And then we were told that whether we paid or not was six of one/half-dozen of the other, as those of us who were unpaid would generate revenue by viewing ads. In fact, IIRC, they said or implied that having more people view the ads would be better. I would have been more than happy to keep paying the lousy $7.48 per year if they had said it would help.
I already paid for the custom title, but I have to admit it would be nice to keep the “Charter Member” either above or below the custom title.
It may be a silly thing, but I do kind of like the “Charter Member” designation.
What about using Ranks for this purpose? That’s pretty much why they exist, isn’t it? Maybe you can make “Charter Member” a rank, and promote all existing Charter Members who donate extra for the custom title to the new rank. Thus they’ll have the custom title and the rank of “Charter Member.” No hacking needed.
Huh - I’ve put everyone who doesn’t have the title “Charter Member” on ignore. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Good point, but here’s the complication:
If you create a rank called “Charter Member” and give it to all Charter Members, then Charter Members without custom titles will show up as:
username
Charter Member
Charter Member
and Charter Members with custom titles will show up as:
username
custom title
Charter Member
If you give the rank of “Charter Member” to Custom Title Members (instead of to Charter Members, as in the previous example), then you will have Custom Title Members who are not Charter Members show up as Charter Members. There is no way in vBulletin to restrict a rank of Charter Member to members of Charter Member AND Custom Title Member.
There is no solution without a hack; and even with, there are no hacks that address titles the way we use them (hacks are all based on post count). And that’s assuming we’d want to install a hack at all, which is a not good assumption.
The solution for now (for Charter Members with custom titles) is to switch back to Charter Member whenever they’re thinking of a new title or are in-between custom titles - a warm fuzzy state which only they are entitled to 
-xash
Administrator
p.s. Grammar Nazis, should this line be “…a warm fuzzy state to which only they are entitled”? That doesn’t sound right.
Doesn’t sound right, but is … such is the hell that is correct grammar. 
Well, what’s wrong with using ranks for all titles, not just Charter Members?
xash
Keeper of the Keys
Administrator
Kunilou
Asker of the Obvious
Charter Member
Newperson
Working Their Way Up
Member
Yeah, baby!
Because not everyone has a custom title, so someone without a custom title would have the same thing listed twice. Or do you mean make up a new rank for each “standard” title?
e.g. All people with title “Guest” would also have Rank “Conviva”.
But then what default Rank would you give “Charter Member” people? If you make the default rank “Charter Member”, then people who don’t have a custom title will have “Charter Member” listed twice under their names which is redundant and looks like a bug.
If you make the default rank something else, “Old Faithful”, then a Charter Member will have
Charter Member
Old Faithful
but a person with a custom title will have
My Custom Title
Old Faithful
and it still won’t show “Charter Member”.
So, I’m starting to grasp here that putting in another field (name, title, custom title) and leaving it blank would be something like division by zero?
Kunilou
Charter Member
Blind to the Obvious
I’m not sure if you are trying to describe what should be possible with a standard vBulletin install and no hacks, using the title and rank fields, or if you are expressing the sentiment that “a computer should be able to do this, since we were able to put a Man on the Moon!”
I can tell you that we’ll put another man on the moon sooner than we’ll put another hack on the SDMB[sup]*[/sup].
I even have my own breaking-news quote ready: That’s one small custom title for gurgle man, one giant custom title for mankind.
*I’m only half-kidding 
Neither. I’m genuinely clueless about this stuff.
The simple answer is that vBulletin’s default options do not allow for any reasonable and satisfactory solution. A hack could make it possible, but someone would need to write that hack. Even if that hack were to be written, we would need to agree to install it, which in all likelihood will not happen.
The poll responses notwithstanding, we have seen strong uptake from Charter Members for custom titles under the existing system, and we hope that other Charter Members would join us in the custom title fun.
-xash
Administrator
Do hacks include changes to the templates? Because Javascript could easily handle making sure that the title and the rank are different. If they both read Charter Member, one line could easily be hidden.
Well, okay, so it would be a whole lot easier if the ranks and titles unique class ids, rather than both being references as class “smalltext”. I don’t know if you can automatically change that or not.
Still, despite the amount of work it would take, it doesn’t really qualify was what I would mean by a hack, but it might to y’all.
So, what if some of us were to put “Charter Member” manually into our location fields? Is that acceptable? Well, I mean, besides ticking off those who like to see an actual location in the Location field.
Yes, because any edits to templates would be overwritten on an upgrade.
I don’t think most people would want to do this, because it wouldn’t be “natural”, but that’s just my personal opinion.
Officially, I don’t think we have any rule one way or the other on this, but the problem with this approach would be that it would need manual enforcement (to ensure that nobody misrepresents their member group) and that’s not something we would want mods/admins, who are all volunteers, to be spending time and effort on.
Currently, a non-charter Member cannot manually change their custom title to Charter Member because the word “Charter” gets auto-deleted and thus no manual enforcement is needed. Charter Members can switch between their custom title and their Charter Member title at any time, and as often as they like, for the duration of their custom title subscription.
-xash
Administrator
I have a proposal.
What if Charter Members who buy custom titles are displayed in bold face, while non-Charter Members are displayed in standard font?
I likes my Charter Member tag quite a lot. Occasionally fits of humor will tempt me to buy a custom title, but losing the Charter Member tag is a bummer. Then again having 2 lines might become a bit cumbersome, though I reserve judgment until I see it in action.