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As you are aware the culture and nature of the MTF is different than most forums. The credit for establishing and maintaining this culture goes primarily to our Charter Members. In the early days of the forum, we had to work very hard to establish a culture that was respectful to others. If you are involved in other forums, you know that this is not always typical. I would constantly harp on folks to cool it but after awhile that got to be like "whining" and I was afraid I was loosing the battle. So I selected those folks which had yielded to my wishes and who were actively participating in the forum and established them as Charter Members. When someone new would come to the Forum the Charter Members started echoing my chants about being respectful and are really the ones that are responsible for the culture that we have now. There are 22 Charter Members. You can find the list here: http://www.mctourer.com/honors/honorc.htm . The thing that I find amazing is that of those Charter Members over half are still active in the forum and many of you have had the opportunity to share their influence personally. Charter Members were selected from the period between July 2001 and December 2001.
I wanted a way to honor those folks that participated in the forum and honored the culture of the Charter Members, so the Gold Member designation was developed. Wow, I just counted and we have 80 Gold Members. You can find the list at: http://www.mctourer.com/honors/honor_gold.html . We have been around for about 53 months (4-1/2 Years) so that averages to a little over one new Gold Member a month. Like the Charter Members, you will find that most of our Gold Members are still active participants, informal leaders of the forum. Many of which serve in volunteer roles.
I wanted an objective way to flag potential gold members so I developed an algorithm that identifies members who actively participate. This algorithm identifies not only those members that post a lot but those members that post occasionally but steadily. I would then look at the list and identify whether or not that person was respectful to other members and worthy of the Gold Member designation. When we incorporated, the process changed a bit. I still use the algorithm to identify candidates, but now the MTF Board of Directors makes the selection.
So how do you become a Gold Member? Basically those that are honored with the title of Gold Member have been around for a long time. They are folks that have consistently supported the MTF and reflect the characteristics envisioned by our charter members. If you want to be a Gold Member, Hang around, participate, and treat others respectfully. Since we only announce one or two new members per month, patience is also important. With only rare exception you will not become a candidate until you have actively participated in the forum at least two years.
When we announce a new Gold Member, you almost always see two responses. The first is from the new Gold Member who says, I was shocked. I'm not sure why we get that kind of response as they have earned the reward. I think it reflects the humble characteristic of those that are so honored. The second response is "I thought you were already a Gold Member". That statement really reflects the selection process and is the true way to be selected as a Gold Member - participate and treat members respectfully and others will notice.
So how to you become a regular member of the MTF? We do not have a formal membership. You become a member just by participating. In fact, you became a member with your first post. How many members do we have? If you look at Delphi's official statistics, they will tell you we have 23,468 members. That is actually the number of registered Delphi members that have visited the MTF. Shocking isn't it. In reality, I have 845 members on my "Active Participant List". We typically have 500-600 members that post at least one message in a given month with about a 30-40 member revolving door of folks that drop in and don't stay or go into lurk mode. We have 584 members in the
MTF Tourer's Assistant database . Considering all of those that lurk, it is reasonable to estimate that we have nearly 3000 members that regularly participate in the forum. Hmmmm, no wonder we have trouble remembering all those names.
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