Regular: A Daniweb member who visits/posts frequently, and tends to be friends with others who visit/post frequently.
New members could easily be overwhelmed by the mass of people running around, and it's hard to fit yourself in a community as old as Daniweb, where members are already well entrenched and have formed cliques. To make this inclusion easier, I had the idea of introducing those people who are around a lot and well known in the community.
This way new (and not so new) members can see who the big names are, why they're big names, and get a little background in the history of Daniweb. A little inside knowledge goes a long way toward fitting in. :)
So here are the rules:
1) You're not allowed to introduce yourself.
2) You're not allowed to bash someone for an introduction you don't agree with.
3) You're allowed to add to an introduction. For example, if someone introduces Dani and forgets to mention that she's a hopeless work-a-holic, you're welcome to add that to partial introduction.
4) You're encouraged to be honest. I'm well aware that some members aren't popular, so there's no need to pretend otherwise. We want the new guys to get a realistic idea of Daniweb. Hopefully everyone can be professional enough not to get into fights because of a harsh introduction. :icon_rolleyes:
I'll start.
Ancient Dragon
AD is in the informal clique of guru programmers for the Software Development category. If you ask a programming question, he's one of those most likely to answer it and be 100% correct. He's also a moderator with duties that span multiple categories and managed to get placed on the short list of featured posters for his contributions to Daniweb.
I don't know much about AD, and I can't really say that we're friends. However, I respect his opinion and trust him thoroughly when it comes to working together as moderators. He's very down to earth and has good judgement.
I get the impression that he's somewhat anti-social (when are you going to hang out more on IRC?) and limits himself to answering programming questions in the Software Development categry and moderator duties. He has a typical programmer mindset but hides it admirably most of the time. The rest of the time he's your typical cranky old man.
As a member he's great about helping people out by answering questions. His answers are almost always spot on and detailed. I find that I don't have to correct him often, despite his sickening post count and activity. AD has been around for a relatively long time, both in the real world and on Daniweb. ;)
As a moderator I've seen him make some bad decisions, but you can't expect everyone to be perfect. His good decisions far outweigh the bad ones. He's one of the moderators that I (as super mod) find myself relying on for picking up slack and setting a good example. He's very reliable and I have to try hard not to shove too much work on him. :(