Hopefully this system will be better than the older one which was simply based on post count.
Your suggestions and comments are most welcome.
Hi ElectroMaster!
The old system was based on reputation points (the green/red square game). The little word under the username was based on number of posts ("Experienced Member", etc). At least, that was how I understood it to work. So if I went and looked at, say, UAEFame's posts now, would it say "Really bad" or just "Bad"? That user currently has two red squares--no offense intended to UAEFame; that was just the first example I thought of.
The new method of showing reputation has less granularity than the old method and, to me, is less visually intuitive. Green and red boxes are quite eye-catching. Of course, the rep thing is just a sub-game but it can be somewhat useful. I'll give it a bit of time but my initial feeling is that the new display is less useful.
As for the rest of it, the "Longevity" thing is nice but as Eric noted, redundant. The "Activity" bar is also nice but perhaps a popup explaining it would be a good idea. I don't know whether vBulletin supports that, though. No biggie.
I'm afraid I can't agree that the new sidebar presentation is more appealing--the old one was cleaner. That is of course a purely aesthetic and subjective judgement.
I don't suppose the software allows the sidebar display to be controlled by a User CP option, huh?
That would be really cool.
Actually, it just occurred to me that what would be *really* cool would be vBulletin providing an XML or similar feed with site and user info which could be used by, say, a Greasemonkey script to display things in whatever format the user desired. That said, I also want a pony. I don't think vBulletin does that and I don't think it's likely to in the near future.
Torben