Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
Ostensibly, it would appear that the ranking system is based on a plain post count, and I allow some to believe that because if they knew the true method it would make their heads explode. Let me give you the bare outlines of the actual Subsim High Intensity Tallying method to determine the Captain Ranking System (CRS).
As you may have heard, I live in Texas and I work for the petrochemical (oil) business. One of the other substantial industries in the Lone Star State is the aerospace industry. Now it happened that one fine Saturday morning about eight years ago I was playing a round of golf with a couple of NASA engineers (rocket scientists) who are buddies of mine, Bob and Jack. I had just started the Radio Room forums online and apparently one of the engineers noticed my mind was elsewhere (I was two over par on the eighth hole).
"Neal," Bob asked me, "what's got you so worried this fine Saturday morning?"
I explained how Subsim Review had this new communications medium called an online forum, and how it was pretty clear to me that we would soon have over 20 users and there was no way to tell the wise old salts from the scrubs. Jack, the other engineer, chuckled and exchanged a glance with Bob. "That's easy," he said.
"Maybe for you," I replied. "You're a rocket scientist".
"No, really. We can help you out here," said. Jack. "How much of your college relational physics do you remember?"
I scratched my head.
"It can be done this way," said Bob. "All you need to do is develop some IP-based cache triggers that use floating algorithms to determine the naval and submarine material content of each user. Simply add this to the user registration process; it will be transparent to the end user. When he signs up, your server will run an antecedent probe of the user's system, establish his browsing and buying patterns. This will gauge how many historical and naval websites he visits, how many subsim games he buys from your store, when he made the last donation to Subsim.com, how often he posts in the Radio Room, stuff like that."
"Yeah," said Jack. "And the application will take this information and run it through a linear matrix, you could call it a marine matrix--" both guys snickered, some private joke or scientist humor, I guessed "--and this will give you a sound basis with which to rank the members of your forum. You can give these ranks traditional naval names and terms, such as lieutenant, petty officer, captain, etc."
"And if the matrix senses paradoxical flux from a particular user, you know, when he is talking out his a**, it will assign a temporary degradation in rank, such as a punishment or probationary rank, like a shore leave, the brig, or getting stuck in an Aussie cathouse and missing the tide."
So, Abraham, that's pretty much how it worked out. There was more to the discussion but I'll skip the technical details. Hope that helps!
Neal
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