There have been quite a few posts recently from new members wondering about the potential success of the method.
Other members (take a bow minneapolisnick) are doing sterling work in reassuring people that it does work, and noting a few of the people that it has worked for.

The site is now at an interesting inflection point, in my opinion. It is beginning to grow rapidly and the pace of this growth will likely increase. Concurrently, a number of members (e.g. potato, SpringerRider) are either cured, or as good as cured, while some others (e.g. Bob) appear to be nearly there.

It struck me that it would be very useful to have a 'hall of fame' type table somewhere on the site, with a list of names, their current status (cured, nearly there, significant progress, early stages, no progress, abandonded etc) and a link to a thread/post that summarises their current position. In fact it would probably make sense to have seperate tables for each category.

I'm happy to volunteer my services to begin assembling the table

The benefits for new members/casual browsers is that they get to be very quickly able to access success stories (or failures), something that will become increasingly difficult as members (either cured - hopefully! - or given up) drift away from the board over time.

Great idea. We really need this. Milestones and breakthroughs are getting buried in the day-to-day stuff. I've been thinking we need something like that but haven't had the time to do it. I say GO FOR IT!! Should we lock the topic so it doesn't get cluttered with replies? That would mean pm'ing the posts to N101CS or me for posting but I think it would maintain the value of the thread.

BTW I am thinking of setting up the same system for the Dear Dr E thread; someone suggested this awhile back. I didn't want to be the gatekeeper of posts to him but it's more work being the hall monitor keeping it cleaned up for Dr E when he has a chance to visit.

What does everything think?

In essence, I agree with this idea. However, I'm not sure that I ever want to be labelled a 'failure' and a Hall of Fame could possibly engender a degree of competition. Also, members understandably display an element of frustration when their progress is slower than they'd like it to be. My concern is that creating a Hall of Fame could exacerbate this.

In summary, I think the idea needs very careful consideration if it is to achieve its desired objective and not demotivate some of the community's members.

V.

Good point, Virgil. In fact I have long suspected the weekly report in the sig potentially has the same effect, and I think I may remove mine. (Besides, one of our resident mathematicians, Mabelee, asserts that weekly numbers are inconsequestial and the daily numbers are what matters.)

There is no little irony in the fact that, while we certainly need and rely on support from one another, TSM just "happens" without any real effort on our part. We follow the Golden Rule by taking our nal. As SpringerRider used to say, TSM works whether we want it to or not. "Atta boys and atta girls" feel great, but our only real effort is just sticking around. Patience is what earns the purple hearts in this army. So the biggest props really should go to the Virgils and houtx's who stick with it and wait patiently for signs of progress. How would it look to lurkers if we were to give one of them the TSMer of the Week Award (ALERT: Attempt at humor).

All this notwithstanding, we really do need to let the world see at a glance when there is a success story. Maybe something more clinical: Describing factually rather than colorfully the indvidual "cases". Example: Perhaps call the thread Mission Accomplished and identify those who have experienced a drop to consistent drinking at safe levels, their drinking history, goals for the future, etc.

Virgil makes a good point, and we do need to be careful about the terminology for sure. However it is important that people get a truthful view of the method. If 10 or 20% of members (To pull figures out of the air) try the method and it doesn't work for them, then it is valuable for visitors to see that. Maybe someone might even be able to find commanalities to advance the method/state of the art in the area to help those for whom TSM doesn't work (if there is such a cohort).

In retrospect 'hall of fame' isn't a good title, it might be better to describe it as a 'TSM member experience summary' or somesuch

My suggestion would be as follows:

a) Create a seperate folder/forum for the summaries, with posting rights limited to a small number of trusted volunteers/moderators (they don't need to have rights anywhere other than this folder)
b) Create a sticky thread somewhere else, for all members - where anyone can post a request to have their profile updated.

That allows maximum flexibility, e.g. if there was 50000 members at some stage you'd maybe want to organise it differently than with 500. For example, for now a single (sorted alphabetically) list would probably be fine under each category - but later you might want to have lists for each letter etc
There could be a thread for each status type (e.g. cured, in-progress) etc

PS. It was me who made the suggest for the Dear Dr. E threads