Hey everyone,

We just realized that our flair application page is 6 months old, and it's time to put up a new one. Before we do that, we thought we'd touch base with everyone to see what everyone thinks about our current flair system.

To give a quick recap, we give flair to people who people who are able to point us to a few comments that demonstrate that they are able to pass an "Economist Turing Test" . That is, the posts should be able to convincingly demonstrate that the submitter is quite knowledgeable about economics.

We're pretty lose about how we're defining sufficient knowledge. We've been saying you should be able to demonstrate a knowledge level equivalent to someone with a master's degree, but there's lots of ways of getting there. A BA with relevant work experience, an ABD PhD student, or extensive self study are all acceptable routes.

While we used to flair people as "Quality Contributors" we changed it to "Bureau Members" after we stole the layout from nber.org. I think that fits a bit better - there are plenty of people who make great contributions, but aren't necessarily extensively trained in economics.

Some context:

• Here's one of the (many) user posts requesting flair
• Here's our state of the subreddit feedback thread
• Here's the flair application page

Anyways, we'd like to hear from everyone about how the flair system seems to be working. Does it improve the discourse on the subreddit? Does it put a target for flaired members to get trolled? Are we flairing the right people? Are there people who should have gotten flaired, but didn't? Does the flair seem unduly biased to the left or right, or to orthodox or heterodox economists? Should we institute a formal system by which flair is removed?

I'd appreciate it if people could limit their input, as much as possible, to discussing the flair policy as opposed to flaired individuals. If you've got any problems with someone in particular, send us a message in modmail, and we will see what we can do to resolve it.

I'm going to keep this up until Monday, then start the next aotW series of with Angrist and Pischke's Credibility Revolution.