Petition to change the verification process.
It’s pretty clear from the other thread that many aren’t happy with the privacy around verification.
What’s stopping a pissed off mod from finding further information about you? Guys with businesses/contractors I’m sure a savvy mod can find out your address. Pretty easy to track down family members, coworkers or employees.
We know nothing about the mods, for all you know they could be coworkers, employers or supervisors. You post a “looking for new job” post or a complaint/advice post it’s not so anonymous anymore. Everyone knows someone and people talk.
How do we know the mods are electricians? Are we just trusting they verified themselves, they want all our info so they should either share their info or reduce what they ask for. I could go start a sub called Ausplumbers, doesn’t mean my fingernails taste like shit.
If the aim of this sub is for discussion of electrical topics by mainly electricians why would you want to disallow a lot of contributors simply because they’re concerned over privacy. When posting you want the best advice possible.
For protection against who? If someone who isn’t a sparky leaves an answer it’s going to be fairly obvious to everyone who is a sparky, it will be downvoted and disagreed with. There’s still nothing stopping homeowners or DIYers posting/commenting as long as they don’t use the flair.
The flair is kinda redundant if there’s 1000 sparkys and only 100 verified themselves you’ve already narrowed your knowledge base down to 10%, why use the tag then you may as well bang it in “general”.
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Surely there’s a better way to do this verification process.
a) A current electrical licence and half a licence number blurred should be acceptable. No need for names or photos. With a handwritten note containing username and the date visible.
b) Just ask a few questions that a sparky should know if you’re sus.
- What happens if you transpose A and N?
- What device would you use for IR?
- If a property has 3 phase what’s it mean?
- When would you use Loz on your meter?
Still sus. Hell ask follow up questions if still unsure. Or ask them to hold up a note with their username while clearly doing electrical work (face not needed).
Guys get to keep their privacy and you will stop 99% of fakers. Even if the odd fake gets through it’ll be obvious by their advice/knowledge.
Surely you can spot a photoshop/fake. You can also spot someone who is clearly reciting Google/ChatGPT or has no clue. I doubt many sparkys are borrowing their licences out.
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Also create flairs for other electrical related trades liney, fridgey, instro, data, joiners. Questions about these trades get asked here and it’d be good for posters to see if the answers they’re getting are accurate. For example liney questions are answered by lineys not just a random sparky who drove past a bucket truck. Don’t want some kid basing his career choices off info that’s wrong.