You make some good points, so I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate and explain my points of view of why I both agree and disagree (mostly agree) with the requirements to become a TM. 

For reference, here are the requirements:

1. You will need to have been a member of this forum for at least three (3) months.

2. You will need to have made a minimum of fifty (50) posts. [Meaning... if you haven't made fifty posts in the first three months, you won't be a TM yet.]

3. You will need to have made at least one hundred (100) posts in the previous year to remain trusted member. [Applicable as of 1 March 2023]

4. You will need to have a clean track record: no bans or suspensions, and/or improved behaviour after a warning.

5. You will need to have made quality posts, i.e. more than "happy birthday!" or "RIP".

6. Trusted Membership is given at the discretion of the admin + moderators. We will need to feel you can be trusted

Point 1: I believe this is pretty reasonable, to be able to know members better before considering TM status for them. 

Point 2: I believe that for this point, it also seems pretty fair. If you join and then hardly post for 3 months I can understand why this rule is in place. Though from my perspective, I sometimes don’t know what to post about considering I haven’t a clue about researching supercentenarians (and so posting their biographies might come across inaccurate). But then again, most of the TM part of the forum is validation/revalidation/debunking so it seems to come full circle. 

Point 3: Also seems pretty fair, in my opinion. 100 posts over 365 days doesn’t seem like too much to ask. To be honest, my points for this requirement are pretty much the same as point 2. 

Point 4: Don’t think there’s any controversy over this one. Especially considering to get banned on this forum you go through 3 warnings which means fixing up behaviour should not be difficult. 

Point 5: This point also seems fair, saying happy birthday and R.I.P doesn’t seem to show in any way that your trustworthy. Respectful perhaps so, but trustworthy is different.

Point 6: Absolutely, and this ties everything up well.

To become a trusted member, you have to be trusted. This is because there’s a lot of information there which cannot be public (yet). Respectful is one thing, but to actually be trusted is another. And I can see why the requirements can seem kind of ‘strict’ but I know they are all within reason. I think you’re a trustworthy person anyway so I’m sure you’ll get granted access at some point or another 🙂

NOTE: This is coming from someone who was granted TM status without really hitting any of the requirements (I suppose I seemed trustworthy beforehand?) which gives me a wider perspective on some parts but a narrower perspective on others, so take my post with a grain of salt. I’m working towards posting more often.

Posted by: @amck

You make some good points, so I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate and explain my points of view of why I both agree and disagree (mostly agree) with the requirements to become a TM. 

 

For reference, here are the requirements:

1. You will need to have been a member of this forum for at least three (3) months.

2. You will need to have made a minimum of fifty (50) posts. [Meaning... if you haven't made fifty posts in the first three months, you won't be a TM yet.]

3. You will need to have made at least one hundred (100) posts in the previous year to remain trusted member. [Applicable as of 1 March 2023]

4. You will need to have a clean track record: no bans or suspensions, and/or improved behaviour after a warning.

5. You will need to have made quality posts, i.e. more than "happy birthday!" or "RIP".

6. Trusted Membership is given at the discretion of the admin + moderators. We will need to feel you can be trusted

 

Point 1: I believe this is pretty reasonable, to be able to know members better before considering TM status for them. 

Point 2: I believe that for this point, it also seems pretty fair. If you join and then hardly post for 3 months I can understand why this rule is in place. Though from my perspective, I sometimes don’t know what to post about considering I haven’t a clue about researching supercentenarians (and so posting their biographies might come across inaccurate). But then again, most of the TM part of the forum is validation/revalidation/debunking so it seems to come full circle. 

Point 3: Also seems pretty fair, in my opinion. 100 posts over 365 days doesn’t seem like too much to ask. To be honest, my points for this requirement are pretty much the same as point 2. 

Point 4: Don’t think there’s any controversy over this one. Especially considering to get banned on this forum you go through 3 warnings which means fixing up behaviour should not be difficult. 

