Member ranks and privileges

[Admin]

Member ranks and privileges.

Guest: This is how you first visit our forum.
You can read:

The various advertisers’ forums
The General Discussion forums

You have no posting rights at all

General Member: Congratulations, you have signed up and validated your email address/identity.
You can read:

The various advertisers’ forums
The General Discussion forums

You can only post in the General Discussion forums


Bronze$: You have now purchased your first membership subscription and been given the keys to the candy shop
You can read:

All of the review forums
The General Discussion forums

You can post in :

All of the review forums
The General Discussion forums

To obtain free ongoing* Bronze membership you must post four acceptable reviews and you will need to pm a moderator and ask to be upgraded. They will look at your posts and decide if you have submitted the required number of suitable reviews. The Moderators decision is final!


Bronze: You have now posted your first four acceptable reviews and been given free membership status
You can read:

All of the review forums
The General Discussion forum

You can post in :

All of the review forums
The General Discussion forums
*To maintain membership status, you need to post at least four acceptable reviews per year


Silver: You have now posted at least 20 approved reviews and be deemed acceptable for admission** to the Silver Member areas by the mod team. You will need to pm a mod and ask to be upgraded. They will look at your posts and decide if you have submitted the required number of suitable reviews. The Moderators decision is final!
You now have full access to the Silver member’s forum, with access to info and chat not available for general viewing.
Read and Post rights: as per Bronze member.
You can now start a Poll

**To maintain membership status, you need to post at least 10 acceptable reviews per year


Gold: Free life membership for those who have made an outstanding contribution to AuXXXReviews. This is given at the discretion of the moderator team and can be revoked if Code of Conduct is deemed to have been violated

[Stevegem]

As a silver member, Logging in this evening I got asked to "accept" XXXreviews conditions for the general member section. Never had that before, I felt like a newbie all over again

Also with the silver membership 10 yearly reviews to maintain that status. Is it possible (and worthwhile) somehow to keep a running log ? Maybe as a sticky in the silver section?

[Admin]

As a silver member, Logging in this evening I got asked to "accept" XXXreviews conditions for the general member section. Never had that before, I felt like a newbie all over again

Also with the silver membership 10 yearly reviews to maintain that status. Is it possible (and worthwhile) somehow to keep a running log ? Maybe as a sticky in the silver section?

The administrative side of verifying those 10 reviews are something we are still refining, as soon as we have something that works we will let you know via an announcement in the Silver Lounge.

[lightning]

Admin, I know there has been some discussion on this, but you have taken my "thanks" off me (which I felt gave some 'cred', as I only have 2 green bars), and we now have the "like" function.
Hhhmmmm, I suppose you can't keep everyone happy all the time!!

[Admin]

Admin, I know there has been some discussion on this, but you have taken my "thanks" off me (which I felt gave some 'cred', as I only have 2 green bars), and we now have the "like" function.
Hhhmmmm, I suppose you can't keep everyone happy all the time!!

Hi Lightning, Technically it was Adminxxx who did it, not me

I like you, and I am sure others do too.

Hopefully Adminxxx will comment on the like option and green bars (reputation based?)

[Bracket]

Just a thought or two on the practicalities for becoming a bronze member.

When I posted my first review here in January, of Wendy from Tokyo Cats, it was promptly shifted from the Post Your First Review Here forum to the Tokyo Cats CBD forum. If that arrangement is going to remain, then first-, second- and third-review posters will lose access to their reviews until they complete their fourth acceptable review since they don't have access to the review forums. This would be unfair to them and would deprive them of the ability to respond to comments that may be made on their reviews.

On the other hand, if those reviews remain in the Post Your First Review Here forum (and possibly in yet-to-be-created Post Your Second Review Here and Post Your Third Review Here forums) then Bronze members who decide to research a particular review forum may well miss out on quality reviews still lurking in those yet-to-be-bronzed forums.

Not sure if you've thought about this, but it has happened to me in the past. Another forum site once tightened access to its inner forums, through no fault of mine, with the result that I lost access to a very-recently posted review which frustrated me no end. Fortunately, the tightening turned out to be temporary and I'm now a happy member there again.

[Admin]

Thanks Bracket, good points. I think we have considered them already, but sometimes things do slip through the net.

The Post Your First Review forum will only be operational for another month or so, and is now only viewable to Bronze, Silver and Registered Users who joined prior to 30th May 2011. Once the backlog of first reviews have been processed then the forum will no longer be needed, since all future Bronze members, paying or free, will be able to post in the general review forums.

From now on, new members can only transition from a free Registered User status to Bronze by purchasing a subscription, for whatever period of time they wish. They can post or not, and their total posts and reviews will always be associated with their username to over time they might be able to reach the required 4 reviews.

The way for paid Bronze to convert to free Bronze will be for them to post their four reviews in the appropriate places, then send a PM to a moderator with those four links and request a status change.

I hope this addresses your comments, if it's still not clear then I will try to word it differently.

[Henry1]

Are the posts per year based on a calendar year or a year to date? In other words does the number of posts get reviewed on Jan 1 or is it continually reviewed on an ongoing basis based on the previous 12 months?

[Admin]

Are the posts per year based on a calendar year or a year to date? In other words does the number of posts get reviewed on Jan 1 or is it continually reviewed on an ongoing basis based on the previous 12 months?

At the moment, we see it as being per calendar year, starting on July 1, so everyone is on equal footing.

The old rules (that all members agreed to when signing up) were that you posted at least one review per 12 months to maintain Bronze membership, and over the rest of June we will be auditing current Bronze members to make sure that they are good to go for the next 12 months.

We will be allowing a fair bit of leeway in this transitional period, and are erring on the side of generosity, however reviews are what we are here for.

With our current membership base, this should generate almost 30 reviews per day. If you are a member here to read reviews and get the good oil on where to go or avoid, then this will be the place to be, either for free by posting those 4 reviews per year, or paying a few $$$ that could save you big time on your next punt.

If you can suggest a fairer way then feel free to offer it up for consideration.

[FriarFuck]

Do the general members have access to the first four reviews of others?
I'm sure you've thought of it, but you need to make sure people see it as an attractive option to hang around and post 4 reviews. If they can't see anything while posting the four, they may doubt that the candy shop is worth the effort.

[Admin]

Registered Members can only read the same parts of the forum as a guest/visitor. You can see what that looks like by logging out and seeing what you can see.

In a nutshell you can read all the advertisers forums, read the general discussion forums, and see the thread titles of all the review forums.

Registered members can't post reviews, only Bronze and above can, both paying and free Bronze have the same read/write access rights. Once someone has purchased a Bronze membership, they can read everything, and over time they can post those four reviews as they see fit.

We find a lot of members don't want to post anything, just read and find out where best to go, hence these changes.

Do the general members have access to the first four reviews of others?
I'm sure you've thought of it, but you need to make sure people see it as an attractive option to hang around and post 4 reviews. If they can't see anything while posting the four, they may doubt that the candy shop is worth the effort.