(The quotes were not working properly in the OP. I assume Bara is hard at work tweaking... )

That is about the jist of it so far.

I know i have, especially in the OT threads had no idea as to the location (SD site wise) of fellow posters, as many assume they are all reading that thread from their own native site. Also, the ranks being non functional now, (apart from level of karma able to give out) aside from their use on WC has left many of us wondering exactly what our fellow users area of expertise or specialty actually is.

The Stardockians have the very helpful banner that list exactly what function, for lack of a better description they actually perform on the forums and within SD and having something similar for the members would save much grief in cross posted topics and give us a bit more insight into our fellow users.

Discuss....

Weird, the yellow has now gone... fuzzy scratches head...

I'm not sure about the necessity for ranks, apart from the official StarDock banners, but some consistency would be nice. For Karma, but also for things as clicking 'My Posts'. I'm currently posting from the Elemental forums, but when I click My Posts in the GalCiv2 forums I don't see anything, despite this being the Off-Topic forum which is shared between all forums

I did have some yellow text in the OP prior to actually posting it but edited it for the reasons you pointed out, never posted it though.....Very Strange.

I'd agree that allowing users to have any control over this is open to abuse.

My thoughts though at the very least is some kind of indication in each members post of exactly where they are posting from. I admit, i like the idea of member banners reflecting their interests and their native site, but that's not an actual productive feature, where the showing of "posted from" would be invaluable to many.

A great example would be with piderman above. Where Kryo's Stardock banner is piderman could simply have a similarly sized Elemental banner.

Ranks aside that feature would help other users become aware of the other SD sites that are open to them but might just not know about and even increase participation/sales in other parts of the community.

Perhaps not. I'm only speaking really of my own experiance in what i have viewed. But it seems that folks like Crazy, Kryo, Zommba, Bara, Brad/Draginol, Shirley, Highlander, Melibee, Zubaz, Jafo.....uhmmm..that's about all i can think of, all those do seem to carry their respective banners across all sites.

In that i would think that such a system is possible to implement. Be it worth the time in SD's eyes is for others to decide but i sure think it would add to the forums.

Also the earlier comment about yellow text brings up another source of inconsistency.

Each site has it's own default color scheme. The game sites are predominately light text on a black background while other sites are black text on a white background along with some other variations.

One thing is that the user has no choice in the matter and I know people have complained about one scheme versus another due to readability issues. It would be nice if the user had at least a limited choice between dark on light versus light on dark.

Also if you stick with the "default" font/formating you're at least reasonably legible on *all* sites, but once you try and use color or font size or anything not default to make your post or reply more legible on the site that you're posting from you run the risk of making your post/reply totally illegible on another site which as far as you know may be where most response is coming from.

[edit] Check out the "view edits" feature on this post to see me change the word "reply" to "response" and to add this edit. I think this makes for more confusion not less. [/edit]

On TriggerStreet.com (a screenplay writers gathering place owned & operated by Dana Brunetti & Kevin Spacey), i once gave out a set of "bannerlike" ranking images that were tied with people's quantity of posts... i'm sure we could do a much more complex & ingenious system that correlates a number of participatory elements to everyone's Forum status, be it across numerous SD sites or not.

Such as this;

Want some? Assuming the feature would be implemented and that the overall thematic Icons and background frameworks should be altered to be galactic in nature or games driven or somethin' along those lines.

You'd reach 10,000 replies & posts on TS, you got to ride a maximum reddish stampede reputation (And well, RobinHood as long gained 25,000 and still counting, last i checked!) and be perceived as a "Blue Peeker" for having less than 20!

Lemme know!

It seems only logical! And possibly, fair if not highly informative for the good of both StarDock and its membership.

A simple "Descriptive term" for ranking would be enough for me - but, i'd also add some sort of gaming proficiency (as reflected by your own row of Medals) or expertise symbol. This way for example, a 500+ games played is certainly a good reference for someone looking for some solid advice, etc. Sure forum members would be "categorized" in stuff such as Coding, Modding, Helping, Playing.. and many more by some SD staff subjective decisions and yet, i could use something like a wrench (Mod) logo with the word helpful as my banner since Moderators DO have a "floating jacket".

And certainly, the site source of the posts.

As in what Peace Phoenix has, yeah that's the only one i know of. Though Drengin many moons ago did have something similar IIRC.

Apart from the time needed for someone to make up the images and the application for us to select the predetermined text, i can't see this being hard to implement.

It's obvious the structure is there for banners to be shown in the user info area, it just needs the support i guess.

I can't stress enough to SD how easy this would make the cross posting and across forum interactions between us users.

I only meant that we would perhaps get to choose if we wanted our rank shown, or a title. You would choose a title of modder (or equivalent other wording) over Citizen i would assume.

We, if it were so, would only get to choose from a drop down list (that's how i would envisage it) predetermined by SD.

To which i can only refer to the "warning" provided by SD;

Karma is a way of letting other users know who is helpful, nice, or just a fun person. Only give someone Karma if you feel they deserve it.

Knowing this, i believe that if you can make a lot of Friends, you can have as many Karma Points as you deserve or not. That's the nature of the beast as it is now.

I stopped judging people (as it relates to the above "rule") the minute OFF-Topic threads chit-chatting background noise matched up value based on the above formula and for everything else found in these Forums.

Thus, why a solidly implemented "Member Banners" system (even if simply symbolic, btw) would probably solve this weird chaos of an egos contest.