Yeah okay. I'm actually at work in the middle of writing something for my thesis... And these issues relate to that - so that might be why I feel the urge to get involved in these discussions (ignore me if I go all comprehensible)...

I guess there are lots of different things that the indicators might do. Here are some:

1) People might take more care of newbies because it is more apparent to viewers that they are newbies.

I'm sure we agree that that would be a good thing.

2) People might ignore newbies because they aren't 'supporters' of psychcentral and people decide to seek out 'supporters' rather than posting to people who aren't.

I guess we might disagree a little... But that might be a harmful thing?

The thing that I'm most worried about is this:

3) People who aren't given 'supporter' status might feel like they are regarded as 'unsupportive'.

I think that people are likely to feel this way when people say things like 'I'm so glad I'm given supporter status because it acknowledges the fact that I've given support'. The implication kind of being that some people have 'earned' their status and the people who don't have that status simply don't deserve it.

I think that is harmful.

Now of course we might say that they should just get over it... But I do think that this (likely) response by people who aren't given 'supporter' status should be taken into account when we are weighing the harms and the benefits in order to figure out whether they are a good idea or not such a good idea - all (harms and benefits) considered...

I guess when I weigh the likely harms / benefits I think it is more likely to harm than to benefit.

I guess when others weigh the likely harms / benefits they think it is more likely to benefit than to harm.

It might be that some harms that have occurred to me haven't occurred to them...
It might be that some benefits that have occurred to them haven't occurred to me...

(That is kind of why it is profitable to discuss differences of opinion)

(And that is why I don't feel particularly upset when people are disagreeing - I appreciate people getting the chance to air their views so that I can take on board some of the considerations they raise that may well not have occurred to me).

I guess we disagree on the verdict...
Which shows we disagree on either the factors that we take to be relevant OR whether the factors are taken to be harmful vs helpful OR the weighting allocated to those factors.