The bar under the avatar?

[sailorjoe]

What is the significance of the bar under the avatar? I see for many members it is completely filled in with little orange hash marks, some only partially so and for folks like me it is empty of hash marks. I also note that there seems to be varying degrees of status under the bars such as mentor, etc. What do these mean? I have only participated in the forum a very small bit this summer so I may have missed something that was discussed earlier and is now common knowledge.

[CoachG]

From what I can tell, the bars don't mean much. I think the more you post on the new site, the more the bars get filled in, but that's just an assumption. As far as the status under usernames, some members have been appointed as Mentors, Moderators, Administrators, etc.

[CMD]

I think it's as Coach described. The titles under the avatar are not new, however. We had those same titles with the earlier version of the forum. Mentor specifically is a member who knows a bit about what is found in their region of the country and may be able to better handle questions from new folks showing up from a mentor's specific region. And a guy like Bruce is mentor in metal detecting, because he's our resident expert in that hobby......

[painshill]

The bars below your avatar and name are what the forum calls “reputations”. As a default, the forum is noting things such as how long you have been a member, how many posts you have made, how many “Likes” you get on your posts and progressively setting the bars to an orange colour according to a set of rules. If you hover your mouse over the bars, you will see various custom messages such as “will become famous soon enough” for example.

There has been rather a lot to do, so the reputation rules are not yet customised from the default settings. We can (and will) change the rules at some point. There are also options for members to be given awards, the power for Administrators to give additional “points” to members and also for the system to be switched off if we decide we don’t want to use it. For the moment it’s switched off for Administrators as the default for example. We will ultimately refine it to how we want it.


As for the titles, all members are set to the default title of "Member" unless they have special responsibilities related to the smooth running of the site or have been nominated for special areas of expertise which they have agreed to share when other members need help in those areas (both geographic and by topic).

[sailorjoe]

Thanks to all who responded to my query. It helps clear up some of my confusion. (At least for the forum, LOL)
I did let the cursor hover over the bar. I'm not sure that I'm ready for Famoushood yet.