Quote (Indent @ Apr 21 2013 11:54pm)
I disagree.
While it could be argued a celebration for the success of the forums (and part to the contributing members) is warranted, having a join date totally X number of years should not be celebrated.
What is being communicated here?
I am a little more special and I am a cut above others, because of the date I joined? You could be someone that has spent years spamming General Chat, or somebody that has made a conscientious effort to add some content to their posts. There are people that have been active and helpful, and there are reemerging accounts of the past.
People are already rewarded for their positive contributes and time to the website, there is a “trusted” tag.
It seems to me this would encourage the already baseless, and utterly stupid, “Look at my join date, I must be more trustworthy than you.” I had a person tell me to send thousands of forum gold to him first, because well, his account was created in 2002.
He had 60 posts and half were active within the last two weeks. I looked through the content of his posts, and there was nothing to suggest I should trust him.
I think the members of the community should be valued, but “rewarded” for something like a join date. There are people that joined recently that have done more for these forums, made more positive contributes (not just post count, and spam), encourage a better community, than numerous people that have been here for years.
This is more for loyalty for sticking around than trading. For the trade example you gave, just use common sense...... If an 02 or 03 member with a ridiculously low amount of posts asks you to send first, then you should be suspicious and check him out (most likely it was probably a bought account) and request a med.
Things like this shouldn't be treated as a "trustworthy trader" thing, thats what TTs and other tags are for.
The samething applies to donor stars, just because a guy has some late tier stars doesn't mean you HAVE to trust him, request a med or check him out first with his previous posts.......
So with that said, I say yes, we have donor stars for donors helping the site. Why not have some loyalty stars or banners for everyone that stuck around for a very longtime? especially now that jsp is 10+ years old and a lot of us have spent years on this and grew with it.......