I have often felt it would be better if I had some idea of the capabilities of those people I try to help. It would enable me to pitch the level of help - the amount of detail if you like - and not suggest things that most people with a certain level of knowledge would automatically know. Not embarassing myself or insulting the person I am helping is the ideal.....

To acheive this, perhaps the login procedure could ask for the users self-assessed level in strictly neutral terms like 'how capable would you rate yourself about computers ? (.) hardly at all (.) not very (.) moderate (.) fairly expert

This rating would then become part of every post header like

posted by gbhall (level 4 user) ...... or similar.

One could edit one's level of capability claimed in the usual areas.

This could have potential, but just like specs & other details most people won't fill it in. They just want to get their question answered and move on.

I agree and I agree. Would be nice, but we'd need to force people to fill in that field somehow. I wonder if there is already an existing module for this.