Thanks for all the thoughts. I'm still not sure what way to bounce with this. Maybe I need to rethink things and start back at square one.
How do I thank everyone for pitching in and helping to make this site something we can all be proud of? Heck, how do you thank a friend for being your friend?
The absolutely last thing I want to have happen is to have anyone feel I slighted them or in any way cause them to feel that I have overlooked, ignored, or worse, PURPOSELY slapped them in the face with anything I do here. It is SO easy for people to mistake intentions on the internet.
Really, the more I think about it, I think I MUST honor the first 100 members here, regardless of their current presence here. That, realistically is the only FAIR way to do it. As for the people currently "regulars" here, well what is the criteria I should use to give them some sort of honorarium for their help? Length of time here wouldn't work because we would be right back where we started with the first 100. Number of posts? Well that sounds reasonable, since that probably is a pretty good yardstick of their involvement. The toe stubber on this is when someone might bring up the issue of QUALITY of the posting. In other words, are 1,000 "Yep, I agree..." messages more deserving of recognition than 10 well thought out detailed help oriented messages?
But wait a minute! We already HAVE something here that might help. The "reputation" system. Where any one of you can give a member's post that is exceptionally well thought out, helpful, or just downright witty, a pat on the back with the reputation system. I can set it up so that when a certain level of "reputation" has been reached, that member can be promoted to a new user group level. Hmm, I need to think about this.... There already has been a post made in this thread where someone indicated that a member having a long string of those graphics might be somewhat detracting. Or would it? Kind of like merit badges. Yeah, it's kind of corny and such, but heck, they WOULD mean something....
So OK, this is out on the table for discussion. What do you all think about using that reputation capability? YOU all then would be in charge of determining who would get the recognition deserved for their participation here. That gets ME off the hook of having to try to decide which of the many of you would be so deserving.....
And if I can avoid additional work and a possible headache, well heck, I'm going to do it.
