I feel if that were a thing, this forum site would have been messed up. I feel if that were how any sort of member had a possible promotion, that would be highly unethical. I hope that was never ever the case of someone being promoted over wishing an anniversary or birthday. I am sure they would say “Thank you.” but wishing someone an anniversary or birthday is not yet close to being promoted, it is nice to wish someone that, but it is something I consider personal and has nothing to do with a community forum. Therefore, not worthy of a promotion over a single message. But interesting topic, @SuperSmartyPants600. Love topics like these.
If you read the reply two above yours from Buildthomas you would know it was never the case. That’s also what your common sense would hopefully tell you.
I had meant that wishing someone a happy birthday often was a good way to get noticed, not that it meant an immediate promotion. Obviously you could be noticed in other ways, but going into someone’s PMs and being nice was one of the key ways to be noticed by others.
The birthday wishing was an idea by @LuckyTux for the sole purpose of the kindness shown in a birthday wish.
Any notion that this was done only to influential users to cajole them into promoting you/“noticing you” is entirely yours. Furthermore, relying on birthday wishes for this purpose is selfish and immature.
Although I still wish developers on the site happy birthday, making yourself known to anyone of importance is how you succeed in any platform. That’s what I’ve practiced in both business and politics along with the devforum.
You didn’t get promotions by sucking up. You got promotions by finding ways to introduce yourself to other developers so that you that, when they see you on the forum, they interact with your work. Making connections is far different than the way that was described here. @TophatBloxxer explained that very well with his response, but I feel like it is important to mention that the techniques that were used to make connections to increase the chances of promotion were not ways to get “free-be” promotions but rather to allow an opportunity to introduce yourself to everyone on the forum.
However, I still recommend wishing your fellow developers happy birthday! Making connections here is still super important! My intention with the program was to create more friendships rather than get promotions-- it just happened to go both ways!
Absolutely keep it up! I wasn’t discouraging the initiative, just suggesting that people who do it check their motives. Helpful response, nonetheless, thank you for the clarification!
Of course not immediate, however, I don’t feel reputation should be from PMs, I think they should be done somewhere public like here on the DevForum through a forum post like tutorials and really helping out the community, at best, you get respected a ton by fellow members and the top contributors, if that is your wish to be noticed. Best way to be promoted is by just that. I see what you are getting at now, but I feel being noticed should never be done privately, always publicly where people really get to know what you do.
Of course it will! However, let us not get ahead of ourselves, it won’t be too easy, and we have to just make sure we have a good reputation for following rules, staying safe of moderation and helping out or engaging in relevant discussion. This will be a good way of growing this forum. I really hope to see a big growth in this forum, especially getting to know more people with awesome abilities to help out on this forum.
It will still have some sort of challenge and dedication to still obtain the role itself, which makes it still hard, but a little more easier than before. As you said, staying safe and following rules and dedication should definitely bring more people into the community.
Manual review decides that. All moderation actions taken against someone on the forum (posts removed, strikes) count forever since there is no way for us to distinguish between stale and fresh moderation actions with this automation we are using. It’s perhaps inconvenient for a small bunch of people that are hindered by this, but people can prevent that situation by just following the rules proper from the start.
I’m asking this question for all the shy developers around the forum (including myself) , does your posts and topics count matter in this automated process?
Well, if you’re not posting much, you probably don’t benefit from having full membership anyways, since the main perk is access to posting in some categories without going through post approval. Since that’s the case, it would be weird to not have it count.
