New Feature: Resident Experts

[Sayonara]

As some of you have already noticed, we've now introduced a new set of user groups on SFN.

 

"Experts" are members who have contributed a lot to the forums, and have consistently demonstrated rational application of their academic qualifications and/or field experience.

 

The groups that have been created so far are:

 

- Maths Experts,

- Chemistry Experts,

- Biology Experts,

- Physics Experts.

 

The members of all of these groups combined appear on the forum leaders page under the collective heading of "Resident Experts".

 

You will notice that experts have a user title that indicates which group they belong to (e.g. swansont's user title is "Physics Expert"), and a blue star beneath their name:

 

 

To verify that members with blue stars are in fact resident experts, either go to their profile (the blue star will appear to the right of their name) or check the forum leaders page. Users hijacking the star image as an avatar will have their ability to use avatars removed.

 

 

What do we get out of it?

 

Experts basically mean the following:

 

- While being an expert doesn't make people infallible, if they're involved in an intense debate the expert is more likely to be right,

 

- The expert's interpretation of an [acr=Original Post]O/P[/acr] is likely to be the most relevant one,

 

- Experts have some moderation abilities in forums within their area of expertise, meaning that they can bring discussions under control,

 

- Experts can generally be trusted to provide good information and relevant citations.

 

 

 

Who can be an Expert?

 

Anyone with post-graduate qualifications, or equivalent experience, who we have observed making useful posts of consistent quality over the duration of their membership.

 

As with moderator positions, please do not send us 329 messages asking to be a resident expert.

 

Please bear in mind that most of the forum staff (moderators and administrators) are also qualified experts in at least one area. To avoid confusion and really ugly profiles, we are not currently adding staff to the various expert groups.