Ignore the original topic. Discuss how great wine + seltzer is.

This post is meant to be a companion to Kaubel's excellent compilation of "all-star" posts.

What I'd like to do here is compile a list (sorted alphabetically by name) of posters who the EJ forum community considers to be "experts" in their specific realm(s) of knowledge.

As an example:

Lactose: hunter theorycraft, spreadsheets, rotation calculations, gear/weapon analysis.
Praetorian: raid encounter strategy, guild management, theorycraft on WoW game mechanics, etc, etc.

Why do this? Two reasons:

1. So people can search by author using the search tool. So people can save time (and unnecessary posts) by simply sending PMs to the "experts" as needed.

2. So the community can better recognize respected voices, and the topics they represent best.

I'll edit my list as people respond to this post.

A List of Experts (by category):

Lactose: hunter theorycraft, spreadsheets, rotation calculations, gear/weapon analysis.
Praetorian: raid encounter strategy, guild management, theorycraft on WoW game mechanics, etc, etc.

A highly respected individual, is not always correct. And a noname begger, talking on the side of the street for pennies, it not necessarily incorrect. What people say should be judged based on the merits of the text, not who says them (this is a problem irl as well).

I hope not. I know that I've developed my own list of people I directly type into the search tool (search by author) in order to see what they've posted on a particular topic. Kalman, Arawethion, Kaubel, Lactose, Nurru...etc come to mind. Would be good to better organize who typically posts on what.

This is pretty much wholly correct, in my opinion. If you create a list of posters who are then officially recognized as authorities on a given subject, it gives undue weight to what they're saying which may not be deserved in the text.

Example (since I was mentioned here):

Poop poopity poop.

I'm able to post crap just as much as anyone else.

That's all fine and dandy but the point of discussion forums is for people to participate. If you just want to PM the experts with questions then you can do that already, but a) I don't believe that they would relish having to answer everything, and b) non-famous people sometimes have something worthwhile to say too! Giving some posters official "MVP status" would just lead to a situation like you see on the WoW forums where everyone says "blue plz."

A more productive approach would be to attempt to combine the posts by these authors that you frequently reference into some kind of wiki. Or perhaps update the already existing one (wowwiki).

:unsure:

Well, good to see you have lots of confidence in your thread, haha.

Anyway, no, this isn't useful. I'd rather people who are new to the boards read broadly and come to their own conclusions. And just because someone released an amazing spreadsheet eight months ago doesn't mean that they are automatically correct today. Let's let people's posts continue to stand on their own merit. A topical search index is handy. A poster-based one, less so.

i'm smrt. s-m-r-t smrt.

I see your poop and raise you a :toot:
While the mention is nice, I'd prefer people think to themselves "This person has good input" rather than "That thread says they're popular".

I'm an expert in fitting a quality bit of self-pleasuring in between Magmadar and Gehennas without anyone noticing. Does that count?

More seriously--this is, to some extent, the function of forum ranks, although that's probably about as far as it should go.

Did anything ever come of that project to come up with some meaningful forum ranks?