Point 5: This point also seems fair, saying happy birthday and R.I.P doesn’t seem to show in any way that your trustworthy. Respectful perhaps so, but trustworthy is different.

 

Point 6: Absolutely, and this ties everything up well.

 

To become a trusted member, you have to be trusted. This is because there’s a lot of information there which cannot be public (yet). Respectful is one thing, but to actually be trusted is another. And I can see why the requirements can seem kind of ‘strict’ but I know they are all within reason. I think you’re a trustworthy person anyway so I’m sure you’ll get granted access at some point or another 🙂

 

NOTE: This is coming from someone who was granted TM status without really hitting any of the requirements (I suppose I seemed trustworthy beforehand?) which gives me a wider perspective on some parts but a narrower perspective on others, so take my post with a grain of salt. I’m working towards posting more often.

I agree with most of this. But losing out on retaining trusted member status if you posted 99 times say, instead of 100, seems a little unfair if you are trustworthy. I’m the same as you, I don’t always know what to post, although working at posting more. At the end of the day, it’s better sometimes to say nothing instead of contributing something that adds nothing to the conversation at hand.
I also don’t understand why some got almost immediate TMS on opening this site and others didn’t. 
I understand that the rules have to be strict up to a point, but I don’t really understand the relevance of number of posts. Having said that, if someone joins and hardly posts anything at all, then that’s fair enough, not enough to judge someone’s trustworthiness. 

Thanks for the discussion, this is keeping us sharp as well and making us reflect on our own rules and choices.

The rules we've implemented are mainly aimed at making those members trusted members whose quality posts contribute to making this forum a better place.

True, granted, some have had the benefit of having shown quality behaviour on the 110 Club... From you, OllieUKSCfan, we simply haven't seen enough yet. I suppose that makes you unlucky in a sense and might come across as unfair. I fully realise that. It's just that we need to have a starting point / vision of what we regard as "trustworthy." We feel that the members who are TMs right now have shown this, but it doesn't mean that regular members are not showing this at the moment. We need time to observe.

Now, you won't lose TM status if you've posted 99 (or 98, you get the point) times within a past year and most of these were of good quality. The point is... we'd like to remain an active community. And what's the point of having TMs if they no longer show up here? What's more, 100 posts within a year amounts to not even 10 posts per month, which basically means that if you make one post every three days (or two every week), then you should already be fine. For active, engaged members, this shouldn't be too much "work."

However, I do think it would be wise to have a look at the list of members within the next couple of days to determine if there are some promotions or demotions to be made. We're also still in a learning process.

I'm sure there's more I could or should have said, so if I haven't properly or fully explained our reasoning behind the process of becoming a TM, please feel free to respond. Thanks for the feedback!

@admin Thanks for the clarification. It’s all new here for everyone so, as you say, there has to be a starting point. I already much prefer the atmosphere here and commenting / contributing should be a much easier thing. Hopefully my actions / contributions will be deemed TM worthy soon. I also had not considered the fact that rules around post count is encouraging the forum to be more active. This has been very helpful 😊 thank you

It's now been about a month since the discussion/feedback on TM status; we'll review our list of members once more during the second half of this month.

It's taken ten days longer than planned - apologies for the delay - but we've just welcomed a couple of new, trusted members. Congratulations to them!

@admin thank you 🙏 I’m very happy to be made a trusted member, so thank you 😊

As it's been a while since our last promotions, is there any regular member that feels they deserve a promotion? And if so, for what reason? (Perhaps certain criteria have been met.)

I would love to have the status. But I don't have enough posts yet. I'll work on it 😀 .

Member "FEW" deserves TM status. He/she posts in The 110 Club in 2,243 times since 2017 and the GSF in 38 times, showing has a very kind personality (who was also create my birthday thread) and had no any problems between others. His/her respect for SC is remarkable.

@record_116 , thank you very much for your kind words, honestly !

My opinion is, that here are members who deserve the trusted member status more than me.

