Message Board Achievements

This handy guide explains our message board achievements, the little multi-colored badges that are displayed underneath avatars in message board posts and member profile pages.

Please note that achievements are for message board-related activity only (with the exception of the Friends of TSL badge and the Subscriber badge). Our message boards were launched in 1999, so for example your “Years” badge relates to that date, not the date you first started reading our site (which might have been earlier).

If you think some of your data is wrong, please see the guide at the bottom of this page on how to email us and get it corrected.

Here’s a guide to the badges.

Friends of TSL

“Friends of TSL” are TechSideline.com supporters who go beyond the subscription and support TSL financially with an extra donation, through our Friends of TSL program.

How can you become one of the Friends of TSL? Click here to learn more about the program, and to become a member.

TSL Founder 1999 Achievement

TSL Founder Achievements

Our boards were launched in October 1999. This badge is displayed if you joined the boards and started posting that year (through 12/31/1999), and are in effect a “founding member” of the board. If you think your join date is incorrect, email us (staff at techsideline.com) with your estimated join date. It doesn’t have to be precise, and you don’t have to give us a long-winded explanation, just send us the date.

Number of Posts Achievements

Number of Posts Achievements     

Note: We have a lot more badges for number of posts than what we show here. They start out white with no border (100 posts), transition to bronze at 2,500 posts, then silver at 5,000 posts, and gold at 10,000 posts. Beyond 100,000 posts, we start turning things a little crimson to show how red-hot you are.

Subscriber Achievements

Subscriber Achievements

If you are a current subscriber to the site, then you’ll get a little dollar sign icon. Thank you for subscribing!

Years on the Board Achievements

Years Achievements       

After you’ve been posting on the boards (not just reading them) at least one year (based on your Join Date), you get one of these badges, showing how long you have been on our boards. They start gray, then go to bronze at 3 years, silver at 5 years, and gold at 10+ years. We don’t display the precise number of years, just the most recent threshold crossed. Once you get beyond 25 years … pffft, who keeps counting after that?

Remember, this is tied to your message board “Join Date,” which is when you first posted on the boards. It’s not how long you’ve been reading the site or subscribing to the site. If you think your join date is incorrect, email us (staff at techsideline.com) with your estimated join date. It doesn’t have to be precise, and you don’t have to give us a long-winded explanation, just send us a new date.

Likes Achievements

Likes Achievements      

Fellow posters give you “Likes” by clicking the “Like+” button inside your posts, if they like them, and we award you badges for the total number of Likes you have received on all of your posts. We’ll display multiple badges that won’t exactly add up to your number of Likes but instead, will add up to a threshold that you’ve recently crossed. (7,327 Likes, for example, will display a 5K+ badge and a 2000+ badge).

Your total number of Likes also includes the number of times people clicked the Plus button on your posts, dating back to some time in 2013 or so, when we first added the Plus-Minus buttons. (The Minus button was later dropped, and the Plus button was converted to a Like+ button.)

Think Your Data is Wrong?

If you think your data is wrong, leading to incorrect achievements being displayed, email us at staff at techsideline.com and let us know where you think the error is, and what the new data should be.

Post counts are a special case. Some people who have been on our boards a long time have low post counts, due to us transitioning through a couple different board systems, and data being lost.  So if you think your post count is strangely low, just email us and ask us to take a look, and we’ll go through the old data to see what the number should be.