happens when a forum turns on open display of user levels/ranks and saw what happens once they’re turned off again, on multiple different forums, which showed me that I was wrong. I know know for a fact that your reasoning, my old reasoning, is wrong. If the data is only available on some sort of user profile page, only those looking for it will actually see it. If it is displayed openly, it affects everyone’s behaviour. Makeshifts last the longest.
In Section
Perl Monks Discussion
|
|