I am very proud be a useful member of our  'Globalsupercentenarianforum'.

Dear all, after a critical review of the members of our community, we have demoted some Trusted Members to regular Members, whereas we've also promoted some regular Members to Trusted Members.

Congratulations to those having made the cut!

@admin yes! Congrats you guys! You guys have done well! I'm glad we have some good captains leading our team!

Before and after seeing the member list, I don't think there's any member who were demoted, as no one member who changed the color blue to green. Probably the admin talking about thing of few weeks/months ago or not correctly demoted.

Congratulations FEW, Beaumont, Gabriel_PT, and Guillaume who became the position of comfort!! Unlike The 110 Club, it is very good that the frequency of member's promotion is  decent time.

Posted by: @record_116

↑

Before and after seeing the member list, I don't think there's any member who were demoted, as no one member who changed the color blue to green. Probably the admin talking about thing of few weeks/months ago or not correctly demoted.

Ah, sorry for my mistake. Only one account was demoted recently, I confirmed.

Hi, I've reached 50 posts and it's been 6 months now!

So, could I already be a trusted member?

@adancho Noted. We are currently checking the list (you're probably not the only one who's been posting more) and we'll let everyone know what we've decided.

Looking at this from a distance, one of the challenges here is the use of the word “Trusted” in the title.

It’s potentially offensive to ever demote anyone (for example for low or no contributions) because the headline message in the title change is that they are no longer trusted.

Perhaps consider a title like “senior” member or something similar.

The main reasons for demotion are then better explained, rather than the inadvertent character assassination that potentially can occur today when we bring “trust” into it.

@chrisr I would completely agree. First of all I want to say that @adancho is a terrific contributor on here and definitely worth a promotion, but the thing I worry about is giving a promotion to the wrong person, and we end up in a bad situation like the110club. We all know the certain 110club member RY1++ definitely abused his power. Even though we had a lot of terrific leaders and senior members there, our member in question ruined it for everybody because of his arrogance. I will absolutely not create an account on this person's new "forum" because of the reason among others as I said earlier. Adancho definitely deserves it but maybe in the future be very careful about promoting someone/giving them moderator status who could potentially be another RY1++. That's all I gotta say. Right now we have some awesome leaders here like @ale76, @930310, @chrisr, @diego and many more, I would hate to see someone come on this forum and cause drama to our leaders and members and cause nothing but hurt feelings and frustration the way the member I spoke of earlier did.

@aquanaut_chalk  Thank you for your words towards me, brother!

Posted by: @chrisr

↑

Looking at this from a distance, one of the challenges here is the use of the word “Trusted” in the title.

It’s potentially offensive to ever demote anyone (for example for low or no contributions) because the headline message in the title change is that they are no longer trusted.

Perhaps consider a title like “senior” member or something similar.

The main reasons for demotion are then better explained, rather than the inadvertent character assassination that potentially can occur today when we bring “trust” into it.

This is a really good suggestion, actually! I'll ask my team what they think of this.

It's taken a bit longer than expected or hoped, perhaps, but my team and I have finally had a proper chat - and we've decided to leave things as they are for the moment.

We definitely acknowledge that we've seen improved behaviour on this forum, GSF, but our trust (awful word, I know) still needs to grow based on what we saw from you in the past (on the 110 Club). I realise this might be a harsh message to receive, but we sincerely hope that you take the positives from this: your behaviour has improved, and all we are asking for is a little more time to gain our trust.

Thank you for your understanding.

I think member: Filipe93, who had already 70 posts in this forum and already being trusted member in the other forum, is should be trusted member.

Thank you for the suggestion, Record. I will take this up with my moderators' team.

Dear all,

I believe it's time to review Trusted Member status on this forum. Is there anyone who feels they or someone else should be promoted to (or demoted from) Trusted Member status?

It would give you access to the private section of the forum, where research on supercentenarians can be shared.

I would like to be promoted here.

I support to promote and would like to ask you for the Trusted member status for Diego.