My bmwcca.org "join date" is May 08, but I joined the BMW CCA 5+ years ago. Would it be possible to have the forum system base the "join date" on the member's BMW CCA membership join date? I think this would more accurately reflect a member's experience/standing in the on-line forum part of bmwcca.org.
Excellent suggestion although I think if it would slow things down since the membership join date needs to be pulled from a different database. On a page with 10 posts, that's 10 more queries.
It's a lot more work for the system to do if they implemented this. That means more bandwidth used, more cost to operate the forums, and so on. Besides, it truly is irrelevant as to when someone joined the club in regards to forum activity.
At one point below the username was the chapter logo. I didn't realize it was gone. And you know, you can use your .sig to indicate your chapter(s) also. Edit: WHOA. I didn't notice that they now show an anniversary pin in your profile. EDIT: Oh wait, I put it there.
Erm, got the point, but why? My "join date" is a value in a database that's looked up already, right? I'm saying that instead of using the "current date" when a member joins the forum, a lookup could be perfomed for that member's BMW CCA join date, and the value used. During run time, there would be no more lookups than there are now. Unless I'm missing something?
It is possible that some members' 'Join dates' will fall outside the readable parameters of the forum software (although the limitations I have seen were 12/31/1969 or 1/1/70). Currently, the join date tells you how long the member has been in the forum, which I think is all you can expect. I think it is almost as significant knowing that a longtime 'CCA member might be a complete 'noob' here. That puts a lot of things into context. FWIW, I've been in BMWCCA (the name when I joined) since 1985 (or is it 1984?), but only 'here' for about a year.
In my opinion I would vote for listing the BMWCCA membership start date. It's an indicator of experience with the club and the make.
Just put it in your signature. Interestingly, even CCA membership start date isn't necessarily fully indicative of one's experience with BMWs. Mine predates joining the BMWCCA by almost 10 years for example...fun times many years ago now.
+1 I've been a member for 5 years but only on this forum for just a few months... and I know hardly a thing about BMW's. Now, if you ask about Track days or AutoX...
Add me to the list of those who would like to see this. Oh, according to the forums I became a member when I was 5 months old
Might work for you "newbies" but for those of us with the four-digit membership numbers, no record exists of our join date in the BMW CCA system. If it helps someone here with my credibility more than the ridiculous "rep power" or post count, I joined the BMWMOA in 1971 (the year I bought my first two BMWs) and the BMWCCA in 1973. You know, back when there were no spaces in the club acronyms.
When did that record set go astray? I know they were reconstructing the portion for the date I joined in 1985. It was a matter of "Well, this guy with a lower number joined in November and this guy with a higher number joined in March, so you probably joined around December-January." Problem was, the guy they thought joined in November had a faulty memory while I had my very first ROUNDEL from several months earlier. So I became the data point for member numbers around 53302. Still, that only narrows it down to about a month, not a date certain - although I may still have that check ...
I suppose the dumped everything sometime after you joined. I'm around member #6000 and they certainly don't have any of those join dates.
